Advertising in disguise? How disclosure and content features influence the effects of native advertising

Abstract

Native advertising has recently become a prominent buzzword for advertisers and publishers alike. It describes advertising formats which closely adapt their form and style to the editorial environment they appear in, intending to hide the commercial character of these ads. In two experimental studies, we test how advertising disclosures in native ads on news websites affect recipients’ attitudes towards a promoted brand in a short and long-term perspective. In addition, we explore persuasion through certain content features (i. e., message sidedness and use of exemplars) and how they affect disclosure effects. Results show that disclosures increase perceived persuasive intent but do not necessarily decrease brand attitudes. However, disclosure effects do not persist over time and remain unaffected by content features.

News in an Era of Content Confusion: Effects of News Use Motivations and Context on Native Advertising and Digital News Perceptions

“…Moreover, the results reflect the immediate influence of perceiving the NA on attitudes toward the message as well as credibility of ensuing political reporting. Although the negativity of these perceptions is certainly a cause for concern, particularly among publishers, the duration of these effects has been called into question (Beckert, Koch, Viererbl, Denner, & Peter, in press) and merits further scrutiny.…”

Transparency of digital native and embedded advertising: Opportunities and challenges for regulation and education

“…Second, the type of native advertising may moderate disclosure effects. The level of embeddedness of the persuasive message in the digital content may determine how hard it is for people to recognize the persuasive nature of embedded and native advertising and, therefore, the necessity of using disclosures (for the role of the persuasive message in disclosure literature, see, in this special issue, Beckert, Koch, Viererbl, Denner, and Peter, 2020. ) Third, the question remains whether the same disclosure is equally effective across platforms.…”

Native and embedded advertising formats: Tensions between a lucrative marketing strategy and consumer fairness

“…Two contributions (Beckert, Koch, Viererbl, Denner, and Peter, 2020;Weitzl, Seiffert-Brockmann, and Einwiller, 2020) provide empirical research on the question of effective disclosure practices. In the complex online-media environment, the recognition of native advertising might not always be possible, even if a disclosure is present (Wojdynski and Evans, 2016).…”