Shedding New Light on How Advertising Literacy Can Affect Children's Processing of Embedded Advertising Formats: A Future Research Agenda

Abstract

Advertisers are continuously searching for new ways to persuade children, thereby fully integrating commercial content into media content, actively engaging children with the commercial content, and enlarging the amount of commercial messages a child is confronted with at one moment in time. This poses a challenge for how children cope with embedded advertising. This conceptual paper aims to develop a theoretically grounded framework for investigating how children process embedded advertising. More precisely, it sheds a light on previous research and conceptualizations of advertising literacy and provides suggestions for future research. In particular, attention is devoted to conceptual and methodological issues, as well as to the need for research on how to improve children's coping with embedded advertising, by emphasizing the value of persuasive intent priming and implementation intentions. To conclude, future research directions are discussed regarding strategies to strengthen children's dispositional (i.e. associative network consisting of cognitive, moral and affective beliefs related to advertising) and situational (i.e. actual recognition of and critical reflection on advertising) advertising literacy, and their coping skills.

The mediating role of advertising literacy and the moderating influence of parental mediation on how children of different ages react to brand placements

“…This advertising literacy refers to individuals' ability to identify commercial content as such (Waiguny et al, ), their in‐depth knowledge about the persuasive nature of the content and the advertising tactics used, and their motivation to apply this knowledge at the time of exposure (Friestad & Wright, ; John, ). Embedded advertising poses a challenge for young children as it hides the commercial content into the media content, making it difficult for those children to critically reflect on this content and develop a balanced attitude towards the advertisement (Hudders et al, ). When advertising literacy is not triggered when watching a brand placement, brand attitudes may be fully determined by a positive affect transfer of the movie context to the brand placed in this context (Nairn & Fine, ).…”

La publicidad en el punto de venta: influencia en la imagen corporal infantil

“…A los adultos se les presupone una capacidad crítica dada por su experiencia que los niños no poseen, puesto que son más incapaces de percibir que están siendo persuadidos. De ahí que la publicidad (y las imágenes mediáticas en general) llegue a ser, sin lugar a http://www.revistalatinacs.org/072paper/1202/52es.html Página 959 dudas, un agente educador en el entorno infantil (Hudders et al, 2017;Lwin et al, 2017;Zeni et al, 2017), ofreciendo un discurso que el niño tiene que compatibilizar con otros presentes en el hogar o en la escuela.…”

“Everything under control?”: Privacy control salience influences both critical processing and perceived persuasiveness of targeted advertising among adolescents

“…These cues are then placed in near proximity of an advertisement to test whether this warning cue can influence young consumers' critical thinking processes and responses. However, by drawing on a reflection of Hudders et al (2017), such cues might not be equally effective for different advertising formats. In the case of advertising on Facebook, an important element is that ads are targeted based on the personal data of users.…”

“…Such cues usually refer to some kind of textual disclosure or visual label that reveal the persuasive intent of a particular message online (Boerman, Kruikemeier, & Borgesius, 2017). They are designed to inform (young) consumers of an upcoming commercial message (i.e., trigger their awareness), and hence, stimulate them to activate their critical persuasion awareness (Hudders et al, 2017). In the past, there has been some research on the effectiveness of such ad cues among young consumers, but this body of literature is still in its infancy.…”