Prominent or subtle: The impact of brand prominence on social media advertisement engagement

Abstract

Brand prominence is a persuasive content feature of social media advertisements (SMA). Drawing on communication and persuasion theory, our research explores the effect of brand prominence on SMA engagement and its mechanism through five scenario-based experiments. The results suggest that high (vs. low) brand prominence lessens consumers' SMA engagement, but this basic effect is moderated by self-brand connection and perceived role overload. Cognitive ad avoidance mediates these effects. These results reveal that brand prominence in SMA hurts persuasion effects. Our research (1) enriches the application perspective of communication and persuasion theory, (2) provides new ideas for research in consumer resource management and contributes to the conservation of resource theory, (3) and complements brand prominence aftereffects research. Also, our findings provide practical guidance for firms’ interaction strategies with consumers on social media.