Abstract
Advertising is ubiquitous in children's everyday life – and on the Internet. The manifestations of online advertising are not only diverse but also very dynamic, increasingly personalised and therefore challenging for young online users in multiple respects. From the perspectives of both law and media education, the central question arises whether children are able to identify online advertising as such and to understand its intention. A basic understanding of advertising and reliable labelling of advertising material is seen as fundamental requirements for children to identify advertising as such and to be able to handle it appropriately and competently. Concerning the question of advertising literacy, we present findings of an interdisciplinary study in which we investigate the concept of online advertising of primary school age and how they deal with advertising online. The results show how challenging online advertising is for children and at which points they have difficulties in transferring their concept of advertising to online content. Against the background of the study, we discuss the idea of advertising literacy and the methodological challenges about current and future forms of online advertising and persuasive messages.
Highlights
Advertising is ubiquitous in children’s everyday life – and on the Internet
We focus on the following research questions: How do children deal with different forms of online advertising, what challenges do they have in dealing with these and what are relevant factors on which the handling of online advertising depends?
The findings show that the way children deal with different forms of online advertising depends on several factors
Summary
Advertising is ubiquitous in children’s everyday life – and on the Internet. Online advertising can take many forms, such as banners, insertions on websites, as well as brand placements in movies or games (Radesky et al 2020). Even if there are different definitions and concepts of advertising literacy (Zarouali et al 2018), a basic understanding of advertising and reliable labelling of advertising material is seen as fundamental requirements for children to identify advertising and to be able to deal with it adequately Developments such as native advertising and influencer marketing, where advertising and editorial content are becoming increasingly blurred, pose further challenges for users. At eleven to twelve years, they have the cognitive prerequisites to understand the compelling character (Landeszentrale für Medien und Kommunikation Rheinland-Pfalz 2014; Livingstone and Helsper 2006; Radesky et al 2020; Zarouali et al 2018) This age-related differentiation is only an approximate orientation, as the competencies are related to both the particular advertising requirements children are confronted with (John 1999) and the online context and product experiences they make (Moore 2004). The quantitative and qualitative findings on these topics are summarized below
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