Advertising Research Articles

Age Differences in Moral Reasoning: An Investigation of Sponsored YouTube Videos

ABSTRACT Researchers in the area of children and advertising have been working for decades to determine exactly how children process commercial messages. While a great deal of work has focused on cognitive advertising literacy, research regarding the development of children’s moral advertising literacy is lacking. Given the popularity of social media platforms among youth today, this study examined age differences in children’s moral evaluations of product placement in a YouTube video displaying various forms of disclosures. Results revealed that more prominent disclosures are associated with greater judgments of the appropriateness of the advertising tactic, which in turn is associated with more positive evaluations of the promoted brand. While the former relationship was particularly strong among younger children, older children were more likely to consider how others and society broadly are impacted by covert advertising, resulting in more negative evaluations of the promoted brand.

Specificities Introduced by Mobile Phones in the Relationship Between Children and Commercial Content

This article explores the specificities of the relationship between children and the advertising to which they are exposed through their cell phones, and reports on a mixed methodology study conducted in the metropolitan area of Santiago de Chile. The study aims to learn about children’s predisposition, interaction, and perceptions with regards to mobile advertising. Most significant is the finding that this young generation (10-14 years old) identify commercial messages with which they claim low levels of interaction. Regarding interaction, the ads which most likely attract minors’ attention are placed on social networks, are presented in formats which provide some value (in terms of information or entertainment) and are for on products of interest to the audience studied. Finally, for many minors advertising eminently belongs to the digital world and their perceptions may not be transferable to traditional media.

Body and diet as sales pitches: Spanish teenagers’ perceptions about influencers’ impact on ideal physical appearance

This project sits at the intersection of three axes: (a) influencers as the increasing focus of minors’ attention and trust online, (b) sponsored content about eating habits and physical appearance produced by these influencers, and (c) minors’ ability to discern and identify the persuasive intent of said content. The usefulness of analyzing the interplay of these three axes lies in the impact that consumption of this content has on minors’ self-esteem and on the adoption of certain habits that can directly impact their personal well-being. For this reason, this project seeks to provide insight into the social imaginary that influencers’ sponsored speech creates in minors regarding their physical appearance. To this end, a qualitative study with 12 focus groups of minors aged 11–17 years of age who reside in Spain was proposed. Notable among the key results was that the interviewees recognize that they primarily receive commercial messages about food and products related to physical appearance, such as makeup or clothing, from influencers; likewise, they are aware of persuasive tactics used on social networks, such as the construction of a perfect, aspirational world, which minors absorb and accept as part of the digital environment and end up incorporating into their behavior on social networks. This research aims to help demonstrate that teaching critical thinking is a long-term cultural investment that would make the citizens of tomorrow aware, engaged, and active.

Posting or Advertising? How Political Parties Adapt Their Messaging Strategies to Facebook’s Organic and Paid Media Affordances

Facebook plays a key role in election campaigns because it provides strategic marketing affordances for political parties’ electoral goals. Organic media allow to engage regularly with broader audiences through publicly visible Facebook posts. Paid media advertisements draw on personal data to target tailored messages only at selected users. Thus, political parties can misuse them to highlight contradictory issues or drive negative narratives to susceptible voters. However, studies are lacking about how and to what extent parties adapt the use and content of their messaging strategies to Facebook’s organic and paid media affordances. To provide answers to these questions, this study draws on data from a manual content analysis to compare the timing and content strategies of all posts, sponsored post, and ads which were distributed by six parties in a four-week time span before the 2018 German state election in Hesse. Our results add to the political marketing literature by showing that parties use organic and paid media as independent messaging strategies. Both are published at rather different times in the campaign and with different campaign functions, issues, and degrees of negativity. Further, we show that parties’ organic and paid messaging strategies are dependent on party characteristics and electoral competition.

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Attention to risk information in direct-to-consumer prescription drug print ads: An eye-tracking study.

FDA regulations state print ads for prescription drugs must provide a true statement of information "in brief summary" describing "side effects, contraindications and effectiveness." To fulfill these requirements, these ads typically display risk information both as important safety information (ISI) on the "main" ad page with the product claims and on a separate "brief summary" page. The ISI can be lengthy and may repeat brief summary content. The authors tested two versions of the ISI (short versus long) and the presence or absence of a brief summary in direct-to-consumer prescription drug print ads for two medical conditions: overactive bladder (N=181) and rheumatoid arthritis (N=179). Attention was measured with eye-tracking and self-report methods. Risk retention and perceptions were self-reported. Participants spent more time viewing ads with a long ISI or a brief summary and in some instances, recalled more risks. The combination of a long ISI and a brief summary did not increase or decrease attention to or retention of risk information. A long ISI and a brief summary may perform similar functions.

Contemporary Advertising Text Art Design and Effect Evaluation by IoT Deep Learning under the Smart City

This work intends to solve the problem that the current artistic typeface generation methods rely too much on manual intervention, lack novelty, and the single font local feature and the global feature extraction method cannot fully describe the font features. Firstly, it proposes a handwritten word recognition model based on generalized search trees (GIST) and the pyramid histogram of oriented gradient (PHOG). The local features and global features of the font are fused. Secondly, a model of automatic artistic typeface generation based on generative adversarial networks (GAN) is constructed, which can use hand-drawn fonts to automatically generate artistic typefaces in the desired style through training as needed. Finally, the generation of the huaniao typeface is used as an example. By constructing the dataset, the effectiveness of the two models is verified. The experimental results show the following: (1) The proposed handwritten character recognition model based on GIST and PHOG has a higher recognition rate of different fonts than the single GIST and PHOG features by more than 5.8%. The total recognition time is reduced by more than 49.4%, and the performance is improved significantly. (2) Compared with other popular algorithms, the constructed GAN-based automatic artistic typeface generation model has the best quality of the generation of huaniao on both the pencil sketch and the calligraphy character image dataset. Models have broad application prospects in contemporary advertising text art design. This study aims to provide important technical support for the automation of contemporary advertising text art design and the improvement of overall efficiency.

Multimodal Coherence Revisited: Notes on the Move From Theory to Data in Annotating Print Advertisements

The present paper proposes a preliminary annotation framework for the study of multimodal coherence in print ads. The framework is firmly based on a review of current theorizing on multimodal cohesion and coherence. Following guidelines for good empirical practice, the annotation scheme is tested on 50 ad samples, seeking to illustrate genre-specific qualities of multimodal coherence and to identify difficulties in applying conceptual frameworks to data. The paper employs six dimensions of multimodal coherence: layout, cohesive ties, info-linking, relational propositions, mode-centricity and multimodal rhetorical operations. In conclusion, we outline some of the more general challenges that multimodal annotation raises when it makes close contact with data.

Exploratory Factor Analysis of Advertising and Perceived Usefulness in the Context of Online Shopping

Exploratory factor analysis is a multivariate statistical approach used to create and validate questionnaire items. This research was designed and certified the instrument of advertising and perceived usefulness through exploratory factor analysis, and it is an application in the context of online shopping behaviour. The study examines two constructs: advertising (ADV) and perceived usefulness (PU). One hundred (100) respondents were selected through a simple random sampling procedure to participate and fill out the questionnaire. Based on the reliability test, this study set an instrument of ten items to develop the construct of advertising, while nine items were designed to construct perceived usefulness. The procedures for carrying out EFA for the two constructs are described in detail. Finally, future researchers can use the items by applying the instrument in different research fields.

Social Media Influencers as Mediators of Commercial Messages

Social media influencers are integral to contemporary organizations’ marketing strategies. Despite growing interest in the topic, there is scant knowledge of how organizations manage and collaborate with influencers in their content production during commercial collaborations. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and a semiotic analysis of social media content, this study elucidates the dynamics of organizations’ commercial collaborations with influencers and discusses how influencers decode and transmit organizations’ commercial messages to their followers in the destination marketing context. Social reality and commercial messages are enmeshed in the content narrative and interpreted by the influencer and their knowledge of their audience into what they could mean and become in the semiotic and symbolic landscapes of social media environments. Thus, an influencer’s interpretation of organization’s commercial messages is embedded in the social media environment.

Improving Representation Over Time? Assessing Intersectional (In)Visibility of Masculinity and Race/Ethnicity in Print Ads

The current research investigates intersections of masculinity and race/ethnicity as portrayed in mainstream advertisements by assessing 1,181 print ads across two time periods. Drawing on intersectionality and content analysis, the intersections of masculinity types and race/ethnicity are explored. Results suggest a narrow assessment of these elements as part of diversity can lead to false improvement assumptions over time. Rather than focusing on one intersection such as masculinity, multiple dimensions should be considered to more accurately capture developments within advertising over time. Overall, companies need to reevaluate how diversity is reflected in advertisements and select suitable depictions to fully reflect and advance societal diversity in promotional tools.

Gender in Philippine advertisements: Portrayal patterns and platform differences immediately before the COVID-19 pandemic

Informed by the pioneering work of Erving Goffman, subsequent studies by Mee-Eun Kang, recent innovations in the Geena Davis Institute, and local approaches by Philippine scholars, this study sought to determine the portrayal of gender in Philippine advertising across various media. Specifically, it located gender across products, storylines, characters, pitch, and setting. It provided the baseline data for the depiction of gender immediately before the pandemic, and served as the benchmark against how gender may be portrayed differently in ads in the next normal. The population of TV, print, and radio advertisements was based on a database maintained by Aries Insights and Media Solutions (AIMS), access to which was facilitated by Kantar Media. The study covered two TV stations, three broadsheets, two tabloids, two FM stations, and two AM stations. The researchers constructed two weeks from January – December 2018 for TV and print, while one week was constructed from October to December 2018 for radio. Across platforms, the most advertised products were food and non-alcoholic beverages, pharmaceutical/health/herbal products, and restaurants, retail outlets, and malls. Ads focused on product/brand prestige, appealed to any of the five human senses, or concentrated on health. Certain ad pitches showed noticeable gendered differences. Women rather than men were associated with beauty, youth, and value for money. Print and radio ads featured more men than women, while TV featured more women than men. The study found that while overt objectification was no longer prevalent in advertisements, stereotypically gendered portrayals remain in subtle forms across platforms.

Online Advertising's Potential Impact on Consumers

Online advertising is a type of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web to deliver marketing messages in order to attract, retain, and enhance customers. A consumer can have an idea and information about products and services from a small business enterprise as well as a large business enterprise. Focus has also been placed on various trends in online advertising, which has resulted in the fact that online ads have become a challenge for print ads, as various online applications and social sites help to lead to data more quickly than other existing advertisement mediums. This is an appealing awareness-raising tool for business promotion. Online advertising is a thriving industry that is being researched.

Personal Cell Phones among Children: Parental Perception of Content-Related Threats and Attempts to Control Them in a Lithuanian Sample.

Background and Objectives: Various content-related threats such as provocative content, disinformation, cyberbullying, or sexual and commercial messages might reach children by phone and have a negative effect on their health. Amongst parents who are able to control it, we aimed to assess parental attitudes towards the use of mobile phones among children and control measures taken. Materials and Methods: A total number of 619 parents of primary school children from a middle-sized town in Lithuania participated in this study. Parents anonymously filled out our original questionnaire. Distribution of the respondents was assessed according to control measures taken, threat awareness, and sociodemographic factors. Results: Most of the respondents (79.8%) thought that personal mobile phones might be harmful to children’s health, 99.5% of the parents used at least one control measure. Further, 91.9% of the respondents did not think that children might receive messages from strangers. Respectively, 85.5% and 95.2% of the parents thought that children do not receive offensive or sexual content messages. Many parents (25.5%) helped their children register to social networks. Parents with lower education and parents of younger children had lower awareness of threats (p < 0.05). Fathers, higher educated, single, and unemployed parents indicated application of fewer control measures (p < 0.05). Other sociodemographic factors were not related with threat awareness or control measures taken (p > 0.05). Conclusions: Nearly all parents of primary school children take measures in order to control their children’s usage of mobile phones but most of them underestimate content-related threats brought by mobile phones.

A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words: Using Depicted Movement in Picture-Based Ads to Increase Narrative Transportation

Storytelling is a common tactic used by marketers to connect with consumers and persuade through narrative transportation. While researchers have explored how narrative transportation can be generated through many different mediums, little research has investigated how narrative transportation can be achieved through a single image, such as those used for print ads and billboards. This research examines how single-image, picture-based ads with high levels of depicted movement can prompt consumers to empathize with characters in the ad, activate their imagination, and experience narrative transportation leading to more positive attitudes toward that ad. In addition, when ads incorporate a design tactic that requires inductive inference, such as showing products as humanized, narrative transportation can be generated even in the absence of depicted movement. This research adds to the narrative transportation literature by providing depicted movement and humanization as specific tactics advertisers can use in a single image to persuade through narrative transportation.

Young people in Australia discuss strategies for preventing the normalisation of gambling and reducing gambling harm

BackgroundThe normalisation of gambling for young people has received considerable recent attention in the public health literature, particularly given the proliferation of gambling marketing aligned with sport. A range of studies and reports into the health and wellbeing of young people have recommended that they should be consulted and engaged in developing public health policy and prevention strategies. There are, however, very few opportunities for young people to have a say about gambling issues, with little consideration of their voices in public health recommendations related to gambling. This study aimed to address this gap by documenting young people’s perceptions about strategies that could be used to counter the normalisation of gambling and prevent gambling related harm.MethodsThis study took a critical qualitative inquiry approach, which acknowledges the role of power and social injustice in health issues. Qualitative interviews, using a constructivist approach, were conducted with 54 young people (11–17 years) in Australia. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to interpret the data.ResultsFive overall strategies were constructed from the data. 1) Reducing the accessibility and availability of gambling products; 2) Changing gambling infrastructure to help reduce the risks associated with gambling engagement; 3) Untangling the relationship between gambling and sport; 4) Restrictions on advertising; and 5) Counter-framing in commercial messages about gambling.ConclusionsThis study demonstrates that young people have important insights and provide recommendations for addressing factors that may contribute to the normalisation of gambling, including strategies to prevent gambling related harm. Young people hold similar views to public health experts about strategies aimed at de-normalising gambling in their local communities and have strong opinions about the need for gambling to be removed from sport.

Advertisers use online reviews to design more effective advertisements

The key advertisement element “text” has a unique superiority effect on attention and attraction towards advertisements. While a number of studies has examined how an advertisements need to be effective and persuading. Our aim in this paper is to mine the customer reviews for emotional, non-emotional and both mix content to design more effective advertisements. We believe that because online customer reviews having a lot of marketing insights which can be used further. We find that that recall effect is higher for print ads containing emotional content. In addition, we found that ads with mix of emotional and non-emotional content from reviews will have a positive attitude towards the print ads. Finally, we found that viewing ads with mix of both emotional and non-emotional text will increase purchase intension among consumers.

Presence of Nicotine Warning Statement on US Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS) Advertisements 6 Months Before and After the August 10, 2018 Effective Date.

Effective in August 10, 2018, FDA requires advertisements for electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) that meet the definition of a "covered tobacco product" to feature a standard nicotine warning statement. To date, limited data exist on the presence of warning statements in ENDS advertising. We acquired ENDS ads (n = 459) that first ran six months before (February 10, 2018-August 9, 2018) and after (August 10, 2018-February 9, 2019) the effective date. The sample included online, print, and outdoor static ads (ie, without video or animated graphics) (n = 166 before, n = 198 after), online and television video ads (n = 16 before, n = 49 after), and radio ads (n = 9 before, n = 21 after). We coded ads for the presence of the verbatim FDA warning. Ads with verbatim warnings were coded for required formatting and additional features. Overall, 28% of static (n = 46/166), 62% of video (n = 10/16), and 67% of radio (n = 6/9) ads that ran before the effective date contained the verbatim warning versus 84% (n = 167/198, p &lt; .001), 96% (n = 47/49, p = .002), and 86% (n = 18/21, p =.329) of ads that ran after, respectively. Following the effective date, nearly all static ads placed the warning as required at the top of the ad (76% [n = 35/46] before, 97% [n = 162/167] after, p &lt; .001), and many video ads featured the warning statement for the entire ad duration (0% [n = 0/10] before, 60% [n = 28/47] after, p &lt; .001). Half (n = 9/18) of radio warnings running after the effective date were read faster than the other promotional content. The presence of the nicotine warning statement on paid promotional static, video, and radio ENDS ads in this sample increased after August 10, 2018, but a notable number still lacked the warning. Results from this study provide initial insights into the extent to which required nicotine warning statements appear in ENDS ads in the study sample across traditional (eg, magazines, television, radio) and digital (eg, online/mobile ads) advertising mediums. Following the August 10, 2018, effective date, we observed a substantial increase in the presence of the required FDA warning statement on the ENDS ads in this sample. However, a notable number of ads in the study lacked the required warning and warnings did not always include the required formatting displays.

Girls’ portrayals in fast fashion advertisements

ABSTRACT This study analyses the visual construction of girls and notions surrounding young femininities articulated by 15 contemporary advertisements of Nordic fast fashion companies, available on their public Facebook pages in Finland. A visual discourse analysis identifies some blatantly stereotypical and a few complex visual constructions of girls as heterosexual, caring, innocent, sexy posers, active self-presenters and self-surveyors, carefree and environmental activists. The implications of our findings, particularly in shaping societal notions surrounding girls, are discussed. The study contributes primarily to the research field of visual commercial representation of girls by unpacking how their complex portrayals can create an equivocation that eventually resurrects stereotypes surrounding young femininities. It advances studies on Nordic consumer culture by highlighting that girls’ portrayals by Nordic companies may not clearly reflect the values of state feminism. The study can benefit marketers by sensitising them to how the complex visual representations of girls may (re)produce stereotypes.

Contemporary Advertising In Islamic Perspective

This paper purposes to examine the principles and implementation of contemporary advertising in an Islamic perspective. The research employs the method of literature study, by examining the perspective of Islamic advertising from various research literatures, the opinions of scholars and the Qur'an and Hadith. Based on literature review, the development of advertising is still trapped in the practice of materialistic advertising that overrides the ethics of Islamic communication. For this reason, this study formulates six advertising principles referring to the Qur'an and Hadith as well as the opinions of scholars, namely the principle of monotheism, the principle of honesty, the principle of justice, the principle of trust, the principle of education and the principle of Istiqomah/consistent. This study can be developed by referring to technological developments and the need for communication and religious research in the future.