Marketing through Instagram influencers: the impact of number of followers and product divergence on brand attitude

ABSTRACT

Findings of two experimental studies show that Instagram influencers with high numbers of followers are found more likeable, partly because they are considered more popular. Important, only in limited cases, perceptions of popularity induced by the influencer's number of followers increase the influencer's perceived opinion leadership. However, if the influencer follows very few accounts him-/herself, this can negatively impact popular influencers’ likeability. Also, cooperating with influencers with high numbers of followers might not be the best marketing choice for promoting divergent products, as this decreases the brand's perceived uniqueness and consequently brand attitudes.     

Advertising targeting young children: an overview of 10 years of research (2006–2016)

A review of 138 published academic articles was conducted to provide an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of academic research of the past decade (2006–2016) on advertising directed to young children up to 12 years old. The research overview resulted in a conceptual framework comprising five research domains that were found to be most prominent. For each of these five domains, an overview, discussion and future research agenda is presented. We conclude that much of the research of the past decade included food advertising and its effects. Progress has been made in the domain of children's advertising processing, specifically with regard to advertising literacy. Despite the growing importance of embedded advertising, many of the new ad formats remain neglected (e.g. native and mobile advertising). Additionally, only a few studies investigated which executional factors (e.g. humour) are effective in advertisements to target children and social influences are also less often considered.     

Comparing TV Ads and Advergames Targeting Children: The Impact of Persuasion Knowledge on Behavioral Responses

Although thousands of advergames are directed at children, little is known about how advergames affect children and whether this persuasive process differs from traditional advertising formats. Investigating the underlying persuasive mechanism, Study 1 shows that, for TV advertising, persuasion knowledge drives the persuasive effects while, for advergames, persuasion is mainly driven by the attitude toward the game. Adding advertising cues to the advergame does not increase persuasion knowledge but does diminish the positive attitude toward the game effect, influencing behavior indirectly. Study 2 demonstrates that, for an advergame, the persuasive mechanism does not differ between a commercial versus a social persuasive message.     

Simultaneous exposure to a program and advertising content in an interactive context: Perceptual and semantic interference and reinforcement

New media, such as the Internet or interactive digital television (a merger of television and Internet technology), often combine different sensory inputs and different types of media content simultaneously. These combined information cues may interfere with each other or reinforce the processing of each other. Two experiments explore perceptual and semantic interference and reinforcement mechanisms and their impact on self-reported attention and clicking behavior. Experiment 1 shows that in the case of an interactive ad containing text and pictures, a simultaneous audiovisual program context leads to less attention and clicking than an auditory context. Experiment 2 indicates that in the case of goal-directed browsing, a congruent program context leads to more attention and clicking than an incongruent context.     

What makes crisis response strategies work? The impact of crisis involvement and message framing

This study investigates the moderating impact of crisis involvement and message framing on the effect of crisis response strategies on post-crisis attitude toward an organization. In the experiment, 274 respondents participate in a 2 (crisis response strategy: match vs. mismatch) × 2 (crisis involvement: low vs. high) × 2 (message framing: emotional vs. rational) between-subjects factorial design. The results show that in the case of high crisis involvement or in the case of rational framing of crisis communication, crisis response strategies that match the crisis type increase the post-crisis attitude toward the organization. In the case of low crisis involvement or in the case of emotional framing of crisis communication, the impact of a matched or mismatched crisis response strategy on the post-crisis attitude toward the organization does not differ. In addition, the study suggests that crisis involvement has a moderating impact on the efficacy of message framing in terms of post-crisis attitude toward the organization, which depends on whether the crisis response strategy matches the crisis type or not.     

Disclosing brand placement to young children

In spite of the EU's prohibition on brand placement in children's programmes, it is argued that children may still be exposed to this advertising format in many occasions. Consequently, and as children may have even more difficulties than adults to distinguish the commercial content from the editorial media content in which it is embedded, an advertising disclosure may be necessary to enable them to cope with brand placement. Entailing two one-factorial between-subjects experiments, the current article examined how different types of brand placement warning cues influenced cognitive advertising literacy and the attitude toward the placed brand, among children between 8 and 10 years old.

In a first study, it was investigated how these outcomes were influenced by warning cues with different perceptual modalities (no vs. auditory vs. visual cue, N = 98). The results showed that a visual warning cue was more effective than an auditory warning cue (vs. no warning cue) in addressing cognitive advertising literacy. However, this higher cognitive advertising literacy could not account for the effect of the visual warning cue on brand attitude.

In a second study, it was examined whether the effectiveness of this visual warning cue was influenced by the timing of disclosure (cue prior to vs. during media containing brand placement, N = 142). Additionally, it was tested whether the effect of the cue on brand attitude could be explained by cognitive advertising literacy if children's sceptical attitude toward the brand placement format was taken into account. The results showed that cognitive advertising literacy was higher when the cue was shown prior to than during the media content. This cue-influenced cognitive advertising literacy resulted in a more positive brand attitude, but only among children who were less sceptical toward brand placement. This positive relation disappeared among moderately and highly sceptical children.

These findings have significant theoretical, practical and social implications.     

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

Advertisers are continuously searching for new ways to persuade children; current methods include fully integrating commercial content into media content, actively engaging children with the commercial content, and increasing the number of commercial messages children are confronted with at one moment in time. This poses a challenge for how children cope with embedded advertising. This conceptual article aims to develop a theoretically grounded framework for investigating how children process embedded advertising. More precisely, it sheds light on previous research and conceptualizations of advertising literacy and provides suggestions for future research. The article examines conceptual and methodological issues and discusses 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 coping skills and their 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.     

The Development and Testing of a Child-inspired Advertising Disclosure to Alert Children to Digital and Embedded Advertising

Via three studies, this article aims to develop and test an advertising disclosure which is understandable for children (ages six to 12 years old) and which can alert them to different types of advertising in multiple media formats. First, cocreation workshops with 24 children (ages eight to 11 years old) were held to determine a selection of disclosure designs based on insights from the target group. Second, two eye-tracking studies among 32 children (ages six to 12 years old) were conducted to test which of these disclosure designs attracted the most attention when the disclosures were integrated into a media context. These studies led to the selection of the final advertising disclosure: a black rectangular graphic with the word Reclame! (i.e., Dutch for “Advertising!”) in yellow letters. Finally, a two-by-two, between-subjects experimental study (disclosure design: existing versus child-inspired advertising disclosure; advertising format: brand placement versus online banner advertising) with 157 children (ages 10 and 11 years old) was performed to test the effectiveness of the child-inspired disclosure by comparing it with existing ones. This study not only showed that children recognized, understood, and liked the child-inspired disclosure better than the existing ones, but they were also better able to recognize advertising after exposure to this child-inspired advertising disclosure.     

The Effectiveness of Telescopic Ads Delivered Via Interactive Digital Television: The Impact of the Amount of Information and the Level of Interactivity on Brand Responses

This experimental study examines two aspects that influence the effectiveness of a telescopic ad (dedicated advertising location, or DAL) on interactive digital television: the amount of information and the level of interactivity. Two hundred eighty-two respondents were allowed to interact with the DAL as long as they wanted. The results demonstrate that both the amount of information and the level of interactivity have a positive influence on time spent in the DAL. Furthermore, a higher level of interactivity has a positive effect on time spent in the DAL, brand recall, and attitude toward the brand when the amount of information is low but not when the amount of information is high. The amount of information in and of itself has no effect on brand recall and attitude toward the brand.     

The Impact of Media Multitasking on the Cognitive and Attitudinal Responses to Television Commercials: The Moderating Role of Type of Advertising Appeal

In two studies, we explored the effect of media multitasking on viewers' cognitive and attitudinal responses to television commercials and the moderating role of advertising appeals. The limited capacity theory of Lang (2000 Lang, Annie (2000), “The Limited Capacity Model of Mediated Message Processing,” Journal of Communication, 50 (1), 46–70.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) that integrates both the motivational and cognitive ability aspects of information processing was used as the theoretical framework. The results of Study 1 show that, in line with previous findings, media multitasking negatively affects cognitive responses but has an overall positive effect on attitudinal responses to television commercials. The results of Study 2 suggest that this effect on attitudinal responses is present only for commercials that focus on the desirability (compared to the feasibility) of a product. The results indicate that in media multitasking contexts, television commercials that rely primarily on stressing the desirability of a product have both a cognitive and an attitudinal advantage compared to those that rely primarily on stressing the feasibility of a product.