Productivity and impact in advertising research since the millennium: a profiling and investigation of drivers of impact

What does it take to become a top advertising scholar in productivity? What drives impact in advertising research? This article sets out to answer these two questions by assessing the productivity and impact among scholars and their work in advertising since the millennium. As a two-part study, we begin by benchmarking and profiling the top 1% scholars in the field based on their research publications in the three top advertising journals (Journal of Advertising, Journal of Advertising Research, and International Journal of Advertising). Next, we employ a three-perspective conceptual model to identify the salient drivers of impact in advertising research. By content analyzing 1443 articles in the three journals published between 2000 and 2014, we show that certain universalistic and particularistic factors (to a lesser extent) significantly predict paper citations. Our findings reveal how advertising academia is advancing and showing signs of internationalization in the new millennium, which provides implications for the field's advancement and scholarship.