Disclosing AI’s Involvement in Advertising to Consumers: A Task-Dependent Perspective

Abstract

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the advertising industry is widespread, yet there is no consensus on whether consumers should be informed of AI’s involvement in ad placement and ad creation. In light of the importance of digital literacy, we believe that consumers have a right to know about the technology behind the ads they encounter and that scholars should lead the discussion on the issue of AI disclosure. To this end, we conducted three experimental studies to investigate how the disclosure of AI affects consumers’ word-of-mouth (WOM) intent in relation to ads. Our findings suggested that participants were more likely to share an ad placed by AI than an ad created by AI when they believed AI is capable of performing high-complexity tasks. This effect was mediated by the sequence from perceived task objectivity to machine heuristic. Our studies have important implications for both theory development and the practice of AI advertising.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editors for their invaluable assistance during the review process.

Disclosure Statement

No potential competing interests were reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In all reported studies, covariates were not directly affected by independent variables. Please refer to Supplemental Online Appendix I for detailed covariate testing in each study.

2 This number is slightly different from the mean of WOM intent of the condition of AI for ad placement in the previous paragraph, because both numbers are adjusted means of WOM intent in the ANCOVA. The same reason applies to the condition of AI for ad creation.

3 The results held if the covariates were removed, F (1, 138) = 4.41, p < .05, η_p² = 0.03, M_{AI_placement} = 2.79, SD_{AI_placement} = 1.66, M_{AI_creation} = 2.27, SD_{AI_creation} = 1.26.

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported by the 2020–2021 American Academy of Advertising Research Fellowship.

Notes on contributors

Linwan Wu

Linwan Wu (PhD, University of Florida) is an associate professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of South Carolina.

Naa Amponsah Dodoo

Naa Amponsah Dodoo (PhD, University of Florida) is an associate professor, Department of Marketing Communication, Emerson College.

Taylor Jing Wen

Taylor Jing Wen (PhD, University of Florida) is an associate professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of South Carolina.