A little context, please! Understanding consumer responses to online advertising

This special section comprises three papers that were originally presented at the International Conference on Research in Advertising (ICORIA) in Prague, Czech Republic in June 2022.

ICORIA is the annual conference of the European Advertising Academy (EAA). EAA and International Journal of Advertising have a long-standing relationship based on a shared commitment toward the international advertising community. Every year around 150 international advertising scholars gather at ICORIA to share research and insights on advertising. Increasingly the presentations also include papers dealing with various types of brand-related communication, reflecting the everchanging nature of the advertising field (e.g. Dahlen and Rosengren 2016; Singh and Ang 2020).

This is the seventh time the long-standing relationship between IJA and EAA manifests itself in terms of IJA publishing a selection of papers developed based on research initially presented at the conference. In this special section all papers share a common interest in online advertising and the importance of contextual factors. Whereas Hatzithomas et al. (2023) focus on fundamental advertising questions related to attention across media, Buzeta et al. (2023) offers a cross-cultural approach to the study of social media, and Boerman et al. (2023) focus on regulatory challenges related to advertising to children. The different topics of the papers also highlight how the international advertising community comprises scholars that approach advertising from several different perspectives using various methods and approaches.

Papers in this section

Of the papers submitted and presented at the 2022 ICORIA conference, those with the highest reviewer scores were selected as options for this issue. The authors were invited to submit a reworked and extended version of their conference submission to the International Journal of Advertising. Ten papers underwent a blind review process, and following successful revisions, three were eventually selected for the special section.

Hatzithomas et al. (2023) investigate how cognitive load impacts effectiveness of cross-media advertising. They propose that sequential cross-media exposure (i.e. seeing the ads for the same brand across media at different times) leads to lower cognitive load compared to simultaneous cross-media exposure (i.e. seeing the ads for the same brand across media at the same time) and that this, in turn, impacts subjective comprehension. They also propose that synchronization and fit will impact these effects. Specifically, they propose that for simultaneous cross-media exposure synchronization of messages and for sequential cross-media exposure fit can reduce the cognitive load, thus making cross-media ads more effective. The results of three studies support this reasoning and provide novel insights into research on cross-media advertising.

Buzeta et al. (2023) investigate how consumer brand-related motivations on social media differ across cultures. Specifically, they rely on uses-and-gratifications to investigate how different motivations for social media use affect three types of consumer responses (viral behavioral intentions, click intentions, and purchase intentions) in a European versus Latin context. Using an experimental design, they find that remuneration has a significant influence in both contexts. In terms of perceived appeals, entertainment is found to have a positive effect in both contexts, but several differences are found related to the effect of perceived appeals, suggesting that this appeal influences users independently of culture. Looking at brand outcomes they further find different relevant motivational drivers and effects of perceived appeals across cultures. Overall, the findings suggest that, through some generalizable drivers of brand outcomes in social media across cultures (i.e. remuneration as a critical motivation and perceived entertainment as a key appeal), brand outcomes tend to have more specific effects across cultures.

Boerman et al. (2023) focus on the role of transparency in influencer marketing. Specifically, it offers a case study on the development of pictograms for signaling advertising content to youngsters (age 8-18 years) in response to the Dutch Media Act. This development is based on a three-step process: first, an inventory of existing pictograms was made based on private research; second, a survey was administered to study youngsters’ reactions to pictograms; and third, an online experiment was conducted to test the effect of the selected pictogram. Interestingly, the final experiment finds no significant effects of the selected pictogram regardless of the rigorous work undertaken. The results thus further reinforce the challenges related to disclosures and transparency of influencer marketing.

Martin Eisend, Liselot Hudders, Sara Rosengren