Advertisers are continuously searching for new ways to persuade children, thereby fully integrating commercial content into media content, actively engaging children with the commercial content, and enlarging the amount of commercial messages a child is confronted with at one moment in time. This poses a challenge for how children cope with embedded advertising. This conceptual paper aims to develop a theoretically grounded framework for investigating how children process embedded advertising. More precisely, it sheds a light on previous research and conceptualizations of advertising literacy and provides suggestions for future research. In particular, attention is devoted to conceptual and methodological issues, as well as to 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 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, and their coping skills.

As chatbots have become increasingly popular over the past years, most social networking sites have recognized their far-reaching potential for commercial purposes. Their rapid and widespread usage warrants a better understanding. This study examines the effectiveness of chatbots on Facebook for brands. The study proposes and tests a model based on the Consumer Acceptance of Technology model (CAT-model) including three cognitive (i.e., perceived usefulness, perceived ease-of-use, and perceived helpfulness) and three affective (pleasure, arousal, and dominance; PAD-dimensions) determinants that potentially influence consumers' attitude toward brands providing a chatbot, and hence, their likelihood to use and recommend the chatbot (i.e., patronage intention). Structural equation modeling analyses show that two cognitive (i.e., perceived usefulness and perceived helpfulness) and all three affective predictors are positively related to consumers' attitude toward the chatbot brand. The findings further indicate that attitude toward the brand explained a significant amount of variation in consumers' patronage intention. Finally, all the significant determinants also have an indirect effect on patronage intention, mediated through attitude toward the brand. In conclusion, our findings hold valuable practical implications, as well as relevant suggestions for future research.

Chatbots on social networking sites are a recent innovation in computer-mediated marketing communication. In this study, 245 Facebook users between 18 and 35 years of age (M age = 25.97, SD = 4.92) were asked to order tickets for the movies through Cinebot, a Facebook chatbot specifically built for the study. Afterwards, they were asked to evaluate their experiences via an online survey. The first purpose of this article was to investigate whether and how perceived helpfulness and usefulness of a chatbot consulted on the Facebook Messenger platform affected perceived intrusiveness of chatbot-initiated advertising in a later stage. In a second analysis, the relation between perceived intrusiveness and patronage intentions (i.e. purchase and recommendation intention of the product) was investigated. In addition, the role of message acceptance as a mediator and perceived message relevance as a moderator in this latter model were explored. As, to the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to investigate chatbot advertising, our research findings may hold important managerial implications.

Political advertisers have access to increasingly sophisticated microtargeting techniques. One such technique is tailoring ads to the personality traits of citizens. Questions have been raised about the effectiveness of this political microtargeting (PMT) technique. In two experiments, we investigate the causal effects of personality-congruent political ads. In Study 1, we first assess participants’ extraversion trait by means of their own text data (i.e., by using a personality profiling algorithm), and in a second phase, target them with either a personality-congruent or incongruent political ad. In Study 2, we followed the same protocol, but instead targeted participants with emotionally-charged congruent ads, to establish whether PMT can be effective on an affect-based level. The results show evidence that citizens are more strongly persuaded by political ads that match their own personality traits. These findings feed into relevant and timely contributions to a salient academic and societal debate.

Adolescents are regularly exposed to commercial messages on social networking sites. There is scant knowledge of how they interact with marketing communications on these social platforms. This study examines how advertising on Facebook is associated with adolescents' ad skepticism, and how this influences their purchase intentions. Also, the moderating role of privacy concern and a textual debriefing about the nature of the advertising technique are investigated. In total, 363 adolescents aged 16-18 years participated in an experimental study.The results show that, in general, retargeted Facebook ads (compared to non-retargeting) lead to higher purchase intentions. However, when textual debriefing is provided or for adolescents with a high privacy concern, skeptical attitude toward retargeting increases, which in turn decreases purchase intentions. These research findings hold some important implications for actors from different fields of expertise, such as policy makers, practitioners and educators.

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This paper discusses the new phenomenon of platform ad archives. Over the past year, leading social media platforms have installed publicly accessible databases documenting their political advertisements, and several countries have moved to regulate them. If designed and implemented properly, ad archives can correct for structural informational asymmetries in the online advertising industry, and thereby improve accountability through litigation and through publicity. However, present implementations leave much to be desired. We discuss key criticisms, suggest several improvements and identify areas for future research and debate.

This article examines whether individual differences in chronic regulatory focus (prevention vs. promotion focus) among adolescents influences the way they evaluate targeted advertising on social networking sites. Study 1 (survey) reveals that adolescents with a promotion focus (who are oriented toward achieving positive outcomes) have a more positive attitude and a higher purchase intention toward targeted advertising, as compared to preventionfocused adolescents (who are dispositioned toward avoiding negative outcomes). Study 2 (experiment) investigates how adolescents' chronic regulatory focus can alter their attitude and purchase intention on a mock social networking site that includes a targeted advertisement. Results show that a low personalized targeted ad is better evaluated (in terms of a more positive attitude and higher purchase intention) among prevention-focused adolescents, whereas a high personalized targeted ad results in better advertising outcomes among promotion-focused adolescents. Contributions to theory and implications for advertising practice are discussed.