Native advertising and the credibility of online publishers

Abstract

The digitization of news publishing has resulted in new ways for advertisers to reach readers, including additional native advertising formats that blend in with news. However, native ads may redirect attention off-site and affect the readers' impression of the publishers. Using a combination of observations of ad content across many publishers and two large randomized experiments, we investigate the characteristics of a pervasive native ad format and compare the impact of different native ads characteristics on perceived news credibility. Analyzing 1.4 million collected ad headlines, we found that over 80% of these ad headlines use a clickbait-style and that politics is among the most common topics in ads. In two randomized experiments (combined n=9,807), we varied the style and content of native ads embedded in news articles and asked people to assess the articles’ credibility. Experiment 1 (n=4,767) suggested that different publishers were impacted differently by the ads and motivated the more detailed design of Experiment 2 (n=5,040). This latter experiment used hundreds of unique combinations of ads, articles, and publishers to study effects of clickbait and political ads. Findings from this pre-registered experiment provide evidence that clickbait and, to a lesser extent, political ads, substantially reduce readers' perception of the articles' credibility. This phenomenon is driven by the least well-known publishers and by readers' prior familiarity with those publishers. Importantly, we rule out large effects of non-clickbait ads, compared with no ads, on readers' attitudes. Many publishers using clickbait native ads may trade short-term revenues for audience trust.

Quality Certificates Alleviate Consumer Aversion to Sponsored Search Advertising

“…Also, our paper is related to the literature on the design of sponsored search ads, such as rules to efficiently allocate ad slots (Athey and Ellison (2011), Yao and Mela (2011), Choi and Mela (2019)) and the role of positions and ranking (Ghose et al (2014), Narayanan and Kalyanam (2015), Jeziorski and Moorthy (2018), Ursu (2018)). In particular, our paper speaks to issues regarding native ads (Aribarg and Schwartz (2020), Sahni and Nair (2020b), Revel et al (2021)). Our findings imply that platforms could gain revenue from less salient ad disclosure (i.e., more native), although we cannot extrapolate the results to extreme cases of non-disclosure, or speak to the long-term effect.…”

Quality Certificates Alleviate Consumer Aversion to Sponsored Search Advertising

“…Also, our paper is related to the literature on the design of sponsored search ads, such as rules to efficiently allocate ad slots (Athey and Ellison (2011), Yao and Mela (2011), Choi and Mela (2019)) and the role of positions and ranking (Ghose et al (2014), Narayanan and Kalyanam (2015), Jeziorski and Moorthy (2018), Ursu (2018)). In particular, our paper speaks to issues regarding native ads (Aribarg and Schwartz (2020), Sahni and Nair (2020b), Revel et al (2021)). Our findings imply that platforms could gain revenue from less salient ad disclosure (i.e., more native), although we cannot extrapolate the results to extreme cases of non-disclosure, or speak to the long-term effect.…”