Native Advertising in Online News: Trade-Offs Among Clicks, Brand Recognition, and Website Trustworthiness

Abstract

Native advertising is a type of online advertising that matches the form and function of the platform on which it appears. In practice, the choice between display and in-feed native advertising presents brand advertisers and online news publishers with conflicting objectives. Advertisers face a trade-off between ad clicks and brand recognition, whereas publishers need to strike a balance between ad clicks and the platform’s trustworthiness. For policy makers, concerns that native advertising confuses customers prompted the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to issue guidelines for disclosing native ads. This research aims to understand how consumers respond to native ads versus display ads and to different styles of native ad disclosures, using randomized online and field experiments combining behavioral clickstream, eye movement, and survey response data. The results show that when the position of an ad on a news page is controlled for, a native ad generates a higher click-through rate because it better resembles the surrounding editorial content. However, a display ad leads to more visual attention, brand recognition, and trustworthiness for the website than a native ad.

Native advertising and the credibility of online publishers

“…A survey experiment compared exposure to a single sports ad, which was either in a native or banner format; with 450 participants, no effects on publisher credibility were detected (Howe and Teufel 2014). Moreover, Aribarg and Schwartz (2020) conducted multiple studies to compare the effects of display versus native ads for mainstream brands on news publications, finding that native ads increase click-through rate while reducing brand recognition and perceived trustworthiness of the news website. These effects appeared only after multiple exposures to what were comparatively innocuous, non-political ads by major brands; with a sample size of 1,300 participants, there were no significant effects on trustworthiness for a one-time exposure to native ads.…”

Superando O Ceticismo Do Consumidor Relativo À Propaganda Com Anúncios Misteriosos

“…Outra forma de reduzir a desconfiança de consumidores mais céticos é uso de mensagens bilaterais, mais equilibradas, quando expõem tanto aspectos positivos quanto negativos da marca (Hernandez et al, 2016) ou quando alertam, de forma transparente, que embora alguns anúncios sejam enganosos, outros são verdadeiros e comunicam com honestidade informações úteis sobre o produto para que os clientes possam tomar decisões bem informadas (Isaac e Grayson, 2020). No contexto do marketing digital, anúncios do tipo "nativos" (camuflados por se assemelharem ao conteúdo editorial) geram mais clicks, mas impactam negativamente a credibilidade do website (Aribarg e Schwartz, 2020). Outro estudo revelou que, quando empresas desejam lançar extensões de marca, consumidores altamente céticos avaliam pior uma extensão de marca quando a similaridade da extensão de marca com a marca principal é moderada, mas não quando a similaridade é alta ou baixa (Hernandez, Wright e Affonso, 2019).…”

The Agile Content Marketing Roadmap Based on the B2B Buyer’s Journey – The Case Study of the Slovak republic

“…As a result, they become more resilient to marketing incentives [2]. The spiral of advertising chaos or advertising blindness sends a clear signal to companies about the unsustainability of this phenomenon, which forces them to make significant efforts to communicate the message [3]. The problem outlined therefore represents a space for finding effective marketing ways to help break down these barriers.…”