How online advertising competes with user-generated content in TripAdvisor. A neuroscientific approach.

The previous literature has almost ignored the interaction of user-generated content (UGC) and advertising content embedded in social media platforms. Visual attention is an important factor for tourist services in analyzing the value of online ads inserted close to UGC. Drawing on cognitive load theory, congruence research and dual processing models, the purpose of this study is to determine the effectiveness of online advertising on social media. A first study based on eye-tracking and EEG analysis was conducted to assess if there was a difference in visual attention and engagement when an ad was embedded in TripAdvisor content. Our findings showed that synergies between social media content and advertising content positively affect users’ visual attention. A second study, using an online survey, was carried out to assess the impact of congruent/incongruent ads on ad recall (2a) and, using eye-tracking, on visual attention (2b). Appropriate managerial implications are provided

Understanding Authenticity in Digital Cause-Related Advertising: Does Cause Involvement Moderate Intention to Purchase?

The paper provides a survey understanding of two dimensions of perceived authenticity in digital cause-related marketing (CRM) display advertising and models the impact on consumers’ responses. It develops a model with a set of six hypotheses and tests them through a multivariate structural equation technique on quantitative data generated by a survey procedure on a UK-based consumer panel. The 465 online panel participants consisted of 60% males and 40% females between the ages of 18 and 35. The findings provide empirical evidence that the perceived donation amount and ad-context congruence are intertwined perspectives of authenticity in digital CRM display ads, and show that both of these dimensions provide input to conferring authenticity on the ads. However, the perceived donation amount accounts for a stronger effect than ad-context congruence. The paper finds firms’ altruistic motives an influential antecedent to the mediating role of attitudes towards the ad (AaD) as a fundraising tool. This is due to the nature of the impact of authenticity on the link with intention to purchase. Contrarily to expectation, the level of firms’ involvement with a social cause does not moderate intention to purchase from the consumers’ standpoint. The paper provides an interpretation of authentic perception in digital CRM advertising and proposes a composite model of the mechanism of this effect on consumers’ response. In DCRM advertising, increasing the perception of donation magnitude is a key driver to advertising success, and the level of association with a social cause is not a significant factor in segmenting and targeting consumers

A comparative impact of cause-related marketing and sponsorship leveraged internet display advertising

Cause-related marketing (CRM) and sponsorship activities have become an increasingly popular corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy, whereby firms partner with non-profit organisations (NPOs) to achieve varieties of business objectives, while still supporting NPOs social causes. Advances in internet technology and e-commerce activities have facilitated the widespread use of internet CRM and sponsorship advertisement frames targeting potential donors and online customers. Typically, firms communicate through ads in a variety of ways, such as offering a precise donation amount (PDA) to the charity organisation in question, or by declaring mutually beneficial collaboration of the firms brand with the non-profit organisation (NPO), by stating an imprecise donation (IDA)offer. This study compares the effectiveness of PDA ads (both at low and high donation amounts) with imprecise donation amount (IDA) internet display advertisement frames, in terms of attitude and purchase intention from a fundraising perspective. Using a web-based experimental survey design involving the national representative sample, the results of the ANCOVA analysis revealed that there is no significant difference in attitudes between precise and imprecise donation ad frames(PDA & IPA). However, PDA advertisements were found to indicate higher purchase intention than the IDA ad frame; regardless of the perceived donation amounts were either low or high. Furthermore, PDA ads with higher donation amounts (versus low donation amount) engender greater purchase. This study contributes to the understanding of the effective use of cause-related and sponsorship internet ads, for consumer segmentation and targeting

Blindness to sponsor: Application to sports event posters

Advertising posters in sports sponsorship are versatile marketing tools with significant media impact and high visibility. However, the academic literature on the impact of advertising posters in this field is scarce. The purpose of this research is to measure the spontaneous recall of and attention toward business brands sponsoring sports events while assessing their location and congruence level. The sample was segmented according to gender. The experiment involved 12 stimuli related to three sporting disciplines corroborating the issue of media blindness with respect to advertising posters. Consistent with the placement theory, we found that the position of the sponsoring brand affected attention and recall with no remarkable differences between genders. Furthermore, we found no significant differences in the congruence levels, reinforcing the image transfer theory. A general guideline would be placing the sponsoring brand within the effective range of the poster while leveraging the effects of articulation and the remaining mediating variables in the literature

User judgements of the online world: factors influencing website appeal and user decision-making.

Websites are an integral part of everyday life but we rarely think about how their visual appeal shapes our responses to them. To understand this relationship, research has outlined a number of visual characteristics that may determine appeal. However, previous studies have often used small stimulus sets or made experimental assumptions about critical website characteristics without careful control, making findings difficult to interpret and generalise. Experiment 1 addressed this through creating a corpus of 480 website stimuli containing normative ratings of key characteristics responsible for website appeal. Subsequent studies employed this corpus, providing stimuli that were well controlled but still represented the wider domain. Experiment 2 examined the timescale of appeal judgements and the impact of verbal brand framing messages on these judgements. As expected, participants made rapid, reliable, judgements even when given only 500ms. However, exposure to positive brand framing had a negative effect on appeal ratings. A possible explanation is discussed in terms of brand placement prominence on consumer attitudes. In Experiment 3 participants evaluated the appeal of embedded website advertising in order to examine the impact of visual framing on appeal judgements. Advertisements were deemed more appealing when they appeared on appealing websites, although brand familiarity had a mediating role. Eye movements revealed a complex relationship between website and advertisement appeal and familiarity in determining where participants attended. In Experiment 4, website appeal judgements were compared between typical participants and participants with autism in order to examine the role of individual differences. Interestingly, despite careful manipulations few differences emerged. However, eye tracking data revealed ASD participants attended to detailed content more than their typical counterparts. The implications of this work are discussed and a revision to the model of aesthetic judgement (Leder et al., 2004) is proposed in order to account for the current findings. An information-processing model of website evaluations is presented which outlines the processes involved from making initial judgements of appeal through to later, long-term evaluations of a website

Online cause-related marketing: the impact of donation amount and congruence on consumers’ response.

Cause-related marketing (CRM) is an increasingly popular corporate tactic, used to achieve sales promotion objective while supporting social causes. Originally, it was practised offline, and academic research on CRM has focused on that context (Ha 2008; Segev et al. 2014). However, the online medium presents unique characteristics, such as interactivity and global access, which influence marketing. Advances in digital technology and e-commerce innovations enable online marketers to target charity site visitors with their products through affiliated cause marketing (ACM) and cause- sponsorship (CS) advertisement tactics which are forms of online CRM. Typically, firms communicate an offer through an explicit donation to the charity in question, contingent on purchases made via a banner advertisement linked from the brand’s site (ACM ad format), or make a declaration of the brand's association with the charity (CS ad format). In light of this, this study investigates the impact of the main design features of the two typical forms of advertisers’ banner advert on charity websites by asking: I. Whether and how the donation amount in an ACM ad format influences consumers’ response regarding purchase intention. II. Whether and how the ad context congruence in a CS ad format influences consumers’ response regarding purchase intention. III. Do consumers respond more positively towards an ACM ad than a CS ad regarding attitudes and purchase intentions? The study uses a web-based experimental-survey design, with 538 UK national representative panel participants to generate field data. It examines this data using ANOVA and structural equation modelling (SEM) techniques. The main findings: i) support the hypothesised positive direct effects of donation amount (with respect to ACM ad format) and ad-context congruence (with respect to CS adformat) on consumers’ purchase intention; ii) the media effect in CRM demonstrates the serial mediating roles of ‘attitudes towards the ad’ and ‘perceived CSR motive of firm’ of the donation amount-purchase intention link, while ‘attitudes towards the ad’ mediates the ad-context congruence and purchase intention link; iii) charity cause involvement moderates the positive link of ad-context congruence to purchase intention; iv) attitude towards CS is found to be stronger than ACM with small donation; and iv) purchase intention towards the ACM ad formats is stronger than towards the CS ad format. The study makes theoretical and practical contributions by identifying composite models of consumers’ response towards ACM and CS tactics, with more favourable purchase intention towards ACM than CS

Reintegrating the Ad Effects of Context Congruency Banner Advertising in Hybrid Media

Banner ads - often placed on the right-hand side of a website - are prone to lose their effectiveness due to banner blindness. The current study investigated whether context congruency was able to increase the banner's impact. Our study tested context congruencies (pictures or text elements or both) and their impact on awareness, retention, and attitude toward an advertisement. We used eye tracking to account for effects on visual attention relative to contact time and further information processing. Results indicated that complete context congruency including both visual and textual elements leads to higher visual awareness, better retention, and better attitudes toward the advertisement