The Commercial Chameleons on Social Network Sites - How native advertising affects ad and brand attitude among social network site users
Abstract: With the increased volume of commercial content online most social network sites have adopted so-called "native" advertising on their websites to convey marketing messages more subtly. As an increased share of advertising budgets is spent on this form of advertising this essay aims to examine its effects on ad attitude and brand attitude among social network site users. The research was carried out through both a qualitative pre-study and a larger quantitative main study. The researched variables were level of congruity, task-orientation among users and the placement of the ad and their effect on ad and brand attitude. The results showed that native advertising is preferred to non-native advertising when placed in social feeds. However the evaluation was still negative or indifferent for ads that were tested in the feed. The difference was clear between information seekers who were more averse to the ads than the more explorative surfers. Among the whole population as well as when divided by task orientation the most favorable ad was a semi-native ad placed outside of the social feed. Thus this thesis concludes that to optimize the effects of native advertising the placement should be outside of social content making it a little less native and recognizable as a commercial message.
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