The Covert Advertising Recognition and Effects (CARE) model: Processes of persuasion in native advertising and other masked formats (original) (raw)
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An introduction to the special issue on native and covert advertising formats
International Journal of Advertising
In recent years, the ubiquity and growth in mobile and online content consumption has fueled the proliferation of digital advertising formats. In attempts to engage consumers, advertisers have increasingly turned to formats that may be less clearly delineated to the reader, at least initially, to be content rather than advertising. These formats include, but are not limited to, sponsored content, native advertising, advergames, sponsored social media posts, influencer videos, paid product reviews and blog posts. Industry statistics indicate that the employment of various native or covert executions continue to constitute an increasing share of advertising spend (Emarketer.com 2019) and represent an effective option for advertisers (Business Insider Intelligence 2016). However, a growing body of research indicates that consumer-related benefits are less clear and often contingent upon several factors including but not limited to message-related features (Hwang and Jeong 2019), consumers' ability to recognize the communication as advertising (An, Kerr, and Jin 2018), and potential feelings of deception (Wojdynski 2016). The goal of this special issue is to bring together the subfield of covert advertising research and to highlight the latest developments in the study of covert advertising. The past several decades have seen an increase in scholarship on covert advertising. Google Scholar searches show nearly 4,000 document mentioning native advertising, 5,000 on influencer marketing, 6,000 on advergames, and almost 50,000 on product placement. The various (and continually proliferating) formats for covert advertising afforded by digital Web-based platforms may differ somewhat in their content, in their constraints and affordances, in how they're used by marketers, and in consumers' expectations. However, research conducted on consumer responses to persuasive messages shows that the psychology of consumer responses to such media formats is rather consistent, with consumers' responses being driven by similar characteristics of the message, the consumer, and the situation in which the message is encountered, regardless of covert platform. We believe the seven articles in this special issue present not only a valuable examination of current issues in covert advertising research, but also help move the field forward by identifying key variables, methods, and empirical findings that can shape the next decade of covert advertising research. The first article, from Wojdynski and Evans, proposes a theoretical model outlining key variables that shape consumers' responses to covert advertising. The Covert Advertising Recognition and Effects Model posits that advertising recognition, or consumers' ability to
The Effect of Covert Advertising Recognition on Consumer Attitudes: A Systematic Review
Journal of Marketing Communications, 2023
Consumers do not always recognize the persuasive intent of covert forms of advertising. Thus, when exploring consumers' evaluations of these specific ads it is important to measure if, and to what extent, they recognize it as an ad. Amidst the current research, conflicting findings exist on what effect ad recognition exerts on attitudinal reactions. This quantitative systematic review found that the effects observed in most studies are negative. Additionally, among these studies, those employing an article-style ad display more negative relationships than social media-style ads. Similarly, studies using binary measures of recognition uncovered more negative relationships compared to continuous measures. Moreover, brand attitudes had fewer negative relationships with ad recognition compared to advertising attitudes and publisher/poster attitudes.
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 2020
An online experiment (N=931) assessing recognition of and responses to native advertising sought to explore how disclosures affect behavioral intent in digital news contexts. Findings suggest that resistance to persuasive attempts conferred by native advertising disclosures is explained by both inoculation and reactance processes and demonstrates how a simple, or generic, disclosure can inoculate people against a type of message (covert advertising mimicking authentic journalism) rather than the content of the message. Furthermore, the attenuating effect of a simple disclosure on behavioral intent is fully and serially mediated through advertising recognition, increased perception of threat to freedom, and increased reactance.
How sponsorship transparency mitigates negative effects of advertising recognition
International Journal of Advertising, 2018
The proliferation of covert online advertising formats such as advergames has raised concerns about consumers' ability to recognize such content as advertising and about how recognition affects evaluative outcomes. The present research utilized an online experiment (N ¼ 179) to examine differences between covertness of advertising format (advergame vs. online video commercials) on advertising recognition, and whether sponsorship transparency mediatesand mitigatesthe negative effects of advertising recognition on attitude toward the ad, attitude toward the brand, and purchase intent. The results show that covertness of advertising format, recognition, and sponsorship transparency all shape consumers' responses to online ads. Specifically, the predicted negative indirect effect of covertness of advertising format on attitudes and behavioral intention via advertising recognition reversed valance when sponsorship transparency was included in the serial mediation model.
Consumers' Processing of Persuasive Advertisements: An Integrative Framework of Persuasion Theories
Journal of Marketing, 1999
In this article, the authors propose an integrative model of advertising persuasion that orders the major theories and empirically supported generalizations about persuasion that have been offered in the information-processing literature. The authors begin by reviewing this literature, placing particular emphasis on the assorted processes or mechanisms that have been suggested to mediate persuasion. To consolidate this material, the authors propose a framework that delineates three alternative strategies that people may use to process persuasive communications and form judgments, in which each strategy represents a different level of cognitive resources that is employed during message processing. In addition, the framework identifies a judgment correction stage that allows people to attempt to correct their initial judgments for biases that they perceive may have affected such judgments. The authors add to this by identifying particular processes that appear to mediate when and how these judgment formation and judgment correction processes operate. They also attempt to foster growth by specifying some of the critical issues and gaps in the knowledge that appear to impede further progress. Finally, the authors clarify how the proposed framework can inform the decisions advertising practitioners make about advertising execution and media factors. E very day, U.S. consumers are exposed to no less than 1000 commercial messages (Kotler 1997*). Regardless of their content and the techniques they employ, most messages share a common final goal: persuading target consumers to adopt a particular product, service, or idea. How do advertising messages influence consumers' judgments and preferences and thereby advance persuasion? A vast body of work has explored this question from various perspectives, seeking to develop a theoretical understanding of the persuasion process. Yet, to date, no single theory or framework that has been developed has been able to account for all the varied and sometimes conflicting persuasion findings. Presumably, this is because the complex process of persuasion is intricately dependent on a myriad of contextual, situational, and individual difference factors, whereas the theories remain relatively simplistic and narrowly developed. The inability of existing theories to accommodate all persuasion findings need not suggest, however, that these theories are inaccurate. Rather, we propose that these theories simply may represent pieces of persuasion processes that operate in certain conditions that are not always clearly specified. This view is consistent with the popular assump-*Authors were limited in the numberof references used in text, therefore, those references marked with an * are available at www.
Subliminal Messages in Advertising: Do They Really Work?
DIEM: Dubrovnik International Economic Meeting
Subliminal messages appear in movies, commercials, music videos, and even cartoons. These are hidden signals inserted into advertising messages sent to a target audience to influence their subconscious behaviour. Such advertising is often considered unethical and, in certain types of advertising, even forbidden by law. Most research to date indicates that people do, in some way, perceive subliminal stimuli that can have an impact on their behaviour. Subliminal messages are viral and are used to manipulate consumers. However, most human psyche researchers are still inclined to think people cannot be persuaded on an unconscious level to behave in a way they would not consciously act. How crucial the influence of subliminal messages is for behaviour has not yet been sufficiently explored. The main goal of this paper is to determine whether people are aware of the existence of subliminal messages in the media and media manipulations and do they find them ethical. An online survey was co...
Knowledge is Power: Recognition of Native Advertising Increases Credibility for Online News
Today we encounter online content from a plethora of sources, in email, social media feeds and websites. Native advertising complicates this landscape, as this content mimics news but may be completely advertiser-influenced. Native advertising changes the public’s ability to assess the source, and thus credibility, creating content that has gained the attention of the FTC due to its potentially deceptive nature. Expanded Prominence Interpretation Theory, EPIT, was developed to address deception in online communication. In this experiment, we consider native advertising through the lens of EPIT. Contrary to previous work, results show that when consumers understand the nature of content, they rate credibility higher, and this effect was even more pronounced for loyal consumers of the news brand. This work bolsters past work on native ad disclosure positions and adds support to the EPIT model, suggesting credibility is a measurable part of a decision-making process between media and deception.
Direct and indirect approaches to advertising persuasion
Journal of Business Research, 1990
While research suggests that advertisers can affect a particular belief intended to be changed (the intended belief) either directly by mentioning it or indirectly by mentioning other beliefs associated with it, the consequences of the two approaches are not deafly understood. Also, relatively little attention has been paid to visual elements that are not equivalent, but related, to verbal content. This study investigated the impact of 1) the directness of verbal claims (direct or indirect) and 2) the existence of visual cues about the intended belief (present and absent). It was found that persuasion was enhanced by visual cues that suggest the intended attribute. Results also indicated that when visual cues were absent, indirectly induced persuasion showed more stability over time than directly induced persuasion. Implications of the findings for understanding advertising effects are discussed.
Ad processing and persuasion: The role of brand identification
Psychology and Marketing, 1998
This article examines the relationship between ad learning and adbased persuasion; it proposes that consumer identification of the advertising brand positively affects attitude toward the ad, which in turn enhances positive brand attitudes. A model integrating learning and attitudinal responses to ads was tested with aggregate readership recognition scores and attitudinal measures for different ads. Results suggested that identification of the advertiser is a crucial operation in ad processing. Ads that facilitated identification of the brand appeared credible, which contributed to enhancing their persuasive impact. Neither the degree of overall attention devoted to an ad previous to brand identification, nor subsequent extensive elaboration of the ad's copy, affected ad or brand attitudes.