Article or Ad? Readers’ Recognition and Evaluations of Native Advertisements on Online News Websites

Abstract

Consumers are more trained than ever to ignore traditional banner advertisements (Hill, 2013), and the amount of internet users with an ad blocker have been going up fast (Adobe, 2015). At the same time, from the media’s side, online news outlets increasingly rely on advertising to generate revenue, as most readers refuse to pay subscription fees to read online news (Newman, Fletcher, Levy, & Nielsen, 2016). Consequently, both media and advertisers are searching for alternative ways to deliver their message to their target audiences. Following this, so-called ‘native advertisements’ are an emerging phenomenon on online news websites (Filloux, 2013). It has been argued that native advertisements are positively evaluated due to their ‘editorial value’ and ‘non-intrusiveness’ (Campbell, 2015). Yet, critics are stressing the deceptiveness of native advertisements, and are warning news media for the long-term negative consequences of making the line between advertising and editorial content less clear (Carlson, 2014). Advertisers are also taking benefit of publishing on credible platforms, as this credibility could spill-over on readers’ evaluations of their advertisements (Bronner & Neijens, 2006; Van Reijmersdal, Neijens, & Smit, 2010). Therefore, native advertisements should be thoughtfully implemented. Nevertheless, little research has been conducted on readers’ evaluations of the advertising technique, and direct consequences for the news media are yet understudied. Although some research showed that native advertisements are positively evaluated and do not harm the credibility of the news website, the authors were not sure whether this was because readers liked the advertising technique, or because they simply did not recognize the native advertisement (Howe & Teufel, 2014). Furthermore, past studies on hybrid advertising techniques such as native advertising, have been mainly focused on the effectiveness of the accompanying disclosures (e.g. Boerman, Van Reijmersdal, & Neijens, 2014; Wojdynski & Evans, 2015), and less on other factors such as the content of the advertisement and personal characteristics of the public. In this chapter, we will present an experimental study that will address these gaps in current literature. First, the study will try to replicate and expand the latest insights on readers’ recognition of native advertisements’ disclosures. The study will not only seek how disclosure recognition is related to readers’ evalua- tions of the advertisement and advertiser, which has been done in previous stud- ies (e.g. Wojdynski & Evans, 2015), but also how this affects their evaluations of the advertising technique in general, and evaluations of the news website. As credibility is an important reason for advertisers to implement native advertise- ments on news websites (Carlson, 2014), we will specifically focus on the credi- bility of both the news website and advertisement. Second, due to the editorial value native advertisements can have, the role of readers’ involvement with the article’s subject will be investigated as a possible factor that could influence readers’ evaluations of native advertising. Past research has indicated that when consumers are highly involved with a subject, they are more focused on the information instead of the source, which can subsequently positively influence overall evaluations (Cole & Greer, 2013; Petty & Cacioppo, 1981; Van Reijmersdal, Rozendaal, & Buijzen, 2012). The results of the present study will further advance our understanding of how and when native advertisements should be implemented. Implications for practitioners and directions for future