Special issue on new insights on digital and social media advertising

Abstract

This special issue of the International Journal of Advertising, “New Insights on Digital and Social Media Advertising,” features five articles selected from papers presented at the Global Fashion Management Conference held July 11–14, 2019 in Paris, France, organized by the Global Alliance of Marketing and Management Association. The articles in this special issue discuss the latest issues in digital and social media advertising theory, research, and practice. Special issue topics feature consumer engagements with Super Bowl ad tweets and advertisers’ official Twitter accounts, short video ad effects, CEOs’ self-disclosure on Instagram, flow experience in augmented reality, and UGC ad effects.

Keywords:

• digital advertising
• social media
• consumer engagements
• self-disclosure
• augmented reality
• user generated content (UGC)

1. Introduction

Digital and social media advertising is becoming increasingly challenging and sophisticated in the domain of advertising. In identifying insights for digital and social media advertising, researchers have found that digital technologies allow for new adaptive processes and creations in advertising. Digital and social media currently integrate new information and communication tools, such as augmented reality, short video ads, and user-generated content (UGC) tailored to the varying attentiveness of target consumers. Social media such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook have become indispensable ways of life for consumers. Subsequent to social media, digital technology, including augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence (AI) services, have a tendency to shape the advertising domain (Kim, Kang, and Lee, 2021).

The ‘New Insights on Digital and Social Media Advertising’ special issue extends global advertising and marketing knowledge to reveal the latest digital and social media advertising research and addresses new insights for theories, practices, and contexts in the digital and social media advertising field. This special issue features five articles selected through several rounds of reviewing papers presented at the 2019 Global Fashion Management Conference held in Paris France on July 11–14, 2019. The conference was organized by the Global Alliance of Marketing and Management Association, whose partners include the American Marketing Association, the European Marketing Association, ANZMAC, and others that boost the global nature of the journal (Taylor, 2021). The article topics incorporate consumer engagement with Super Bowl ads on Twitter, short video ad effects in social media, flow experience influences on psychological ownership in augmented reality, CEOs’ self-disclosure on Instagram and consumer-brand relationships, and UGC attributes and effects in luxury brand advertising.

2. Articles in the special issue

2.1 The relationship between consumer engagements with super bowl ad tweets and the advertisers’ official twitter accounts: A panel data analysis of 2019 Super Bowl advertisers (Noh et al., 2021)

This study clarifies the influence of consumer engagement with Super Bowl ad tweets on engagement with the advertiser’s official Twitter account by employing a panel data analysis of 351 cases for 27 Super Bowl advertisers. The study found that the number of retweets and ‘favorite’ responses on the Super Bowl ad tweets increased the number of followers and favorites on the official Twitter accounts of the Super Bowl advertisers.

2.2 Effect of short video ads on sales through social media: The role of advertisement content generators (Ge et al., 2021)

This study focused on the effect of user-generated social media short video ads on product sales from the perspective of advertisement sociability and vividness attributes by reflecting the moderation effect of advertisement content generators, including influencers, sellers, and buyers.

2.3 CEOs’ self-disclosure on Instagram and consumer-brand relationships: The moderating effect of relationship norm (Kim and Sung, 2021)

This study focused on the effects of chief executive officer (CEO) self-disclosure on consumer–brand relationships and the moderating role of brand relationship norms. The study employed a 2 × 2 experiment to identify the interplay between a CEOs’ self-disclosure level on Instagram and relationship norms between consumers and brands, and their effects on consumers’ attitudinal and behavioral responses. With the communal norm, high CEO self-disclosure generated more positive attitudes toward the CEO and the brand, as well as higher consumer intentions for self-disclosure, than low CEO self-disclosure. This study contributes to expanding the theoretical knowledge of brands’ social media engagement using CEOs and describes the practical implications.

2.4 The influence of flow experience in the augmented reality context on psychological ownership (Yuan et al., 2021)

This article illuminates the driving factors of flow experience in the augmented reality (AR) shopping environment and how this relationship affects consumers’ psychological ownership. The research also clarified the moderating role of brand attachment in the relationship between flow experience and its antecedents. The study found that perceived informativeness, perceived esthetics, perceived novelty, and parasocial relationships positively affect consumers’ flow experience, which in turn positively influences psychological ownership.

2.5 UGC attributes and effects: Implication for luxury brand advertising (Yu and Ko, 2021)

This study clarifies user-generated content (UGC) related to luxury brand experiences and its advertising effects by analyzing actual Instagram cases. The study found differences in UGC advertising attributes and UGC effects according to the UGC types and positive effects of UGC advertisement attributes on eWOM, brand attitude, and visit intention.

3. Conclusion and future research direction

In this special issue of the International Journal of Advertising, which focuses on ‘New Insights on Digital and Social Media Advertising,’ the five presented articles reveal current global research on digital and social media in the advertising domain. Consumer engagement, self-disclosure, consumer-brand relationships, flow experience, and psychological ownership provide the theoretical underpinnings for digital and social media advertising. In digital and social media, AR, UGC, Twitter, and Instagram are key contexts for insights and practical implications.

The key articles in this special issue offer insights for assessing current and future impacts in the digital advertising field. The studies set a foundation for the emerging field of digital advertising that will allow academics and practitioners to value the impact of digital advertising. Future research can consider how leading-edge technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), shapes the advertising domain by evaluating consumer engagements, self-disclosure, consumer-brand relationships, flow experience, and psychological ownership as key theoretical underpinnings in the digital advertising field.