Full disclosure: advertising is more than meets the eye

This is the fifth special issue presenting papers from the International Conference on Research in Advertising (ICORIA). It contains a selection of six papers from the 2019 ICORIA presentations that were delivered during the conference in Krems, Austria.

Reflecting the presentations at the conference, the papers in this issue cover a wide range of topics and approaches. A common theme is that all papers focus on updating our understanding of advertising as the boundaries between advertising and other types of communications continue to blur. Whereas advertising academia has been critiqued for lagging behind advertising practice when it comes to understanding contemporary issues such as changing advertising media and formats (e.g., Dahlen and Rosengren 2016; De Pelsmacker 2020), the papers in this special issue suggest that this is no longer the case. In fact, only one of the papers deals with advertising in the traditional sense. In the special issue, three of the papers deal explicitly with how disclosures enable consumers to make sense of “hybrid” content such as product placements and sponsored consumer reviews, whereas the remaining three investigate the impact of various formats or appeals such as spoof placements, posts on social media, and synced advertising on consumer reactions. To us, this shows how advertising researches have broadened their interests, topics, and perspectives and their wish to stay relevant and up to date in a rapidly evolving advertising landscape. We are hopeful that this is a sign of the field moving closer to contemporary advertising practice and being able to offer actionable recommendations (for a recent critique of advertising research in this regard see De Pelsmacker 2020). What is more, the papers offer insights to stakeholders beyond the advertising industry for example in terms of policy implementation and understanding human emotions related to social media in general.

To us, this suggests that the relevance of advertising research extend beyond advertising practice. To fully understand advertising, we as scholars must continue to push the boundaries, not only in terms of the type of advertising that we study, but also in terms of what constituencies we address. With increasing levels of co-creation and active participation in the advertising process, scholars must address other dependent variables (e.g., Dahlen and Rosengren 2016; Eisend and Rosengren 2020) as well as address additional stakeholders (e.g., Dahlen, Rosengren, and Karsberg 2018; Schaefer, Terlutter, and Diehl 2020).

Given the prevalence of advertising in contemporary society and the changing formats, behaviors, and effects associated with it (cf. Dahlen and Rosengren 2016), advertising is more than meets the eye. We hope that advertising scholars will continue to offer insights – not only on the role of advertising for advertisers, but also for consumers and society in general.

Papers in this issue

Of the papers submitted and presented at ICORIA in Krems, those with the highest reviewer scores were selected for this issue. The authors were invited to submit reworked and extended versions of their conference submissions to the International Journal of Advertising. Nine papers underwent the blind review process, of which six were eventually selected for inclusion in the special issue, following successful revisions.

The first three articles deal explicitly with disclosures and their impact. In the first article, Spielvogel, Naderer and Matthes (2021) investigate the implementation of product placement disclosures in audiovisual media in Europe. More specifically, they adopt a policy perspective and compare the disclosures used by European broadcasters with those studied in academic research. The results reveal several gaps between what is done in practice and what has been found by academic research. Interestingly, the disclosures most commonly used in practice (i.e., a Product Placement symbol) have been found in existing research to have only limited effects. What is more, whereas academic research tends to focus on brand-specific disclosures in practice such disclosures are quite rare. The paper clearly highlights the need to further bridge academic research with advertising policies.

In the second article, Boerman, Tessitore, and Müller (2021) investigate the long-term effects of product placement disclosures, again focusing on audiovisual media. Effects are investigated in terms of persuasion knowledge, memory, and attitudes. In line with previous product placement research, the authors find that a disclosure helps consumers to identify product placements as advertising in the short run, but also add evidence that this effect holds over time. They further find that brand memory is aided by a disclosure both in the short and long term. However, the results show no evidence of any resistance effect – that is, neither skepticism nor brand attitudes or intentions are affected in the short or long term. Based on these findings, the authors propose that advertisers adhering to disclosure regulations do not affect advertisers negatively and recommend transparency about brand placement in television programmes. From a policy perspective they also conclude that disclosures are, in fact, working as they help consumers recognize brand placements as advertising, even in the long-term.

In the third article, Pfeuffer and Huh (2021) investigate the role of disclosures in a different context, namely online reviews written by consumers. Whereas disclosures in a product placement context can be regulated based on the professional relationship between an advertiser and a media company, reviews present a very different blurring of boundaries. As pointed out by the authors one key difference is that consumers who review products are not controlled by advertisers to the same extent as boundary-spanning advertising such as product placements or native advertising. Reviews differ from traditional media content as it is not professionally produced, allow consumers greater control, and typically lead to more variation in judgements. The results of the study reveal a significant negative impact of sponsorship disclosure on consumers’ trust and attitudinal responses. The responses, however, depend on type of sponsorship revealed (free product, payment, or sales commission).

In the fourth article, Singh and Ang (2021) explore the communication effects of Facebook posts by consumers. Although not interested in disclosures as such, they discuss the different persuasive roles of the person and the brand in a social media context. More specifically, they investigate the role of envy in reactions to social media. Envy is defined as ‘a frustrating emotion that arises from upward social comparison’ and can be both benign (positive) and malicious (negative). The authors find that in a social media context, envy affects purchase intentions through two different pathways: partly via the person who uses the product and partly via the product itself. The benign or malicious experiences of envy can be transferred to both the user and the product, which then affects purchase intentions. However, when there is envy, the pathway via attitude towards the user exerts a stronger mediating effect on purchase intention than via attitude towards the brand, suggesting that the human-related pathway of persuasion is more powerful. Consequently, the authors call for advertising research to build in social aspects in models of advertising effectiveness.

In the fifth article, Naderer, Matthes, and Bintinger (2021) investigate the communication effects of so-called spoof placements. A spoof placement is a product placement that use signifying fonts and colors of original brands but change their names or designation to the scenery of the media content. The researchers explore whether spoof placements will have the same communication effects as actual product placements in terms of persuasion knowledge, memory, and attitudes. The findings show that although consumers do not perceive the spoof placement as advertising (it does not activate conceptual persuasion knowledge), it significantly affects explicit brand memory of the referenced, real brand. No effects were, however, found on attitudes.

The sixth article, by Segijn and Voorveld (2021), focuses on synced advertising. Synced advertising denotes the practice of monitoring people’s current media behavior and using collected information to show people individually targeted ads based on people’s current media behavior across media. This practice is different from online behavioral advertising as it is based on current (vs. historical) behavior, requires multi-media usage, and is overlapping with its environment. The paper focuses on attitudinal effects of synced advertising and finds that synced advertising leads to more positive brand attitudes than no advertising, but no differences are found in terms of timing. The authors thus call for more research to understand the potential effects of this new advertising practice.