The role of relevancy in native advertising on social media

Abstract

Native advertising has grown in popularity in recent years, and advertisers continue to look for ways to increase its effectiveness. Beyond the emphases of prior research on ad disclosure and format relevancy of native advertising, the current research contributes to the literature by first testing the relationship between the native ad and social media content by varying the thematic content relevancy of the ad (irrelevant vs. relevant) and second, adding media context effects to the equation by changing the thematic media content consistency (low vs. high) of the surrounding social media posts in the feed. Across three experiments, the ad relevancy effect was significant. The ad relevant to the surrounding content posts decreased ad intrusiveness and increased positive ad or brand attitude compared to an irrelevant ad in high media content consistency settings. In low media content consistency settings, the ad’s relevancy did not matter as much. Moderated mediation found that higher ad intrusiveness drove lower ad attitude and brand attitude for the irrelevant ad only in the high content consistency condition. This relationship did not occur for the low content consistency condition. The findings highlight the importance of testing thematic ad-content relevancy in digital media settings that present novel content presentation formats. Theoretical implications are provided regarding the psychological appeal of relevancy and the different media contexts where schema theory can be more or less applicable. Practical implications on how to place ‘in-feed’ native ads and how social media platforms may facilitate contextual ad targeting, given the different media content consistency backdrop, are discussed.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Data availability statement

Due to the nature of this research, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data is unavailable.

Notes

1 In addition to Study 1, the authors also conducted another study (N = 152) with a 2 (ad relevancy: irrelevant vs. relevant) x 2 (ad type: brand ad vs. PSA) between-subjects design to test if the main effect of ad relevancy would hold even with native ad type variations. The pattern of the significant results was the same as in Study 1, where a main effect of ad relevancy emerged with the relevant (vs. irrelevant) ad, decreasing ad intrusiveness and increasing ad attitude. The details of the study can be provided upon request.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hye Jin Yoon

Hye Jin Yoon (Ph.D., University of Georgia) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations at the University of Georgia. She conducts research using humor and incongruity messaging at the intersection of health, environmentalism, sustainability, and brand activism on digital and interactive media. Her work has been published in the Journal of Advertising, Journal of Business Research, International Journal of Advertising, Journal of Health Communication, Health Communication, and Journal of Current Issues & Research in Advertising, among others.

Yan Huang

Yan Huang (Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University) is an assistant professor of integrated strategic communication at the University of Houston. Her research investigates how content features and technological aspects of media campaigns shape audience responses to health, risk, and prosocial messages. Her work has appeared in such journals as Computers in Human Behavior, Health Communication, Information, Communication & Society, Journal of Communication, Journal of Health Communication, and Science Communication, among others.

Taeyeon Kim

Taeyeon Kim (Ph.D., University of Georgia) is an assistant professor in the School of Media and Communication at Kwangwoon University. Her research interests include digital advertising, consumer-brand relationships on social media, and consumer psychology. She has published scholarly articles in the International Journal of Advertising, Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, Journal of Interactive Advertising, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, and Telematics and Informatics.