Native advertising in mobile applications: Thinking styles and congruency as moderators

ABSTRACT

This study tested the moderating roles of individual thinking styles and congruency between the promoted brand and the mobile application’s characteristics in the effects of native ads in mobile applications on consumer responses. The results from an online experiment with 119 participants recruited from Amazon MTurk revealed interesting interaction effects of nativity and thinking styles in that native ads were more effective for holistic thinkers, whereas non-native ads were more effective for analytic thinkers. In addition, the absence of brand-app congruency generated lower ad irritation in response to the non-native ad. This study contributes to the growing research stream of native advertising and provides practical implications for mobile advertisers.

KEYWORDS:

• Native advertising
• thinking styles
• congruency
• mobile advertising
• mobile application

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Haseon Park

Haseon Park (M.A., University of North Dakota) is a doctoral student at the University of North Dakota. Her research interests include interactive and mobile advertising and social media advertising strategies.

Soojung Kim

Soojung Kim (Ph.D., University of Minnesota, Twin Cities) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of North Dakota. Her research interests include online and social media advertising effects and consumer resistance to persuasion. Her research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals, such as International Journal of Mobile Communications, Journal of Marketing Communications, Science Communication, and Asian Journal of Communication.

Joonghwa Lee

Joonghwa Lee (Ph.D., University of Missouri-Columbia) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of North Dakota. His research interests lie in interactive and non-traditional advertising as well as consumer behaviors. His research has been recognized in peer-reviewed journals, such as Journal of Marketing Communications, New Media and Society, International Journal of Advertising, Communication Research Reports, and Journal of Interactive Advertising.