Going Native on Social Media: The Effects of Social Media Characteristics on Native Ad Effectiveness

ABSTRACT

An online survey (N = 320) was conducted to examine the effects of social media characteristics on native ad effectiveness. Results show perceived intimacy, professionalism, and anonymity positively predict consumers' attitude toward native advertising, trust toward the ad sponsor, and satisfaction toward the sponsor. Further, the findings also show network size is a significant positive predictor for trust toward the ad sponsor, with theoretical and practical implications discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Native ads
• social media characteristics
• professionalism
• anonymity
• intimacy
• ad effectiveness

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable assistance during the review process.