Exploring How Disclosure Works for Listicle-Style Native Advertising: The Role of Persuasion Knowledge, Persuasion Appropriateness, and Supplementary Disclosure Effect of Brand Social Media

Abstract

Listicles are a new media phenomenon and appear on a news organization’s website; they are articles that use a ranked list and offer concise details about a topic to readers. The study explores how consumers recognize and understand native ad forms that mimic listicle-style online news articles. We investigated whether the inclusion of a disclosure or a companion brand social media post triggers the same effect and process provoked by conceptual persuasion knowledge. Through a between-subject design experiment, we show that the presence of disclosures and branded social media posts influence consumer’s perception of persuasion appropriateness, which correlates with the affective and behavioral evaluation of the brand and publisher.

Keywords:

• native advertising
• persuasion knowledge
• disclosure
• sponsored content
• listicle