The credibility of native advertising - Perceptions by the consumers

Abstract

Marketing tactics remain plentiful in today´s modern world, and the competition to stand out is becoming more challenging. Marketers have realised that novel implementations are required to gain the audience's attention. With this tendency comes native advertising, an advertising method imitating impartial editorial media content. Native advertisements offer a less intrusive and non-disruptive, engaging experience, delivering the information that users desire. These advertisements are eventually crafted for commercial purposes but do not appear as such. With this progression, consequences follow. Consumers do evidently place native advertisements under scrutiny for their deceptive and misleading intentions since it has become challenging to distinguish editorial content from commercial content. Furthermore, so-called ad disclosures are frequently missing or inadequately placed. Ad disclosures are indicators informing readers that the content is, in fact, promotional material. The question arises: Are native advertisements perceived as credible by their audience? Advertisements may pursue a so-called ad execution form of emotional and rational advertisement execution form. Research proves that consumers may react differently to the advertisement depending on the discourse taken in the advertising style. Additionally, this thesis includes investigating what are the differences in the consumer´s credibility perception depending on the advertisement execution form. In conclusion, the perceived trustworthiness, transparency, authenticity, and the explicitness of ad disclosures are investigated in this study by utilising the survey method as a part of the quantitative research methods. Furthermore, the effects of the designated ad execution form acting in the advertisement are included in the research. It was found that consumers do not typically perceive native advertisements exclusively as credible or incredible. However, the higher the recognition of the advertisement, the less credible the advertisement is. In addition to these findings, it was discovered that the rational advertisement execution form performed slightly better than the emotional advertisements, even though the variance in these was marginal.