The effect of ad integration and interactivity on young teenagers’ memory, brand attitude and personal data sharing

Contemporary online advertising is characterized by the integration of advertising in other content and brand interactivity. Integrated advertising embeds a persuasive message into informative or entertaining content. Brand interactivity refers to interactions consumers have with brands in advertising messages. A two (integration vs. no integration) x two (brand interactivity vs. no brand interactivity) between subjects experiment (n = 576) examines the effect of online advertising's brand interactivity and its integration in other content on young teenagers' (11–14 years) brand memory, awareness of selling intent, critical processing, brand attitude, and their personal information sharing. Brand interactivity has a positive effect on memory, awareness of selling intent, brand attitude and personal information sharing. Integration of advertising in other content has a negative effect on memory, but has no effect on awareness of selling intent, brand attitude and personal information sharing. Surprisingly, awareness of selling intent leads to less critical processing. The main contribution of the study is that it disentangles the effects of brand interactivity and message integration in contemporary advertising formats, and suggests adaptations to well-known theories, such as the Affect Transfer Mechanism and the Persuasion Knowledge Model, in the context of young teenagers' responses to these formats.

"Awareness of selling intent does not result in negative brand effects. Instead, it leads to a more positive brand attitude and more sharing of personal information through its positive effect of appropriateness of the brand used in the advertising stimulus. The important role of (1) brand interactivity (interactions consumers can have with brands oradvertising messages, by clicking on banners or pop-ups that contain brand-related information or by clicking on or using brands in games), (2) the largely insignificant role of brand integration in developing persuasion knowledge, and (3) the awareness of selling intent on perceptions of fairness, non-manipulativeness and appropriateness of advertising stimuli are important findings when applying contemporary online advertising formats to children and teenagers. The results show that interactivity leads to higher awareness of selling intent. The active control the individual has over the interactive stimuli leads to more engagement and involvement, which in turns results in more elaborated processing of the information. On the contrary, brand integration would have a negative effect on the advertising message." (Daems et al., 2019, pp. 252-254)