If it turns out that readers only respond positively to native ads if they don’t realize they’re looking at an ad, then we have a problem. The question I therefore asked myself at the start of my research was: can we implement native ads in an effective and sustainable way, without misleading readers? If so, how should we approach this? Through my research (interviews and online experiments on Belgian and Dutch news websites) I have found several factors that can contribute to this. I have summarized them in 4 principles.
1. Relevance
Readers often react more critically when they know they are looking at a (native) advertisement. However, this does not always have to be the case, as my research shows. Whether readers india telegram data react positively or negatively mainly depends on their so-called ' inferences of manipulative intent '. In other words: feelings of manipulation . And those feelings of manipulation are in turn influenced by the extent to which the reader feels that he/she gets sufficient value from an advertisement, or that it is mainly the advertiser who profits.
This is interesting for native ads, which can potentially contain a lot of information that readers may consider more or less valuable. I found several factors that influence this. What factors influence relevance and readers' feelings of manipulation?
Brand prominence in the text
In an experiment on the Belgian news website HLN.be we found that when an advertiser referred to itself frequently in the article (5 times versus once), readers felt more manipulated. This led to more negative evaluations of the ads, advertisers and even the news website. There was no direct negative effect of label and ad recognition among readers. Readers only reacted more negatively to the native ad when the brand prominence was high.
