Advertising in online news media: How to balance consumer protection, medium credibility and effective advertising?

This project revolves around two types of advertising used in online news media - banner advertising and native advertising. Online banners are widely used and a significant part of the online (news) media profits rely on them. Online banners are not massively viewed or clicked on, however. Also, readers are increasingly using ad blockers to actively avoid them. In response, advertisers have shifted their focus to native advertising in which commercial content is blended with the editorial content. The embedded nature of such ads decreases the distinction readers can make between news versus advertising. This puts both consumer protection and journalistic autonomy at risk. Even more, when readers are aware of the disguised commercial nature of native advertising, credibility of news media and the advertiser may decline. Taking an innovative approach by integrating insights from advertising research, journalism studies and adopting a stakeholder perspective, we aim to investigate the perceptions and behavior related to native advertising and banners. We will first explore perspectives from three stakeholders: readers, advertisers and news media professionals. We will then test several situations in which readers of online news media are confronted with (combinations of) online advertising. We will investigate causal relations between the type(s) of online advertising, readers' critical reasoning, brand and medium credibility and related behaviors.

Keywords:ADVERTISING

Disciplines:Communication sciences, Journalism and professional writing, Media studies, Other media and communications

Project type:Collaboration project