Journal of Advertising, 47(1), 38–54 Copyright Ó 2018 Hilde A.M. Voorveld, Guda van Noort, Dani€el G. Muntinga, and Fred Bronner ISSN: 0091-3367 print / 1557-7805 online DOI: 10.1080/00913367.2017.1405754 Engagement with Social Media and Social Media Advertising: The Differentiating Role of Platform Type Hilde A. M. Voorveld, Guda van Noort, Dani€el G. Muntinga, and Fred Bronner University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Advertisers are enthusiastically integrating social media into their advertising programs to drive digital engagement. For example, stating “digital engagement is key to us,” sports brand Adidas recently announced it will focus its marketing efforts exclusively on digital and social channels (McCarthy 2017). The effectiveness of such digital engagement programs is usually assessed with social media monitoring tools providing quantitative metrics, such as the number of likes, shares, comments, opens, views, followers, or clicks, as indicators of level of engagement or valence of engagement (positive or negative comments). Growth among these engagement metrics is often thought to stem from creative execution of ads. With A/B testing, for example, various colors, calls to action, background images, photos, and the like are juxtaposed to examine which option best stimulates engagement (Scheinbaum 2016). Academic research also tends to focus on the executional factors in the content of the ad that drive digital engagement (e.g., Ashley and Tuten 2015; De Vries and Carlson 2014). We diverge from such approaches. We postulate that on social media the context (i.e., the platform), not the content, of advertising is a key determinant of its effectiveness. Although media context research shows that engagement with magazines, TV programs, and websites can carry over to evaluations of advertising included in the medium (Malthouse, Calder, and Tamhane 2007; Calder, Malthouse, and Schaedel 2009; Calder, Isaac, and Malthouse 2016), to the authors’ knowledge, this has never been tested with social media. Moreover, we argue that it is unlikely or inappropriate to equate engagement with a medium with advertising effectiveness because it disregards engagement with the embedded advertising. We therefore suggest that engagement with a social media platform spills over into how people engage with advertising within the platform and consequently affects ad evaluations. The main aim of the study is to examine the relation between social media engagement and social media advertising. However, to be able to examine this relation, we first need to understand consumer engagement with social media. This study examines how consumers’ engagement with social media platforms drives engagement with advertising embedded in these platforms and, subsequently, evaluations of this advertising. Our survey (N D 1,346, aged 13 and older) maps social media users’ engagement experiences with Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, GoogleC, Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat and their experiences with and evaluations of advertising on these platforms. Our findings show that engagement is highly context specific; it comprises various types of experiences on each social media platform such that each is experienced in a unique way. Moreover, on each platform, a different set of experiences is related to advertising evaluations. It is further shown that engagement with social media advertising itself is key in explaining how social media engagement is related to advertising evaluations. The general conclusion is that there is no such thing as “social media.” The authors thank SWOCC, the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Commercial Communication, for funding the data collection of this study. They also thank Peter Neijens for his feedback during the project.
“Looking for a Similar Assignment? Get Expert Help at an Amazing Discount!”
The post The main aim of the study is to examine the relation between social media engagement and social media advertising. appeared first on My Perfect Tutors.
“Are you looking for this answer? We can Help click Order Now”
