Exploring the role of control in digital advertising effectiveness

Media technologies have changed how we process media information by enabling more interactive and relevant communication processes. Today media communication are primarily shaped by both user control, where the media users actively choose and determine their media experience, and system control, where the media technologies and the underlying algorithms automatically generate and push relevant information to users. Understanding how both these processes influence media users’ perceptions and responses to media messages is thus an important yet relatively unexplored topic in digital media and communication research. This study explores how ad choice, representing self-controlled advertising communication, and ad personalization, representing system-controlled advertising communication, influence media users’ responses, including perceived control, ad attitude, and visual attention. Findings from an experiment showed that having ad choice in determining which ad to view enhanced media users’ perceived control, which positively influenced attitude toward the ad. While the effect of ad choice on visual attention was not significant, ad personalization was found to increase visual attention. Results also showed that ad choice could significantly affect media users’ perceived personalization, which enhanced both ad attitude and visual attention. Theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Communications and Media

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Hu, Xiaohan

Contributors dc:contributor

• Wise, Kevin
• Yao, Mike
• Duff, Brittany
• Buetti, Simona

• Perceived control
• User control
• Personalization
• Advertising effects
• Eye tracking

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Xiaohan Hu

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/116029

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F116029