ADVERTISING LITERACY:
“WHAT ABOUT THE
CHILDREN?”
Ralf De Wolf
CHILDREN’S
ADVERTISING LITERACY
Key findings
In general
• Children’s understanding of advertising tactics
develop together with their cognitive capacities
and their information processing skills, and thus
with age
• Early childhood (-5): Does not recognize the intent of
advertising
• Middle childhood (8-12): Begin to recognize the
difference between advertising and program, begin to
understand persuasive intent
• Late childhood (12-16): More detailed comprehension
of persuasive intent
 Because young children lack the cognitive skills,
they are highly susceptible to the influence of
advertising
Old versus new advertising tactics
• Children’s ability to process information already is limited.
New advertising tactics just make things harder.
• “Difficulty to recognize ad content and persuasive intent in brand
•
•
•
•
placement” (Panic et al., 2012)
“They are much more aware of explicit versus implicit tactics”
(Freeman & Shapiro, 2014)
Children’s ability to recognize advertisements on a Web page is far
behind their ability to recognize advertisements on television
(Blades et al., 2013)
“Children’s advertising literacy between 6 – 12 is low to average.
Certainly for product placement, advertiser funded programs and
advergames (Cauberghe et al., 2012).
“Because of the affect based nature of contemporary advertising,
children’s ability to use advertising knowledge is limited (Rozendaal
et al., 2001).
Example: advergames
• Children who played an advergame had more difficulty recalling the
advertised brand than children who saw a traditional television
advertisement (Verhellen et al., 2014)
• 3/4 of the children did not recognize advergames as a type of
advertising (An et al., 2014)
CHILDREN’S
ADVERTISING LITERACY
What is missing? What are the research challenges?
Challenge #1: Disentangling the concept
• Different conceptual and operational definitions of
advertising literacy
• Too little is known about affective and moral dimension
Challenge #1: Disentangling the concept
Cognitive dimension:
• Recognizing advertisements
• Understanding
• The selling and persuasive intention
• Knowing persuasive tactics
• Positive attitudes
!Moral dimension:
• skills to judge advertising (tactics) in terms of appropriateness
(fairness, manipulativeness and respectfulness)
!Affective dimension:
• Affective attitudes (learned and sceptic)
Challenge #2: Moving beyond the classic
television commercial
• Focus on traditional TV advertising. Less is known about
new adverting tactics
Challenge #3: taking into account
children’s experiences
Children’s own accounts of how they experience, use and
manage new advertising formats have not received
sufficient attention
CHILDREN’S
ADVERTISING LITERACY
The bigger picture
Our goal = empower children so that they can grow up to
be critical, informed consumers who can make their own
conscious choices
…But new advertising tactics are developing rapidly
Key questions:
• How do we balance between empowerment and
regulation?
• Is it fair to use implicit/ integrated advertising tactics when
we know children have low levels of implicit tactic
awareness?
• What can advertisers do? Implement advertising cue?
ADOLESCENTS AND
ADVERTISING ON SNS
Brahim Zarouali
Limited attention for adolescents
in advertising research
Underdeveloped advertising
knowledge
Advertising on social network sites (SNS)
 SNS have become an important venue for marketers
 Sharp increase in advertising on SNS
 Advertising on SNS = targeted advertising
Advertising Effectiveness on SNS
Relevant and
appealing
advertising
Creepy and
feelings of privacy
intrusion
Important …
Adolescents are avid
SNS users
Regularly exposed to
advertising on SNS
Adolescents and Advertising on SNS?
How do adolescents engage or interact with targeted ads
on SNS, and how this influences their advertising
responses?
STUDY!!
In general…
•
Positive effect
•
Higher purchase intention
But…However…
1. High privacy concern
2. Informed debriefing
•
Higher advertising skepticism
•
Leads to lower purchase intention
Implications
 Practitioners
o Targeted ads backfired in the study
o Careful when using adolescents’ personal information
o Be transparent
More responsible and effective campaigns
New advertising formats and
children’s fundamental rights
Valerie Verdoodt
Children’s fundamental rights
→ Right to become an optimal person, to development,
to being ad literate?
→ Best interest principle
→ Other relevant rights
• right to freedom of expression
• right to privacy
• right to access information and material from a diversity of
national and international sources & protection
participation
protection
• …
What are the research challenges? What is
missing?
Fragmented regulatory framework: does it adequately
cover new advertising formats?
Media law
(AVMS Dir.)
For example advergames:
 AVMS Directive (?)
 E-Commerce Directive
 Unfair Commercial Practices Dir.
 Data Protection Directive (GDPR)
 Self- and co-regulation
Audiovis.
Commerc.
Comm
.
Principle of
identification
Principle of
separation
Commercial
content-specific
rules
Consumer
protection
Principle of
identification
(e-Commerce
Directive)
Unfair / misleading
/ agressive trading
practices
UCP Directive
Data
Protection
Parental consent
(16 years GDPR,
unless MS opt for
a different age)
What are the research challenges? What is
missing?
→ Creating a level playing field?
→ Self-regulation and children’s rights – compatible?
→ Research on advertising cues
→ Children’s personal data collection and its limits
Parental consent
Innovative ways of providing information
→ The use of emotions in advertising and their impact on
decision making
Further study
 What are the most problematic formats for children to
comprehend?
 How should a cue look like to have the most desired
effect?
 How do we best reach children?
 How should education packages look like?
 What is the role of parents?
@R_dwlf, @Brahim_Zr, @valeverdo
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]