Effects of Advertising (continued)

Consumers

Supporters of native advertising claim that a reasonable person should be able to identify native advertising from authentic content (Schauster, Ferrucci, & Neill, 2016). However, studies have shown that a majority of people are unable to correctly identify it even with proper disclosure. (Wojdynski & Evans, 2015, Hyman et al., 2017).

A national study of college advertising students found that one-in-four could not correctly identify “sponsored content” as advertising. This study also found “one-fifth of students misidentified legitimate news articles as advertising” (Fullerton, McKinnon, & Kendrick, 2020, pg.14). For the general population these numbers are more concerning with one study reporting 92 percent of adults studied were not able to correctly identify paid content from non-paid content (Wojdynski and Evans, 2016).

This misidentification can be particularly troubling considering a Pew Research survey found that young adults (18-29 years) rated social media as their preferred platform for news consumption compared to TV, radio, and print (Shearer, 2018). By using social media platforms as their primary news source, the younger generations may be particularly vulnerable to native advertisements (Nee, 2019).