ADVERTISING LITERACY: WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?

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1 ADVERTISING LITERACY: WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN? Project coordinator: Ralf De Wolf Promotors: Liselot Hudders, Veroline Cauberghe

2 CHILDREN S ADVERTISING LITERACY Key findings

3 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

4 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).

5 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)

6 CHILDREN S ADVERTISING LITERACY What is missing? What are the research challenges?

7 Challenge #1: Disentangling the concept Different conceptual and operational definitions of advertising literacy Too little is known about affective and moral dimension

8 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)

9 Challenge #2: Moving beyond the classic television commercial Focus on traditional TV advertising. Less is known about new adverting tactics

10 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

11 CHILDREN S ADVERTISING LITERACY The bigger picture

12 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?

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16 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?

17 ADOLESCENTS AND ADVERTISING ON SNS Brahim Zarouali

18 Limited attention for adolescents in advertising research

19 Underdeveloped advertising knowledge

20 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

21 Advertising Effectiveness on SNS Relevant and appealing advertising Creepy and feelings of privacy intrusion

22 Important Adolescents are avid SNS users Regularly exposed to advertising on SNS

23 Adolescents and Advertising on SNS? How do adolescents engage or interact with targeted ads on SNS, and how this influences their advertising responses? STUDY!!

24 In general Positive effect Higher purchase intention

25 But However 1. High privacy concern 2. Informed debriefing Higher advertising skepticism Leads to lower purchase intention

26 Implications Practitioners o Retargeted ads backfired in the study o Careful when using adolescents personal information o Be transparent More responsible and effective campaigns

27 New advertising formats and children s fundamental rights Valerie Verdoodt

28 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

29 What are the research challenges? What is missing? Fragmented regulatory framework: does it adequately cover new advertising formats? Media law (AVMS Dir.) Consumer protection Data Protection For example advergames: AVMS Directive (?) Audiovis. Commerc. Comm. Principle of identification (e-commerce Directive) Parental consent (16 years GDPR, unless MS opt for a different age) E-Commerce Directive Unfair Commercial Practices Dir. Principle of identification Unfair / misleading / agressive trading practices UCP Directive Data Protection Directive (GDPR) Self- and co-regulation Principle of separation Commercial content-specific rules

30 What are the research challenges? What is missing? 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 Self-regulation and children s rights compatible?

31 @R_dwlf,