Researchers from Lehigh University, University of Hong Kong, and Wuhan University published a new Journal of Marketing article that examines in-feed advertising's performance across subscription versus AI recommended news feeds.
The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Tales of Two Channels: Digital Advertising Performance Between AI Recommendation and User Subscription Channels" and is authored by Beibei Dong, Mengzhou Zhuang, Eric (Er) Fang, and Minxue Huang.
How do you get news on a daily basis? Subscribe to topics you are interested in? Or let artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms recommend news to you? Platforms like Google News, Twitter, and TikTok offer two distinct ways of curating organic content: through user subscriptions and via AI algorithms.
If, for example, you log into Twitter (now known as "X") and open the "Following" tab, you will encounter posts from the sources you have subscribed to. Or if you open the "For You" tab, you will see content recommended by AI algorithms based on what AI predicts you are interested in viewing.
These different methods of delivering content provide distinct contexts for in-feed ads. However, little is known about how the performance of in-feed ads compares between subscription and AI-recommendation channels.
In-feed ads blend into your news feed, matching the format and style of content while clearly indicating their sponsored status. These ads can take various forms, from text-based ads on Apple News to eye-catching images on Instagram and engaging videos on TikTok. In-feed advertising has seen significant growth, with 58.3% of U.S. digital display spending allocated to these ads in 2018.
The authors explain that "in-feed ads ideally fit seamlessly into the organic content stream and their effectiveness is determined by both the ads' attributes and where they are placed. We examine how the channel affects ad effectiveness and whether the effects also depend on ad attributes." They consider two core digital ad attributes:
- Ad appeal that describes key content of the ad, which can either be informational (focusing on factual product information) or emotional (emphasizing the product experience through subtle feelings)
