The effects of native advertising on consumer responses. Some experimental evidences on the interaction between content type and brand awareness

Native advertising is rapidly establishing itself in the field of online marketing communication strategies. This paper aims at analyzing consumer responses to native ads varying upon the concreteness versus abstractness of content under specific brand awareness conditions. The conceptual model proposes that brand awareness moderates the relationships between the type of content (concrete vs. abstract) and consumers evaluations of and dispositions towards native ad, product/service and brand. The results of an experimental study provide empirical support to the idea that consumer responses to concrete vs. abstract native content change for well-known and less known brands and suggest implications for theory and practice.