Shedding New Light on How Advertising Literacy Can Affect Children's Processing of Embedded Advertising Formats: A Future Research Agenda

TLDR

Advertisers continuously seek new ways to embed commercial content into media, actively engage children, and increase message density, creating a challenge for children’s ability to cope with embedded advertising. This conceptual article develops a theoretically grounded framework to investigate how children process embedded advertising, highlighting the need for research on persuasive intent priming, implementation intentions, and strategies to strengthen both dispositional and situational advertising literacy. The authors review existing research and conceptualizations of advertising literacy, identify methodological gaps, and propose future studies focusing on persuasive intent priming and implementation intentions to improve children’s coping with embedded advertising.

Abstract

Advertisers are continuously searching for new ways to persuade children; current methods include fully integrating commercial content into media content, actively engaging children with the commercial content, and increasing the number of commercial messages children are confronted with at one moment in time. This poses a challenge for how children cope with embedded advertising. This conceptual article aims to develop a theoretically grounded framework for investigating how children process embedded advertising. More precisely, it sheds light on previous research and conceptualizations of advertising literacy and provides suggestions for future research. The article examines conceptual and methodological issues and discusses the need for research on how to improve children's coping with embedded advertising by emphasizing the value of persuasive intent priming and implementation intentions. To conclude, future research directions are discussed regarding strategies to strengthen children's coping skills and their dispositional (i.e., associative network consisting of cognitive, moral, and affective beliefs related to advertising) and situational (i.e., actual recognition of and critical reflection on advertising) advertising literacy.