The Influence Of Social Cues And Tie Strength On The Social Media In-Feed Advertising Effectiveness

Since 2016,mobile advertising has dominated the Internet advertising market,and in-feed advertising has become the fastest growing mobile advertisement.The research of in-feed advertising is worthy of attention.Among them,social media in-feed advertising is favored by advertisers.Because of the social attributes of the platform,in-feed advertising that immerses social media also has features of sociability and interactivity,and the social clues generated by interactions will affect the other audiences’ response to in-feed advertising.How does social context with the feature of interactivity affect the effectiveness of in-feed advertising?Because the current research on in-feed advertising is few,the specific impact of related factors about social influence on the effectiveness of in-feed advertising needs further exploration.Therefore,based on the application of social influence in marketing research,this paper chooses social cues and tie strength as entry points to explore their influence on the cognition,attitude and behavioral intension of in-feed advertising in order to enrich the in-feed advertising research.We conduct two two-factor between-subjects experiments,for exploring the effect and mechanism of social cues、tie strength and brand familiarity on the in-feed advertising.The first experiment is designed as 2(high brand familiarity vs low brand familiarity)*2(high social cues vs low social cues),the second experiment is designed as 2(high brand familiarity vs low brand familiarity)*2(strong tie strength vs weak tie strength).The experimental results show that the higher the brand familiarity is,the better the advertising recognition,advertising attitude,brand attitude and purchase intention of in-feed advertisements will be.The brand familiarity has a significant effect on advertising effectiveness,but cannot affect the willingness to interact with in-feed advertisement.The more social cues appear,the better advertising attitude and brand attitude of in-feed advertising will be,and the stronger tie strength subjects have,the better the brand attitude of in-feed advertising will be.In other words,the social cues and tie strength can significantly affect the in-feed advertising attitude,but has little significant effect on advertising recognition,purchase intention and willingness to interact.In addition,the interaction effect between brand familiarity and social cues on advertising attitude is significant.Specifically,the effect of social cues on advertising attitude will be different because of the brand familiarity.When the brand is unknown,the effect of the social cues on the advertising is greater,when the brand is famous,the effect of social cues is not so great.The interaction effect between brand familiarity and tie strength on the willingness to interact with in-feed advertising is significant.Specifically,the effect of tie strength on the willingness to interact will be different because of the brand familiarity.When the brand is unknown,the effect of tie strength on the advertising is greater,when the brand is famous,the effect of tie strength is not so great.In the end,this paper puts forward suggestions for the practical development of in-feed advertising and the evaluation criteria of in-feed advertising effectiveness.