The influence of retargeted advertisements and FoMO on young people

Abstract

Usage of the Internet, social networking sites, and smartphone technologies has become incessant among young people. Concurrently, the advertising industry made significant strides with the advent of programmatic advertisements, making advertisements more personalised and targeted. Billions of Euros are spent on these advertisements yearly to influence young people, among others. Hence, the pertinence to study this area has become increasingly important. The study investigates the influence of retargeted advertisements on young people by employing the Advertising Value Model (AVM) and the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). It extends the current understanding of the Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) in the form of appeals exposed by retargeted advertisements and their effect on young people. Retargeting is a highly personalised form of advertising in which individuals who have previously visited a website and viewed products are shown advertisements with visuals of the same viewed products soon after they leave the website and surf the Internet. A systematic literature review identified the six most influencing factors affecting young people’s attitudes towards online advertising, namely: entertainment, informativeness, irritation, credibility, personalisation, and interactivity. Two focus groups, each with six participants, served as a crucial exploration of FoMO in a marketing appeal framework, equipping the study with four constructs adopted from different studies, namely: scarcity, urgency, social proof, and loss aversion. Subsequently, a self-administered questionnaire collected data from 480 young people in Malta aged 13 to 24, focusing on AVM, FoMO, and TPB. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was employed to analyse the data. Using a multi-group analysis, gender and age groups (minors and young adults) were further investigated. The results revealed that entertainment and interactivity were strongly associated with the value and attitude towards retargeted advertisements. Informativeness, personalisation, and credibility were only positively correlated with advertising value. Advertising value exhibited a fully mediated role between these three antecedents and attitudes. Irritation was found to be negatively associated with attitude. Men were more affected by irritation than women. A strong relationship was observed between FoMO as a higher-order construct and attitude, subjective norms, and the intention to click on retargeted advertisements. As expected, attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control were all strong antecedents of the intention to click, with a significant statistical relationship between the intention and behaviour. Interestingly, men were more predisposed to FoMO influence on subjective norms and behavioural intentions than their female counterparts. Attitude was identified as the principal antecedent influencing the intention to click on advertisements among women, predominantly minors. Hence, retargeted advertisements displaying products that have already been encountered on a retailer’s website that are enjoyable, interactive, with timely information, credible, and include tailored content for young people are perceived as more valuable and useful. Such advertisements have the potential to shape young people’s attitudes favourably when they are entertaining and interactive, but conversely, they might have an adverse impact if they are irritating. Additionally, a FoMO appeal in retargeted advertisements can positively influence attitudes, leverage subjective norms, and drive young people’s intention to click on these advertisements. While acknowledging the inherent caveats in each method used in this study, it still offers valuable insights for academics and suggests avenues for future studies. Additionally, this study provides practical and social implications for young people, advertisers, policymakers, and parents or guardians.