Recent trends and developments in the fields of Big Data, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence are completely transforming the way brands are engaging and communicating with their audience, allowing more personalized communications than ever. With the spread of social networking sites, such as Facebook, YouTube or Instagram a new opportunity arises for companies to connect to their consumers. However, since social media personalization implies the collection and analysis of highly personal data, consumers may develop negative reactions, attitudes or perceptions towards personalized advertising. Research covers extensively issues such as privacy concerns, invasiveness, forced exposure or irritation, which can lead to advertising avoidance. Though understanding the user perspective is crucial, the topic advertising avoidance in the context of personalization, especially in social media environments, hasn’t been discussed at great length. The purpose of this thesis is to understand how YouTube users experience personalized advertising while using the platform. The empirical findings of this thesis contribute to the ongoing research on personalized advertising within a social media setting. In addition, by understanding what can influence personalized ad avoidance on YouTube and describing how consumers express ad avoidance on the platform, this thesis aims to nurture a deeper understanding of the phenomenon. This study is based on an interpretative, abductive as well as a qualitative research design. It uses semi-structured interviews to explore the views, experiences, beliefs, and motivations of individual participants as well as focus groups that can leverage group dynamics to generate new qualitative data. The results of this thesis show that YouTube users experience ad avoidance in relationship with personalized ads for several reasons linked to prior negative attitudes, perceived goal impediment or ad irritation. The analysis of the findings revealed that users can experience cognitive, affective and behavioral ad avoidance as presented in the literature, but a theoretical model which can perfectly explain the phenomena of personalized ad avoidance on social media is currently not existent. While some antecedents claimed by the previously mentioned theoretical frameworks were also visible in the study, additional aspects may have an impact on how consumers experience personalized advertising avoidance in the social media environment, and more specifically on YouTube.

Social media has become an integral part of consumers’ lives and a popular platform for interactive marketing communication. In an age boasting of unprecedented digital connectivity, loneliness (defined as perceived social isolation) has, paradoxically, becoming widespread, affecting consumers’ preferences for products and brands in the marketplace. The present research extends the feelings-as-information theory and develops a conceptual framework in which loneliness modifies people’s cognitive processing style and induces concrete thinking in the context of evaluating social media messages. Using a mixed methods research approach, I first take a close look through the lens of a qualitative study at what it is like for the average consumer to experience loneliness. Additional experiments show that lonely consumers have higher digital engagement with concrete (vs. abstract) social media ads. Broadly, my findings on the effects of loneliness on consumers’ digital engagement with social media ads highlight the fact that loneliness may render different types of social media ads (abstract versus concrete) more or less effective.

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Recent developments in internet technology have ushered in unprecedented change when it comes to communication. This change has also given rise to social media, which has significantly changed the way modern communication occurs (Rosengren, 2000; Evans & McKee, 2010; Tuten & Solomon, 2015). While social media has gained enormous reach in recent years, with millions of new users joining social platforms every year, it has changed company-consumer relations as well (Akar & Topcu, 2011; Fan & Niu, 2013; Tuten & Solomon, 2015). Marketers are continuously turning towards social media to distribute advertisements and gather information (Akar & Topcu, 2011). As such, consumers today are bombarded by vast amounts of promotions and advertisements on social media. However, consumers are no longer passive observers and are increasingly becoming more and more able to edit and control what they choose to see online  (Kelly, Kerr & Drennan, 2010). This has led to the decline of social media advertising effectiveness, as consumers choose to avoid and ignore more advertisement than ever before (Wen, Tan & Chang, 2009; Kelly et al., 2010; Chang, Chen & Tan, 2012; Khan, Dongping & Wahab, 2016). As such, in order to be able to overcome consumer avoidance of marketing messages, it is now more important than ever for advertisers and marketers to understand what drives consumers to avoid advertising in the first place (Cho & Cheon, 2004; Wen et al., 2009; Akar & Topcu, 2011; Chang et al., 2012). Therefore, as there is a significant lack of research on these subjects, the authors constructed a model based on Cho and Cheon’s (2004) theory that describes the antecedents of online marketing avoidance, and sought to test a number of hypotheses about the relationships between the antecedents of social media marketing avoidance and social media advertising effectiveness. To be able to do so, the authors constructed and utilized a survey method and a questionnaire. However, while the initial results of the data  gathered by the survey were encouraging for the model as a whole, it was ultimately found that only one hypothesis was acceptable. Keywords Antecedents of marketing avoidance, social media advertising effectiveness, advertising effectiveness

[pt] As mídias sociais digitais fazem parte do dia a dia de muitas pessoas. Nestas mídias, as empresas também estão presentes, o que indica interesse destas em construir relacionamentos mais próximos com os consumidores, além de promover seus produtos/serviços. Este estudo tem como objetivo analisar a percepção de consumidores em relação aos anúncios nas mídias sociais digitais e avaliar se estes anúncios conseguem influenciar o comportamento de compra. Para entender esta influência, foi desenvolvido um modelo conceitual com os seguintes construtos: informatividade, entretenimento, irritação, credibilidade, incentivos, valor emocional, valor do anúncio e atitude em relação à anúncios em mídias sociais digitais. Foi aplicada uma survey online que resultou em uma amostra de 589 brasileiros que utilizam Instagram ou Facebook. Os dados levantados foram analisados através da modelagem de equações estruturais (SEM). Uma das contribuições teóricas deste estudo foi a proposta de analisar a influência do valor emocional sobre a atitude em relação aos anúncios em mídias sociais digitais, o que não foi identificado em estudos anteriores. Além disso, o resultado apontou que a informatividade, construto consolidado na literatura como antecedente de valor do anúncio e atitude, não apresentou efeitos significativos no modelo estimado. Ademais, foi estudada a moderação do tipo de mídia social digital (Facebook ou Instagram) sobre as relações propostas. Os resultados indicaram que, enquanto os usuários de Instagram percebem com mais intensidade o efeito do valor do anúncio sobre a intenção de compra, os usuários do Facebook percebem o efeito de atitude de forma mais intensa. O estudo também fornece contribuições gerenciais que permitem profissionais de marketing a desenvolverem anúncios em mídias sociais de forma mais eficaz. / [en] Digital social media is a daily part of many people s lives. Companies are also present in this type of media, which indicates their interest in building closer relationships with consumers, in addition to promoting their products/services. This study aims to analyze consumers perceptions of ads on digital social media and to assess whether these ads can influence purchase behavior. To understand this influence, a conceptual model was developed with the following constructs: informativeness, entertainment, irritation, credibility, incentives, emotional value, ad value and attitude towards digital social media ads. An online survey was conducted that resulted a sample of 589 Brazilians using Instagram or Facebook. The collected data were analyzed through the structural equation modeling (SEM). One of the theoretical contributions of this study was the evaluation of the influence of emotional value on attitude towards digital social media ads, a relationship that was not identified in previous studies. In addition, the results pointed out that informativeness, a construct consolidated in the literature as an antecedent of ad value and attitude, did not present significant effects in the estimated model. In addition, the moderating effects of the type of digital social media (Facebook or Instagram) on the proposed relationships were studied. The results indicated that while Instagram users perceive more strongly the effect of ad value on intention to buy, Facebook users perceive the effect of attitude more intensely. The study also provides managerial contributions that enable marketers to more effectively develop social media ads.