Background: Due to the rapid growth of social media usage, marketing has significantly moved from traditional ways towards digital marketing. In today’s society, people are exposed to an overload of information through various media channels. Due to the overexposing of marketing, traditional marketing has become less effective since the majority of the information through traditional media channels pass people by. Considering this, companies are seeking new ways to market their brand and products. A new attractive marketing tool is blogs and with the help of bloggers as influencers, companies see the potential of effectively reaching out to their desired target group.   Purpose: The purpose of the thesis is to examine how advertising of brands, products and services are presented in the blog of Michaela Forni as well as the readers’ interpretation of the sponsored content.   Method: This thesis adopted an abductive philosophy, with an interpretive, qualitative methodological approach. The main techniques include content analysis, narrative analysis and semi-structured interviews.   Conclusion: A major finding and conclusion obtained from this study is the importance of what product or service that is promoted in the sponsored blog posts. This factor plays a crucial role whether the readers are susceptible to the sponsored message or not. Thus, sponsored posts are more appreciated than native advertising and ad-banners appearing on the blog as the latter two forms feature content not written by the blogger herself. Michaela Forni is using several presentations styles of her sponsored posts which leads to a bigger interest of the readers due to the variety. One of the most significant conclusion from this study is that branded storytelling is the most effective presentational style of sponsored content. The loyal relationship between the blogger and reader results in less ad skepticism and the reader having a positive association towards the sponsored content on the blog. The authors also identified correlations between the presentation styles of the sponsored content and readers’ interpretations.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore consumers’ attitudes towards native advertising and its perceived value. Design/methodology/approach – This research has a qualitative and exploratory nature. Forthe empirical material, primary data is collected through conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews. Findings – Consumers’ persuasion knowledge in relation to native advertising is found to be low. The advertising value of native advertising is positive since the consumers considered it to be entertaining, informative and credible. Furthermore, it was not considered as irritating which enhances the advertising value as well. Design was found to be its own category as it has an effect on all dimensions to enhance the advertising value. Since the advertising value is positive and enhanced, the attitudes of consumers towards native advertising are positive. Research implications/limitations – The main implications of this research are: native advertising can be used as a solution to consumers avoiding online advertising and in order for it to be successful, the design, content and frequency have to be taken into consideration. Since this research is qualitative, it has a subjective nature which might result in researcher induced bias. Furthermore, the age of the interviewees’ range from 21 to 38 years old which unlikely represents the whole population. Originality/value – As there is a lack of research in the field of native advertising, this research contributes to the field with knowledge about consumers’ attitudes towards it as well as how native advertising creates value. Additionally, the researchers applied the attitudes-towards-advertising model for this specific context and augmented it with a new dimension, design. This research also contributes with knowledge about each dimension in the native advertising context. Lastly, this research shows advertisers how native advertising should be used in terms of content, frequency and design.

Background: Social media marketing has grown rapidly in recent years and has become a standard tool for marketers. As a result, companies use social media influencers (SMIs) to reach their target audiences. One important aspect of influencer marketing is the relational aspect. Followers who exert parasocial relationship (PSR) with SMIs are more prone to respond positively to influencer marketing and the persuasion tactics put forward by companies and SMIs. It has therefore become crucial to understand how PSR and followers' persuasion knowledge affect followers' perception of transparency in sponsored posts.  Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to explore parasocial relationships and persuasion knowledge impact on followers’ perceived transparency of social media influencers. Methodology: This abductive thesis used a qualitative strategy for the collection of empirical data. A combination of four focus groups and semi-structured interviews were used, leading to a total of 17 participants. The data was analyzed using thematic analysis, resulting in three major themes and nine sub-themes. Findings: We found that followers’ perceived transparency has direct relationships with PSR and persuasion knowledge, respectively. However, there was no direct link between PSR and persuasion knowledge. Instead, this relationship was indirect through perceived transparency. Furthermore, how these concepts affect each other determines how followers perceive and respond to sponsored content.  Value: This thesis demonstrates the effectiveness perceived transparency has in SMIs sponsored content. Furthermore, we also extend the view and the meaning of PSR and persuasion knowledge, in response to perceived transparency. Lastly, this thesis illustrates PSR and persuasion knowledge’s effect on perceived transparency and how this ends in followers' perception of sponsored content.

This work titled Advertising impact of influencers as perceived by the young online users defines the term influencer in its theoretical part, offering several perspectives through which this phenomen can be viewed. For example, the number of followers on influencers' profiles, the interaction between these two sides, or the characteristic features of influential figures, such as their behaviour on the Internet. Furthermore, this work deals with influencer marketing, some types of collaboration between influencers and companies within social media, and the issue of tagging the sponsored commercial content. Also, one of the chapters summarizes some of the findings from several relevant studies, creating an initial insight into the topic. The research part of this work explores the issue as perceived by the young online users, using the research sample comprising 179 respondents in the range of 16-26 years old. The data collected through the electronic standardized questionnaire revealed, for example, that respondents require tagging sponsored posts on influencers' profiles, even though they trust these commercial posts less. Also, the pattern of behaviour hinting some verifying information before immediate tasting influencers' recommendations was indicated. The analyzed answers also point to the...

Social media are online accommodations where users can interact with other users, which has become a phenomenon that has grown and completely exploded over the past decade. Companies are well aware of this and has invested a large amount of resources in order to establish a better contact with their customers. Companies have several different fields of applications with social media such as gathering information, promotion, communicating with customers and reach out to desired audience effectively. Millennials are the generation who most frequently use social media and also grown up during the phenomenon's development. Previous research has shown that companies have had difficulties in reaching out to the millennial generation. This thesis purpose is to gain a deeper understanding of how companies can use social media to facilitate the segmentation process and effectively reach out to the millennial generation. Therefor two research questions have been established. The two research questions have been answered with assistance from relevant theory and research in the subject area. A case study was applied for the study, where the data was gathered from two focus groups discussing the social media platform Facebook. Each focus group consisted of eight participants within the millennial generation containing basic knowledge in marketing. The study’s result indicates millennials to follow (and thereby self-segment themselves) influential profiles they have a personal interest towards. However, Facebook is not the platform where the millennials follow these profiles. The study also indicates the best way to capture millennials interest on Facebook is through short, humorous videos with an interest capturing beginning. The study’s results also show millennia’s have a low interest in interacting with companies on Facebook. / Sociala medier är onlineplatser där personer kan interagera med varandra. Detta fenomen har vuxit i en accelererande fart under de senaste decenniet och fångat stort intresse hos företag som lägger massiva resurser på att få en bättre kontakt med sina kunder. Företag har åtskilda användningsområden av sociala medier, som till exempel att samla kundinformation, marknadsföra sig, kommunicera med kunder och att nå ut till en önskad målgrupp. Millennials är den generationen som flitigast använder sociala medier och har växt upp under fenomenets utveckling. Tidigare forskning visar att företag har haft svårigheter med att nå ut till millennial generationen. Denna uppsats syfte är därför att ge en djupare förståelse om hur företag kan använda sig av sociala medier för att förenkla segmenteringsprocessen och nå ut till millennial generationen. För att få en djupare förståelse inom område, har vi formulerat två forskningsfrågor. Forskningsfrågorna har i sin tur blivit besvarade med ståndpunkt i relevant teori och forskning inom området. Studien utfördes som en fallstudie, där informationen samlades in från två fokusgrupper som diskuterade Facebook. Vardera fokusgrupp bestod av åtta deltager inom millennial generationen, med grundläggande marknadsförings kunskaper. Studiens resultat indikerar på att millennial generationen följer (och där igenom själv-segmenterar sig själva) inflytande profiler de finner ett personligt intresse för. Dock är Facebook inte den plattform de använder för att följa dessa profiler. Vidare indikerar studien att det bästa sättet att fånga millennial generationens intresse är genom en kort, roligt video, där något intressant händer under de första sekunderna. Studiens resultat visar även att millennial generation inte har något större intresse av att interagera med företag på Facebook.