Why are you following me?: impact of ad repetition on ad avoidance on social media platforms

Abstract

The digital landscape is constantly evolving, and companies are adapting their marketing techniques with it. The internet has enabled the creation of targeted marketing and advertising which was not possible to this extent in traditional mass media models. As consumers spend more time online, they provide large quantities of data to companies which then use behavioral targeting to offer consumers personalised communication. However, consumers have become less trusting over time and have raised concerns over lack of privacy, identity theft and lack of transparency in data collection methods. Companies tend to retarget consumers to increase brand recall. However, with increasing personalization and data collection, it is important to understand the threshold beyond which consumers begin to engage negatively with ads or completely avoid them. An in depth understanding of how the optimal number of times an ad is repeated beyond which it leads to avoidance can aid more efficient utilize of media spending. The aim of this paper is to understand how frequency of ads on social media can impact ad avoidance and what factors can moderate the same. While there has been research on repetition in traditional media, very little literature exists on the impact of repetition of ads on social media in the current data driven digital climate.