Politics also plays a role in who trusts sponsored advertisements online.
A new study Published by Alexander Davidson, Associate Professor of Marketing at Wayne State University, found that traditionalists Sponsored search results are more likely to be clicked on liberal Are.
To get the results, Davidson first examined data from more than 500,000 visitors to retailers’ websites nationwide. They analyzed who reached the website by clicking on search ads versus organic links, as well as the share of residents of each state who identify themselves as conservative.
The data showed that a 10% increase in a state’s conservative identity was associated with a 6.4% increase in search ad clicks.
Davidson also found a relationship between conservatives and search ad clicks by looking at each state’s average age and per capita personal income.
He noted that conservatives are generally older and have higher incomes than liberals.
The study also involved bringing online participants to a search results page and asking them how likely they were to click on a search ad as opposed to an organic link.
This time, their political affiliations were explored either through self-identification and attitudes towards political issues.
Once again, conservative participants were found to be more likely to click on search ads.
“The decision whether or not to click on an ad may seem quite trivial,” Davidson wrote in his study. “But I believe aversion to advertising is strongly rooted in people’s core beliefs and values.”
In his final analysis, Davidson created search ads for a website created for this research and found that conservatives were more likely to click on sponsored ads, such as “Buy Headphones.”
However, more detailed searches such as “buy headphones with microphones that reduce background noise” showed no correlation between political affiliation and clicks.
Davidson speculated that this was because broader searches are less cognitively demanding, so participants make their decisions based on their core beliefs and life outlook.
“On the other hand,” Davidson said, “I argue that specific searches require us to pay close attention to the information we are processing, which disables our core beliefs from having a primary impact on our decisions. Does.”
Overall, Davidson said advertisers should use these research findings to their advantage. He said they needed to come up with alternative ways to get liberals to click on sponsored ads, such as using star ratings or credible endorsements.
according to them online profileDavidson’s research explores consumer behavior with an emphasis on political and public policy issues.
