Purpose

The playable ad is a new type of digital advertising that combines interactivity with gamification. Guided by psychological reactance theory, this study aims to explore the psychological processes and effects of playable ads on consumers’ perceived control and product attitudes.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper conducted two experiments to examine the relationship between playable ads, perceived control and product attitude. This paper also applied psychological reactance theory and investigated whether perceived control triggered by the interactive features of playable ads influenced psychological reactance toward them.

Findings

Findings from two experiments show that playable ads, compared to video ads, increased consumers’ perceived control, which, in turn, led to more positive attitudes toward the advertised products (Studies 1 and 2). This study also supports psychological reactance theory by revealing that increased perceived control diminished perceived freedom threat and subsequently alleviated consumers’ psychological reactance toward advertising messages (Study 2).

Originality/value

This study sheds light on the effectiveness of a new type of ad-game integration – playable ads. Different from prior research in gamification of advertising, this paper examined the effectiveness of playable ads in an information processing context in which the ads were not the primary task to focus on. This study also extends psychological reactance theory in the context of interactive marketing by exploring the effect of perceived control afforded by digital message features in mitigating reactance.

中文翻译：

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可玩广告如何影响消费者态度：探索感知控制和自由威胁的中介效应

目的

可玩广告是一种将交互性与游戏化相结合的新型数字广告。本研究以心理反应理论为指导，旨在探讨可玩广告对消费者感知控制和产品态度的心理过程和影响。

设计/方法/方法

本文通过两个实验来检验可玩广告、感知控制和产品态度之间的关系。本文还应用了心理反应理论，研究了由可玩广告的交互特征触发的感知控制是否会影响对它们的心理反应。

发现

两个实验的结果表明，与视频广告相比，可玩广告增加了消费者的感知控制，进而导致对广告产品的更积极态度（研究 1 和 2）。该研究还通过揭示增加的感知控制减少感知自由威胁并随后减轻消费者对广告信息的心理反应来支持心理反应理论（研究 2）。

原创性/价值

这项研究揭示了一种新型广告游戏集成的有效性——可玩广告。与之前对广告游戏化的研究不同，本文研究了可玩广告在信息处理环境中的有效性，在该环境中，广告不是要关注的主要任务。本研究还通过探索数字消息特征提供的感知控制在减轻反应方面的影响，在互动营销的背景下扩展了心理反应理论。