The Role of Ad Sequence and Privacy Concerns in Personalized Advertising: An Eye-Tracking Study into Synced Advertising Effects

Synced advertising is a relatively new strategy in which ads are personalized based on concurrent media usage. The aim of this study was to explore whether the sequence in which TV commercials and tablet ads were shown in synced advertising affected consumers' memory and attention toward advertisements in both media. Because of public debate about privacy concerns related to personalized advertising, we examined the moderating role of consumers' privacy concerns as a personal factor. An eye-tracking experiment (N = 118) showed that, overall, synchronizing ads across media results in the most favorable cognitive responses. The placement of a tablet ad simultaneous to (versus before or after) a TV commercial for the same brand resulted in the most attention toward both ads. However, consumers with higher (versus lower) privacy concerns paid less attention to the tablet ad when it was shown simultaneously with the TV commercial, compared to consumers with lower privacy concerns. The results show that synced advertising is a promising personalized advertising strategy for the industry but at the same time it might be less effective for people with higher privacy concerns.