Variation Matters : The Effectiveness of Platform Variation and Content Variation in Social Media Advertising as Mediated by Ad Intrusiveness

Social media advertising may vary in place in that it runs on different platforms and vary in content in that it features different ad executions. Drawing upon psychological reactance theory and the repetition-variation literature, this experimental study employed a 2 (single platform vs. multiple platforms) by 2 (repeated ads vs. varied ads) between-subject factorial design to investigate the impacts of platform variation and content variation on brand attitude and purchase intent. Social media users residing in the United States were recruited on Amazon Mechanical Turk to complete the study (N = 1097). The findings indicate that platform variation has a conditional indirect effect on brand attitude and purchase intent through ad intrusiveness, and this effect is moderated by content strategy. Specifically, when repeated ads are used, the use of multiple platforms reduces ad intrusiveness, resulting in more favorable brand attitude and greater purchase intent as opposed to the use of a single platform. In contrast, when varied ads are used, no significant differences are found in the outcome variables between single platform and multiple platforms.