Abstract
The transformation of the advertising system is the result of the dynamic interaction of three dimensions: advertising proposals, consumer response, and advertising effectiveness resulting from the interaction. The decrease in advertising effectiveness at the end of the last century, together with a set of technological and socio-cultural factors, has given rise to new advertising proposals distributed through new multidirectional communicational contexts and new formats that continue to privilege a type of direct advertising. However, these new advertising proposals have focused on the first dimension of the advertising system and have not sufficiently taken into account scientific advances on the psychological nature of the consumer. This has produced a series of imbalances whose analysis has led to the identification of a phenomenon of masking and transfiguration in a type of indirect advertising, emerging in the culture of digital entertainment, which benefits from scientific advances on the current conception of affective-cognitive processing.
TopIntroduction
Advertising is in a process of mutation. The hegemonic advertising system of the 20th century, based on the mass media, has diversified. New forms of advertising have appeared that are profoundly changing the advertising landscape. Three sets of factors are converging and feeding back on each other to explain this process of mutation in which we find ourselves. These factors are giving rise to different advertising manifestations that illustrate this dynamic of change. The first part of the chapter describes these factors and manifestations of advertising change. The conceptors-designers and analysts of this advertising evolution have emphasized new communicational aspects and advertising formats. Thus, a first dimension of the advertising process has been privileged, which is interested in adapting the advertising proposal to the new context. However, there are gaps, inadequacies and imbalances detected in this process, which may mark the future of advertising. As argued in the second part of the chapter, the other two dimensions of the advertising system have not been sufficiently addressed: user and advertising effectiveness. The scientific advances that help us to better know and understand the response of the advertising user and the new perspectives in the evaluation of advertising effectiveness have not been taken into account. The analysis of these inadequacies has led us to detect some indicators of the emergence of new persuasive strategies that seek to indirectly influence people's mental processes. These new strategies are supported by scientific advances in psychology and neuroscience. We propose to add to the three factors described above, factors of masking, transfiguration and depth of psychological processing that had not been taken into account so far, among other reasons, because the understanding of the advertising mutation had focused on the transmission of content and had neglected psychological factors of the user. Finally, the theoretical proposal on these phenomena and strategies of indirect persuasion that may influence the mutation and future evolution of advertising in the new landscape of digital entertainment is articulated.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Direct advertising: It is a type of interpellative advertising generally inserted in the media. It has a push strategy that seeks to capture the conscious attention through focal perceptual route in order to process content of an advertising nature. It is advertising with advertising genre and disclosure codes that allow the receiver to identify that it is content paid for by an advertiser.
Transfigured Advertising: It is a type of indirect advertising in which a real brand has been transfigured into a fictional band and is present in a fictitious entertainment universe or in a real one. This transfigured brand has design features that allow the user during the activity in that fictional or real world, and unconsciously, to associate the fictional brand with the real brand, thus generating a process of advertising effectiveness by association and transfer of properties and affections between the real brand and the fictional one.
Indirect advertising: It is a type of advertising present in both entertainment and informative content. It has a pull strategy that seeks to attract the consumer to a content of interest or main content. Advertising is a secondary content that is present and forms part of the main content, even though it is not the main objective of the activity. Depending on the type of indirect advertising, the receiver may or may not be aware of the presence of the brand. If the focal attention is primarily focused on the main activity, the advertising present in the activity may also be processed unconsciously via parafoveal or peripheral perception.
Masked advertising: It is a type of indirect advertising that uses a pull strategy in which there is a main content that attracts the user to that activity and a secondary advertising content attached to it. Masked advertising can be present in entertainment or information content in different degrees of masking depending on the number and type of gender indicators (disclosures), the type of cognitive processing (conscious vs. unconscious) and the processing pathway (focal, peripheral or parafoveal).