Factors that cause scepticism for advertisements on social networking sites

Nowadays, social network advertising has become a rising trend as a result of the diversification and widespread use of social networking sites and the rapid growth in online advertising revenues. On the other hand, the effectiveness of social network site ads and the power of these ads on consumer attitudes have become significant for advertisers. For this reason, advertisers need to know how consumers react to advertisements on social networking sites and what factors cause these reactions. One of the reactions of consumers to advertisements is scepticism. The consumer who is scepticism of the advertisement will not trust the brand and will avoid watching the advertisement. This will result in wasted advertising efforts and costs of brands. In this respect, it is very important to determine the antecedents of scepticism towards advertisements on social networking sites and to design advertisements accordingly. In this context, it is aimed to determine the antecedents of scepticism towards advertisements on social networking sites by using structural equation modeling (SEM). Quantitative research method was adopted in order to identify the antecedents of scepticism towards advertisements on social networking sites. As a result of the analysis of the data taken from the sample of 932 social network users, it was determined that credibility, informativeness, entertainment and privacy concerns had an effect on the scepticism of advertisements on social networking sites, whereas perceived personalization had no effect on credibility and scepticism. On the other hand, it was determined that the variables of trust, informativeness and entertainment had a mediating role in the effect on scepticism, but the variables of trust, privacy concern and perceived personalization did not have a mediating role in the effect of scepticism.