The effects of ad social and personal relevance on consumer ad engagement on social media: The moderating role of platform trust

The growing number of firms leveraging social media for marketing purposes highlights the urgent need for firms to understand consumer perceptions and attitudes toward posted ads. This study builds on the elaboration likelihood model to characterize how different types of ad relevance, namely, personal and social relevance, determine the ad's perceived conversation value and consumer social motivation and further impact consumer ad engagement. Platform trustworthiness is becoming an important issue of concern for users. We further examine the role that platform trust plays in moderating the effects of personal and social relevance on perceived conversation value and social motivation. The results reveal that personally and socially related ads provide more conversation value for consumers and lead to higher social motivation among consumers, which can increase consumer engagement with ads. On social media platforms with relatively high user trust, the positive effects of personal ad relevance are magnified. This study deepens the current understanding of social media ads and extends the research on social media platform trustworthiness. Our findings may help firms to develop targeted and effective advertising schemes in social media environments.