Contextual advertising in online communication: An investigation of relationships between multiple content types on a webpage Susanne Franziska Waechter A thesis submitted to Auckland University of Technology In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Communication Studies (MCS) 2010 School of Communication Studies Primary Supervisor: Gudrun Frommherz Table of Contents List of Figures and Tables ................................................................................. III Attestation of Authorship................................................................................. IV Acknowledgements........................................................................................... V Ethical Approval................................................................................................ VI Abstract ........................................................................................................... VII 1. Introduction................................................................................................ 1 2. Literature review ........................................................................................ 5 2.1 Marketing ............................................................................................. 6 2.1.1 Internet marketing ...................................................................... 10 2.2 Advertising and Online advertising .................................................... 13 2.2.1 Online advertising........................................................................ 16 2.2.2 Contextual advertising................................................................. 20 2.3 Semiotics ............................................................................................ 25 2.3.1 Social semiotics ........................................................................... 29 2.3.2 Geosemiotics ............................................................................... 30 2.3.3 Semiotics in advertising............................................................... 31 2.4 Multimodality..................................................................................... 35 2.5 Conclusion .......................................................................................... 38 3. Approach .................................................................................................. 41 3.1 User‐centred and system‐centred approaches .................................. 43 3.2 Structural description of the selected webpage ................................ 50 3.3 Summary ............................................................................................ 56 I | P a g e 4. Methodology ............................................................................................ 58 4.1 Research ............................................................................................. 58 4.1.1 Qualitative Research.................................................................... 59 4.2 Design of the study............................................................................. 61 4.2.1 The participants........................................................................... 64 4.2.2 Research Ethics............................................................................ 65 4.3 Procedure of data analysis ................................................................. 67 4.4 Summary ............................................................................................ 74 5. Analysis and discussion of interview data ................................................ 76 5.1 Participants’ responses about environmental factors........................ 76 5.2 Participants’ responses concerning editorial content ........................ 79 5.3 Participants’ responses concerning advertisements.......................... 82 5.4 Participants’ responses concerning the webpage and website tools ...................................................................................... 89 5.5 Participants’ responses concerning relationships between information modules.......................................................................... 95 5.6 Answers to the research questions .................................................. 101 6. Research Conclusions............................................................................. 105 Reference List................................................................................................ 111 APPENDIX I: Interview Questions ....................................................................... I APPENDIX II: Interview examples ..................................................................... III Participant 6 ................................................................................................. III Participant 3 .................................................................................................. X II | P a g e List of Figures and Tables Figure 1: Simplified illustration of the GeM‐model; own compilation............ 45 Figure 2: The selected webpage from the website www.healthyfood.co.nz.. 51 Figure 3: Information modules on the selected webpage............................... 53 Figure 4: Module‐components of Ad1 ............................................................ 55 Figure 5: Illustration of terms.......................................................................... 56 Figure 6: Shots from Camera 1, Camera 2 and Camera 3................................ 64 Figure 7: Cards in the card activity ..................................................................... I Table 1: The 4 P's and 4 C’s of the Marketing Mix ............................................ 8 Table 2: Example of theme identification ....................................................... 69 Table 3: Developed categories for data analysis ............................................. 72 III | P a g e Attestation of Authorship “I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person (except where explicitly defined in the acknowledgements), nor material which to a substantial extent has been submitted for the award of any other degree or diploma of a university or other institution of higher learning." ________________________ Susanne Franziska Waechter March 2010 IV | P a g e Acknowledgements Throughout this research, I have received help and support from a lot of people. I wish to thank my primary supervisor Gudrun Frommherz for all the guidance and support during that fascinating and challenging time in my life. In addition, I thank my second supervisor Rosser Johnson for his time and advice throughout the two years of my study. I would like to thank my partner Roman Meyer for his unlimited support, patience and belief in my abilities. I would also like to acknowledge and thank Alex Challis for making the enormous effort of proofreading my final draft. Big thanks also to my parents for their continuous and unconditional support, wherever I am. V | P a g e Ethical Approval This research has obtained ethical approval 09/154 from the Auckland University of Technology Ethics Committee on 6 August 2009. VI | P a g e Abstract As part of the promotional mix, advertising plays a significant role in a company’s or organisation’s communication with its consumers and stakeholders. In order to inform consumers about their products or services, marketers apply a variety of advertising strategies. One particular strategy is “contextual advertising”, which refers to the strategic placement of advertisements in an editorial environment whose theme is relevant for the promoted product or service (Belch & Belch, 2009, p. 492). Also in advertising research, contextual advertising received a considerable amount of attention. Scholars have investigated the effectiveness of contextual advertising in online and offline media. Researchers as well as practitioners have particularly focused on content‐based relationships between advertisements and the theme of the editorial environment in which the advertisement is placed. With a focus on online media, the present study aimed to investigate this content‐based relationship but also to examine what other types of relationships between the different contents on a webpage the user constructs. Advertising has also been investigated in the area of semiotics. Several scholars analysed advertisements in order to reveal their meaning‐affordances. A second interest in the present study derives from semiotic studies and theories, which emphasise the individual’s significance in the meaning‐making process but also exclude the individual from their analysis. A potential contradiction could be seen here and by investigating how users interpret a particular webpage, this study aimed to examine what insights an analysis can provide that is solely focused on the webpage user. In order to capture users’ interpretations of a webpage’s contents and to investigate what types of relationships between these contents users construct semi‐structured interviews with six participants were conducted. The VII | P a g e participants were invited to look at a webpage from the website www.healthyfood.co.nz. Following the interviews, the participants’ responses were transcribed, categorised and analysed. Findings from the study revealed that several participants constructed relationships between advertisements and the editorial content based