Native advertising in mobile applications: Thinking styles and congruency as moderators

This study tested the moderating roles of individual thinking styles and congruency between the promoted brand and the mobile application’s characteristics in the effects of native ads in mobile applications on consumer responses. The results from an online experiment with 119 participants recruited from Amazon MTurk revealed interesting interaction effects of nativity and thinking styles in that native ads were more effective for holistic thinkers, whereas non-native ads were more effective for analytic thinkers. In addition, the absence of brand-app congruency generated lower ad irritation in response to the non-native ad. This study contributes to the growing research stream of native advertising and provides practical implications for mobile advertisers.