The Role of Perceived Surveillance and Privacy Cynicism in Effects of Multiple Synced Advertising Exposures on Brand Attitude

Technological advancements have made it possible to personalize advertising messages across media in real time based on consumers’ offline media behavior (i.e., synced advertising). This is thought to positively influence consumers’ brand attitudes. However, consumers encountering multiple synced advertising exposures could decrease the strategy’s effectiveness by increasing the perceptions of surveillance among consumers. Moreover, these effects may differ depending on privacy cynicism; consumers may decrease their privacy protection behaviors as a result of feeling hopeless and frustrated by the high demands and lack of control of their data being used for personalized advertising purposes. An online experiment (N = 527) showed the more that ads were synchronized, the higher the perceived surveillance, which led to less positive brand attitudes for participants with the lowest levels of privacy cynicism and positive brand attitudes only for participants with intermediate to high levels of privacy cynicism. The results advance theory on the direct effects, underlying mechanisms, and consumer-related factors that play a role in synced advertising effects. It shows that synced advertising could be a promising advertising strategy but that considerations around privacy and ethics are essential.