Citation[]
Federal Trade Commission, Blurred Lines: An Exploration of Consumers' Advertising Recognition in the Contexts of Search Engines and Native Advertising (FTC Staff Report) (Dec. 2017) (full-text).
Overview[]
This report summarizes exploratory research the FTC staff conducted in 2014-2015 to gain additional insights into consumer recognition of native and search ads. In particular, the staff was interested in whether making modest changes to the design and wording of disclosures — based on guidance previously issued by the FTC staff and usability and web design principles — could improve consumers' recognition of these ads. The study compared participants' reactions to actual ads (both native and search) as they appeared on a series of captured web pages to the reactions of other participants to nearly identical versions of these same web pages with ad disclosures modified to improve their prominence, legibility, or clarity. We made a number of modifications, including changes to disclosure language, position, text size and color, and to other visual cues such as the borders around or background shadings of ads or ad groupings. We tested an equal mix of ads viewed on either a desktop computer or a smartphone.
Overall, the study results suggest that using disclosures that are consistent with FTC staff's guidance can improve the likelihood that consumers will recognize an ad as an ad.