October 19-20, 2023
2nd Computational Advertising Thought Leadership Forum (TLF)
The Minnesota Computational Advertising Lab hosted selected authors to participate in the Computational Advertising Thought Leadership Forum (TLF) event at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, MN. The event began at 5 P.M. on Thursday, October 19, with a dinner, welcome, and keynote speaker sessions. The conference continued at 8 A.M. on Friday, October 20, with a welcome breakfast followed by conference sessions where the computational advertising research methodological issues were discussed in depth. Breakout rooms were available on Friday for conference participants who wished to work collaboratively.
Computational social science (CSS) research is a fast-growing interdisciplinary research approach across all social science disciplines. Computational Advertising Research, which applies CSS methodology to advertising research, has emerged in recent years. Still, there are many issues regarding methodological rigor, validity, and research ethics, and a lack of standards and best practice guidelines for this research methodology makes conducting, reviewing, and reading computational advertising research rather difficult. Against this backdrop, the 2023 Computational Advertising Research TLF aimed: (1) to examine the most critical methodological developments and issues in the advertising research field in connection to the rise of programmatic advertising, data-driven targeting and personalization, and AI advertising; (2) to set the research standards and ethical guidelines for future researchers using computational social science research methods to address wide-ranging advertising research problems; (3) to provide helpful, practical guidelines that can improve computational advertising research’s internal and external validity; and (4) to contribute to methodological innovation and advancement of the emerging field of computational advertising research in an ethical and responsible manner.
November 2022
Maral Abdollahi’s dissertation project receives the Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship
Maral Abdollahi was awarded the Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship for her dissertation project "Human Users’ Responses to Virtual Social Media Influencers and Strategic and Ethical Implications for Communication." Virtual influencers, which are defined as digital, anthropomorphic social media personae that are controlled by humans or AI software, are a relatively new phenomenon and raise several questions regarding their effects as brand endorsers as well as ethical concerns for social media users. In her dissertation, Maral aims to examine social media users’ skepticism and attitudes toward virtual influencers as compared to human influencers, their interactions with and reactions to virtual influencers' and human influencers' advertising messages, and the role of skepticism in mediating the effects of influencer type on advertising outcomes. She uses an interdisciplinary multi-method approach, including a content analysis of social media comments and posts, a computational analysis of said data, and an online experiment, to examine the effectiveness of virtual influencers as brand endorsers as compared to human influencers.
August 2021
Dr. Huh and the MCAL Team join multi-year industrywide consortium Once & For All Coalition to Build More Equitable Advertising Ecosystem.
Publicis Media launched a multi-year, industrywide initiative to remove industry barriers to equitable financial opportunity and representation of underserved and ethnically-diverse suppliers, ultimately helping marketers uncover opportunities that more closely mirror their brand values and drive growth with audiences in a multicultural world.
Through a cross-industry consortium called the Once & For All Coalition, purpose-driven brands; collaborative, diverse and general market suppliers; and multi-practice agency executives will join forces to focus on creating solutions in three core areas:
- Establishing Equitable Investment with Minority Owned and Targeted Media Supply
- Development of Minority Creators, Content and Media
- Advancing Sustainable Infrastructure Requirements and Best Practices
Dr. Jisu Huh is participating in this initiative as a category expert and the MCAL team will conduct research projects focusing on the minority-owned and minority-targeted media supply and inequity issues to contribute to this initiative.
Read the full press release: https://www.publicisgroupe.com/en/news/press-releases/publicis-media-launches-once-and-for-all-coalition-to-build-more-equitable-ad-ecosystem
June 2021
Hao Xu’s dissertation project receives the 2021 Page Center Research Grants on Corporate Social Advocacy
Hao Xu, a PhD candidate in the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and his co-advisors Dr. Jisu Huh and Dr. Hyejoon Rim received The Arthur W. Page Center’s Page/Johnson Legacy Scholar Grant on Corporate Social Advocacy. This project “Companies Getting Political: Public-Company Identity Similarity and Its Influences on Public Reactions to Corporate Social Advocacy Initiatives” propose a novel computational research approach to assess CSA outcomes among members of publics with different ideologies in a natural real-world setting. This project aims to advance methodological innovations in CSA research and enhance theory development on the impact of CSA initiatives.
Read more about this project: https://www.bellisario.psu.edu/page-center/article/research-in-progress-companies-getting-political-and-the-influence-on-csa-p
Journal of Advertising Volume 49 Issue 4, Special Section on "Advances in Computational Advertising"
Computational Advertising Research Thought Leadership Forum (TLF)
In conjunction with the Journal of Advertising
To examine important and timely issues in data-driven advertising and to advance the emerging field of computational advertising research, the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota hosted the Computational Advertising Research Thought Leadership Forum (TLF) on October 18-20, 2019 in Minneapolis, MN.
With the goal of setting new research agenda, innovating methodological approaches, and expanding the application of the computational research approach to advertising practice and scholarship, this TLF brought together prominent senior scholars, industry thought leaders, and active junior scholars across the advertising, communication, marketing, computer science, law, and information and decision science fields.
Twenty-five participants engaged in an intensive 2-day paper hackathon examining the broad landscape of computational advertising and surrounding macro issues, ad content-related issues, ad-delivery and media issues, and advertising effects and outcome assessment issues. Research papers developed from this TLF, based on the collaboration among scholars from varying methodological and disciplinary perspectives and different expertise, will be published in the Journal of Advertising Special Section, co-edited by Jisu Huh (University of Minnesota) and Ed Malthouse (Northwestern University).
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