From apathy to ambivalence: How is persuasion knowledge reflected in consumers' comments about in-game advertising?

In today's fragmented media environment, advertising in videogames (i.e. in-game advertising) is an increasingly appealing marketing communication tool to reach a targeted and captive audience, especially the elusive and hard-to-reach 18–34-year-old demographic. This article develops a conceptual framework that adapts the persuasion knowledge model to consumers' views of in-game advertising. The propositions are tested in a content analysis of consumer comments about brands in videogames collected on 21 online forums. The results show that the interplay between knowledge types is reflected in gamers' comments about in-game advertising. The absence of persuasion knowledge is reflected in more positive comments about the practice, but consumers who express both topic and agent knowledge also express more positive views of it. A key finding is that, when all three knowledge types are activated, consumers express ambivalent thoughts about the practice, and ambivalence is actually more common than univalent or apathetic views. The findings collectively suggest a nuanced approach to the relationship between persuasion knowledge and consumers' opinions of new advertising formats.