Consumer empowerment in interactive advertising and eWOM consequences: The PITRE model

Modern users demand control over their advertising experience and a sense of empowerment throughout the communication process. In response, some platforms have introduced online features that increase users’ control by facilitating ad interaction and electronic word of mouth (eWOM), such as YouTube’s skippable advertising. Using this prototypical example, the current study develops and proposes a novel, sequential framework that accounts for product involvement, intrusiveness, time watching the ad, recall, and eWOM (PITRE) to describe tactics to increase advertising effectiveness through consumer empowerment. Consumers’ involvement with advertised products reduces their perceptions of intrusiveness and enhances their positive ad and brand eWOM intentions. Ad intrusiveness instead increases ad-skipping behaviour and hinders ad and brand dissemination. Greater time watching the ad increases brand recall and eWOM intentions, though users do not need to recall the brand to share related ads. These findings offer suggestions for professionals seeking to establish effective online advertising strategies.