Introduction to the special issue: new trends in digital and social media advertising

The digital revolution is fundamentally transforming marketing practices, making them more interactive, experience-based, personalized, data-driven, and accountable (Truong, McColl, and Kitchen 2010). As the development of digital technologies creates new opportunities and challenges for marketers, digital advertising has made consumers more engaged with and loyal to brands by using creative and innovative new technologies such as social media, augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR), big data analytic tools, and much more. In particular, social media advertising has become a more important communication tool for marketers to create authentic brand conversations and build long-lasting relationships with customers (Shin, Chae, and Ko 2018). However, such topics have received relatively little attention in scholarly journals, including the International Journal of Advertising . Digital technologies not only provide a new platform for innovations in the field but also raise the issue of whether we have provided an adequately detailed and current view of advertising using these technologies and discussed what might be the future of digital advertising. This is why we designed this special issue on new trends in digital and social media advertising.