Effect of content type on impact: editorial vs. advertising

Although message believability may be an important determinant of attitude toward the product under some circumstances, in others, argument quality may be even more important than content type.

Abstract

This article examines the effect of content type whether news editorial surpass advertising. An anticipated finding was that news editorial would be more believable than advertising. However, this is not supported by the results of this study. For strong arguments, news editorial demonstrated an effect similar to that of advertising. However, for the weak argument, advertising had a stronger effect than did news editorial. Although message believability may be an important determinant of attitude toward the product under some circumstances, in others, argument quality may be even more important than content type.