Understanding Consumer Conversations Around Ads in a Web 2.0 World

User-generated online content poses a problem when it takes the form of advertising. Consumer-generated advertising challenges researchers and practitioners to understand consumers' articulated responses to ads and to the responses of other consumers, as well as the implications these may have for the brand. Traditional research methods such as viewer-response testing may be limited when the viewer becomes part of the conversation. This exploratory study attempts to interpret the conversations consumers have around consumer-generated ads using the comments they have posted to each ad's Web page. We show how conversations around ads can be mapped and interpreted, and then develop a typology of consumer-generated ad conversations. We discuss managerial implications of our findings, outline the limitations of the technique used, and trace avenues to extend the research.

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