Grady AdPR department shines at AAA conference

Nate Evans with "Best Paper Award"
at the AAA conference.

The Grady College Department of Advertising and Public Relations brought home two distinguished awards from the American Academy of Advertising conference in Seattle March 17-20.

Nate Evans, assistant professor of advertising at Grady College, and Dooyeon Park, a Grady College doctoral student, earned the “Best Paper Award” for their conference paper.

“This is a remarkable feat—especially for an assistant professor and graduate student,” said Tom Reichert, head of the Department of Advertising and Public Relations. “Their paper was rated as the best among almost 200 submissions by some of the top advertising scholars in the world. We are very pleased.” 

Also winning honors were Len Reid, emeritus professor of advertising, with doctoral students Jung Hwan Park and Dooyeon Park and recent graduate Olesya Venger (Ph.D. ’14). They won the top journal article award for the "Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising" for their paper “Replication in Advertising Research, 1980-2012: A Longitudinal Analysis of Advertising Journals.”

“Winning the top JCIRA award is quite a coup for our department,” Reichert said. “This is the second time in three years that a Grady Ad/PR faculty member has brought home this award. It is a true testament to the level of dedicated research our department is producing.”

The top papers are nominated by reviewers of the journal and selected by its ediorial board. In 2014, Reid and Reichert won the award.

The top conference paper by Evans and Park is entitled “The Effects Format, Topic Knowledge, and Experience on Advertising and Brand Recognition for Paid Search Advertising” and describes research about subjects’ ability to identify paid search advertising from mobile versus typical desktop platforms. “We know that there are certain structural differences in how paid advertising is presented on these platforms”, said Evans. An online experiment examined whether people could identify paid search advertising designed for the platforms on which they were being viewed.

During the research, subjects were asked to view either a mobile or desktop screen shot of search advertising on a desktop computer. Nearly 60% of those who viewed the mobile screen shot said a paid ad appeared on the right hand side of the screen. Evans said that, “this level of false advertising recognition is quite interesting but not necessarily surprising. Participants probably expected advertising on the right hand side  because that is where advertising usually appears when seen on a desktop computer.”

“Experience matters in the world of advertising,” said Evans. “The study showed that there are issues with advertising schema. How we make sense of the advertising environment, we believe, is predicated on experience and context in which we are viewing the advertising.”

A second part of the research focused on subjects’ overall experience with advertising. There was an assumption that someone who has seen advertising across multiple places and platforms will be better equipped to know when and where there will be advertising. They created indices designed to capture participants’ breadth and depth of advertising experience. Their findings indicated that participants were better able to recognize brands and paid search advertising when they possessed more breadth of advertising experience.   

The Best Conference Paper is a recognition by the AAA where paper reviewers recommend manuscripts for the award. The top four or five papers are reviewed by a committee of five people, including the two immediate past vice-presidents and three research committee members, and one winner is selected.  

Author: Sarah Freeman, freemans@uga.edu

AdPR department shines at AAA conference

Assistant professor Nate Evans wins "Best Paper Award"
at the American Academy of Advertising 

The Grady College Department of Advertising and Public Relations brought home two distinguished awards from the American Academy of Advertising conference in Seattle March 17-20.

Nate Evans, assistant professor of advertising at Grady College, and Dooyeon Park, a Grady College doctoral student, earned the “Best Paper Award” for their conference paper.

“This is a remarkable feat—especially for an assistant professor and graduate student,” said Tom Reichert, head of the Department of Advertising and Public Relations. “Their paper was rated as the best among almost 200 submissions by some of the top advertising scholars in the world. We are very pleased.”

Also winning honors were Len Reid, emeritus professor of advertising, with doctoral students Jung Hwan Park and Dooyeon Park and recent graduate Olesya Venger (Ph.D. ’14). They won the top journal article award for the "Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising" for their paper “Replication in Advertising Research, 1980-2012: A Longitudinal Analysis of Advertising Journals.”

“Winning the top JCIRA award is quite a coup for our department,” Reichert said. “This is the second time in three years that a Grady Ad/PR faculty member has brought home this award. It is a true testament to the level of dedicated research our department is producing.”

The top papers are nominated by reviewers of the journal and selected by its ediorial board. In 2014, Reid and Reichert won the award.

The top conference paper by Evans and Park is entitled “The Effects Format, Topic Knowledge, and Experience on Advertising and Brand Recognition for Paid Search Advertising” and describes research about subjects’ ability to identify paid search advertising from mobile versus typical desktop platforms. “We know that there are certain structural differences in how paid advertising is presented on these platforms”, said Evans. An online experiment examined whether people could identify paid search advertising designed for the platforms on which they were being viewed.

During the research, subjects were asked to view either a mobile or desktop screen shot of search advertising on a desktop computer. Nearly 60% of those who viewed the mobile screen shot said a paid ad appeared on the right hand side of the screen. Evans said that, “this level of false advertising recognition is quite interesting but not necessarily surprising. Participants probably expected advertising on the right hand side  because that is where advertising usually appears when seen on a desktop computer.”

“Experience matters in the world of advertising,” said Evans. “The study showed that there are issues with advertising schema. How we make sense of the advertising environment, we believe, is predicated on experience and context in which we are viewing the advertising.”

A second part of the research focused on subjects’ overall experience with advertising. There was an assumption that someone who has seen advertising across multiple places and platforms will be better equipped to know when and where there will be advertising. They created indices designed to capture participants’ breadth and depth of advertising experience. Their findings indicated that participants were better able to recognize brands and paid search advertising when they possessed more breadth of advertising experience.   

The Best Conference Paper is a recognition by the AAA where paper reviewers recommend manuscripts for the award. The top four or five papers are reviewed by a committee of five people, including the two immediate past vice-presidents and three research committee members, and one winner is selected.  

Original Source: Grady College

Graduate student wins American Academy of Advertising Dissertation Proposal Award

Graduate student Yan Shan

Congratulations to graduate student Yan Shan, who has won The American Academy of Advertising 2014 Dissertation Proposal Award for her work,  "The Credibility of Electronic WOM: Do Perceived Similarity, Membership Prestige and Argument Quality Foster the Emergence of Trust."

Shan’s dissertation is about the credibility of online product reviews. Specifically, she examines the factors that influence consumers’ trust in online product reviews, as they are an important information source in the decision-making process when shopping online.

Shan is honored to have received the award:

“I want to say that I couldn’t achieve this accomplishment without the help and support from the Grady family. Too many great ideas and inspiration have been given to me from my committees and my cohorts in the Ph.D program. Grady is like my home in the United States.”

She hopes her study helps businesses who sell their products online as well as consumers who choose to shop online.

“ I am extremely excited about it because I know I am helping people with the knowledge and skills I learned,” she says.

The award will be given at the upcoming AAA Conference in late March and includes $1,500 of support for Shan’s research.

AdPR well represented at American Academy of Advertising's Hawaiian conference

Dr. Kim and AdPR doctoral students in Honolulu, Hawaii

Dr. Joo Young Kim, Associate Professor in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations, along with AdPR doctoral students Eun Sook Kwon and Kuan-Ju Chen, attended the The American Academy of Advertising Global Conference, held from May 31 to June 1, in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The conference's theme was “Going Digital? Opportunities and Challenges of New Media and Non-Traditional Marketing Communications in a Globally-Connected World.” The AAA conference was sponsored by the Shidler College of Business and the University of Hawaii at Manoa. 

The event was well attended and served as an important forum for intellectual exchange and collaboration among advertising scholars, educators, and practitioners from around the world. “The presence of the UGA team composed of Eunsook, Kuan-Ju and me had certainly demonstrated the world-class strength of our advertising program. I really enjoyed the conference program which was full of scholarly insights we could use in our research and teaching, particularly in my Global and Multicultural Advertising class in the fall,” said Dr. Kim.

Graduate student research excellence award established to honor Professor Leonard Reid

To honor long-time, award-winning educator and researcher Dr. Leonard Reid, the Department of Advertising and Public Relations at UGA has established a fund to support research excellence in graduate education. All funds will go to support an annual graduate student research award in Len Reid's honor.

Dr. Leonard Reid
Len Reid retired in May 2012 after more than 30 years of teaching and service to UGA. He began his career as an associate professor at UGA in 1980, after holding positions at Arizona State University and Michigan State University. During his time at Grady College, he served as Department Head, Interim Dean, and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research. In the UGA community, he has served in the President's Advisory Committee and the University Promotion and Tenure Appeals Committee. In addition, he has served in leadership positions in the American Academy of Advertising, Journal of Advertising, Journal of Interactive Advertising, International Journal of Internet Marketing & Advertising, among many others.

"Len's contributions to research and leadership at UGA must be considered alongside those of Steadman Sanford, Dean Drewry, Tom Russell, Dean Krugman and Conrad Fink," notes Tom Reichert, head of the Department of Advertising & Public Relations.

"His contributions to advertising scholarship are one of the reasons why we are identified as a top advertising research program. I can think of no better way to honor Len Reid's contributions than by supporting our best graduate students."

Make a gift in Dr. Reid's honor to support graduate students
Please consider making a gift in honor of Dr. Len Reid's contributions that will support excellence in graduation education in Grady College. You can give online by clicking here or you can mail a check made out to "UGA Foundation" with "ADPR Grad Student Support Fund/Reid" in the memo line. Please indicate online and in all correspondence that the gift is "In honor of Len Reid." Mail your checks to: Shanna Sheets, Grady College, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, or call us at 706-410-0116.