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

Congrats to advertising faculty and alumni award winners

Ahn, King and Evans at the AAA Annual Conference

Congratulations to UGA advertising faculty and alumni for being recognized for national teaching and research distinctions. The American Academy of Advertising (AAA) held its 2015 Annual Conference March 26 - 29, in Chicago. The American Academy of Advertising honors educators and innovators in the advertising industry.

UGA's advertising faculty at AAA

During the annual conference, three faculty members from the Department of Advertising and Public Relations were recognized. 

• Nathaniel Evans, Assistant professor, received the Best Article Award from Journal of Interactive Advertising and also received a faculty research grant.
• Grace Ahn, Assistant professor, received the Mary Alice Shaver Promising Scholar Award.
• Karen King, Jim Kennedy New Media Professor, received the Charles Sandage Award for Excellence in Teaching which recognizes top educators in the industry.

In addition, several AdPR@UGA doctoral alumni also won awards at the AAA Annual Conference.

• Taehyun Baek (ABJ '07, PhD '11), Assistant professor at University of Kentucky, became the only person in AAA history to win Best Paper at the AAA Conference twice.
• Frederico de Gregorio (PhD '05), Associate professor of marketing at The University of Akron, won Best Reviewer Award from Journal of Advertising.
• Gergely Nyilasy (MMC '02, PhD '06), Senior lecturer at University of Melbourne's Melbourne Business School, won Best Reviewer for the Journal of Current Issues in Research in Advertising.

Advertising faculty and alumni

New faculty spotlight: Nate Evans

Nate Evans

Nate Evans, a doctoral candidate in the School of Advertising and Public Relations at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, will be joining the Grady faculty this fall as an assistant professor of advertising.

What classes (if any) are you teaching this year? I am currently teaching an Advertising Principles class at the University of Tennessee and am scheduled to teach Advertising and Society at UGA in the fall. 

Past academic positions/awards: My past academic positions have been teaching assistant/teaching associate/ and instructor of record. Here are the awards I have received:
- AAA Doctoral Dissertation Grant Competition: Funded by the American Academy of Advertising (AAA) 
- Top Student Paper: Advertising Division, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC)

- Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award: Best Student Paper, Advertising Division (AEJMC)

- Competitive Student Travel Grant Award: Funded by AEJMC

- ESPN's Research Funding Award

What are your research interests and why?  My program of research focuses on the theoretical and policy implications of interactive and embedded advertising formats. Specifically, my research concentrates on three main areas: 1) parents and children's advergames, including parents' perceptions, understanding, attitudes, and persuasion recognition in children's advergaming formats; 2) social media, in-game advertising (IGA), and massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), which include applications of interpersonal communication theory, schema theory, and associative learning; and 3) larger societal and macro-focused implications of advertising communication, including an emphasis on children's international online advertising regulation.  

Are there any projects/publications you're working on that you can share a little about at this time? I was recently working on a piece that will be published in the next issue of the Journal of Advertising. This article examined parents attitudes and perceptions of children's advergaming using Parental Socialization theory. Co-Authors were Dr. Les Carlson (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) and Dr. Mariea Grubbs Hoy (University of Tennessee). Currently I am working on my dissertation, which tests the influence of advertising disclosures and cognitive load on parents' ability to recognize children's advergames as advertising. In addition to my dissertation I am also working on other manuscripts that focus on a re-conceptualization of the persuasion knowledge model, children's international online advertising regulation, and have future plans to study branded apps for children on tablets and mobile devices.  

 What are you most looking forward to while you're at Grady/UGA? Perhaps what I am most looking forward to at Grady is working along side some of the most productive and prolific scholars in the field advertising scholarship. I am also looking forward to working with, what I understand to be, some of the most motivated and gifted graduate students. Furthermore, my fiance Taylor Krcek and I recently purchased a house outside Athens in Danielsville. We are excited to begin our lives together as UGA Bulldogs (Formerly I was a Vol and she a Buckeye).