User settings for advertising optimization on Facebook: Active customer participation or settings blindness?

Facebook and many other social media companies act on information markets with various player groups, which are differentiated by the kind of payment, one group paying with money (normally, advertisers) and the other group paying with their personal data or their attention (i.e., Facebook’s users being simultaneously the advertisers’ potential customers). In order to minimize users’ problems with (rather annoying) ads on digital services, some providers offer user settings for the optimization of advertising. We analyzed the information behavior of Facebook users concerning ad settings with the help of an online survey (N = 1,021). Only about 40% of participating Facebook users know about personalization of settings of their advertising preferences. More than 20% of the users who work with Facebook’s advertising optimization are satisfied since the changes, but 35% are unsatisfied, and another 32% have a generally negative attitude towards online advertising. To describe customers’ disregard or ignorance of settings we introduce the term “settings blindness.” Especially the users’ gender and their educational background influence the information behavior concerning advertisement settings. The results have practical implications for Facebook users (namely, setting their own preferences for ads and thus seeing only personally customized ads), for Facebook and other social media companies (producing less annoying ads leading to a better customer loyalty and maybe more trust in the service), and for advertisers on social media (improving the correct addressing of the target groups).     

User adaptation to interactive advertising formats: The effect of previous exposure,habit and time urgency on ad skipping behaviors

Due to commercial information loss of efficacy, social media advertising introduced skippable formats as an interactive function to attract customers. This empowerment of users could also favor the development of their skills and strategies to deal with online advertising, which may result in a lower advertising effectiveness. A study with 286 YouTube users was carried out to investigate this adaptation process to an advertising format by focusing on pre-roll skippable video ads. In contrast to advertisers’ approach (e.g. improving the persuasiveness of the ad), our research deepens on the ad skipping phenomenon from a human and context based perspective. In favor of an ad avoidance training effect, the findings show that participants previously exposed to a skippable ad are faster in taking the decision to watch or skip a subsequent ad. Participants’ skipping habits and time urgency are also revealed as main determinants of different ad skipping behaviors. This innovative research provides empirical support for the adaptation process leading people’s interrelation with interactive advertising formats. Practical and theoretical consequences are discussed for advancing on this underexplored topic.     

Snapping and chatting away: Consumer motivations for and outcomes of interacting with Snapchat AR ad lens

Snapchat AR ad lens is one of the highly engaging and interactive ads among the plethora of social media advertising formats. Applying the uses and gratifications (U&G) theory and social media advertising engagement (SMAE) framework, two survey studies were conducted to enhance our understanding of consumers’ motivations for interacting with this unique Snapchat ad format and its subsequent effects. With the use of exploratory research, Study 1 uncovered consumers’ motivations to interact with the Snapchat AR ad lens: entertainment, aesthetics, uniqueness, curiosity, brand fan, and social interaction. Furthermore, Study 2 cemented consumers’ disclosed motivations as antecedents of attitudinal perceptions of the Snapchat AR ad lens and examined its resultant outcomes: ad engagement and purchase motivation. The results revealed that the majority of motivations had a positive effect on Snapchatters’ attitude toward the AR ad lens, which directly affected continuous ad engagement and indirectly affected purchase motivation through ad engagement. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed for scholars and practitioners.     

To use or not to use ad blockers? The roles of knowledge of ad blockers and attitude toward online advertising

The rapid spread of ad blockers potentially threatens the sustainability of the hitherto dominant business model of ad-supported websites, in which users get web content free in return for allowing themselves to be exposed to advertising. Focusing on the users’ perspective, this study proposes that (a) adoption of ad blockers is positively influenced by the level of knowledge of their advantageous features; (b) the decision to continue using ad blockers is negatively affected by attitude toward online advertising; and (c) this attitude is positively shaped by perceptions of online advertising’s pleasure, credibility, and economic benefits, as well as negatively shaped by perceptions of online advertising’s intrusiveness and clutter. We tested these relationships in a survey study among the members of an online panel supported by the Spanish advertising industry, and all the relationships were confirmed within a structural equation model. Our findings provide some implications for online advertising stakeholders. Web publishers and online advertisers may expect that, in the coming years, ad blockers will continue to spread rapidly as a consequence of the extension of their knowledge among Internet users. These stakeholders are thus advised to focus on improving Internet users’ experiences with online advertising by reducing those ad characteristics that provoke negative reactions and by strengthening those that are positively evaluated.     

Online targeted ads: Effects of persuasion knowledge,coping self-efficacy,and product involvement on privacy concerns and ad intrusiveness

This study conducted an online experiment to examine how persuasion knowledge of online targeted advertising (OTA), coping self-efficacy, and product involvement influenced the perceptions of privacy concerns and ad intrusiveness. These findings indicated that persuasion knowledge increased coping self-efficacy, which, in turn, influenced privacy concerns and perceived ad intrusiveness. Furthermore, the relations between coping self-efficacy and the evaluations of the OTA varied, depending on levels of product involvement. Specifically, when participants had high product involvement, their perceptions of privacy concerns and ad intrusiveness increased as their coping self-efficacy enhanced. However, those relationships did not appear among participants with low levels of product involvement. Theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed later.     

Cluster based emergency message broadcasting technique for vehicular ad hoc network

Broadcasting is one of the major emergency services of Vehicular ad hoc network, since the number of vehicles increases every day. Because of the high density of the vehicles, it is necessary to broadcast emergency messages to all the vehicles to avoid traffic jam and vehicle accidents. Reliable broadcasting of messages in self-organizing Ad hoc networks is a promising research field. In this paper a cluster based emergency message broadcasting algorithm is proposed. In this regard we have proposed cluster based architecture for emergency message dissemination and collision avoidance in VANET. In this paper, first the formation of cluster is done in such a way that it avoids any kind of collision. Once cluster head is selected it takes the responsibility of intra cluster management to avoid interference between the clusters. To increase the reliability during emergency message dissemination two MAC layer broadcasts protocol is used. This assures that message is delivered on time without any hazards. The proposed model is simulated for DSDV, AODV, and DSR protocols with the standards 802.11 and 802.11p in SHWM, Manhattan and freeway mobility models.     

How does Facebook news use lead to actions in South Korea? The role of Facebook discussion network heterogeneity,political interest,and conflict avoidance in predicting political participation

Employing survey data collected in South Korea (N?=?470), this study investigated whether and how Facebook users’ news use promotes their offline political participation. Results showed that Facebook news use indirectly influenced political participation through discussion network heterogeneity. This indirect relationship was conditional on Facebook users’ political interest and conflict avoidance. For people who are highly interested in politics but less conflict avoidant, the frequency of Facebook news use is more likely to boost political discussions with heterogeneous others, which contributes to facilitating their participation in offline political activities. The implications of these results were discussed.     

SPREAD: Improving network security by multipath routing in mobile ad hoc networks

We propose and investigate the SPREAD scheme as a complementary mechanism to enhance secure data delivery in a mobile ad hoc network. The basic idea is to transform a secret message into multiple shares, and then deliver the shares via multiple paths to the destination so that even if a certain number of message shares are compromised, the secret message as a whole is not compromised. We present the overall system architecture and discuss three major design issues: the mathematical model for the generation and reconstruction of the secret message shares, the optimal allocation of the message shares onto multiple paths in terms of security, and the multipath discovery techniques in a mobile ad hoc network. Our extensive simulation results justify the feasibility and the effectiveness of the SPREAD approach.

Self-ie love: Predictors of image editing intentions on Facebook

Little research has examined image-editing behaviour on social media, yet with images being a key form of online social communication, the importance of such research is evident. The aim of the current study was to examine the factors that influence peoples’ intentions to post digitally altered self-images on the Facebook platform, using an extended Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) model. It was hypothesised that after controlling for age, prior editing application use, and integration of Facebook in a user’s life, the TPB variables (attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control [PBC]) would explain a significant proportion of intention to post digitally altered images on Facebook. Furthermore, that the addition of narcissism would explain further variation in intentions, beyond that explained by the control and TPB variables. Participants (N?=?151; M_age?=?25.6 years; 76% female) completed an online survey assessing each of the aforementioned variables. Hierarchical multiple regression revealed that each of the hypotheses were supported, with all variables significantly contributing to the prediction of intentions, except PBC and age. This study sheds light on the predictors of image-editing behaviour, and sets the stage for subsequent research examining editing behaviours on Facebook as well as other social media platforms (e.g. Instagram).     

Facebook ads not working in the same way: The effect of cultural orientation and message construals on consumer response to social media ads

The research examined the impacts of psychological distance and message type on social media by cultural orientation. This research assessed social media usage and construal levels on Facebook pages in two cultures (Individualism – the U.S. vs. Collectivism – South Korea). While the U.S. participants had different levels of construals in two Facebook pages (News Feed vs. Timeline), the Korean participants did not. Further, the results demonstrated that for U.S. Facebook users, the different distances from the two Facebook pages impact their evaluation of ad messages framed with different construal terms: In News Feed that U.S. users feel distant from, an ad message framed with high construal terms (vs. low construal terms) was more effective. In Timeline that U.S. users feel proximal to, an ad message focusing on low construal terms (vs. high construal terms) led to more favorable response. However, Korean Facebook users did not exhibit varying psychological distances from those two Facebook pages. Rather, they consistently preferred high-level construal messages regardless of where the ad messages were posted. The importance of this study is the suggestion that cultural orientation and social media usage need to be considered for the development of particular ad messages that engage social media users across the globe.     

Localized broadcast incremental power protocol for wireless ad hoc networks

We investigate broadcasting and energy preservation in ad hoc networks. One of the best known algorithm, the Broadcast Incremental Power (BIP) protocol, constructs an efficient spanning tree rooted at a given node. It offers very good results in terms of energy savings, but its computation is centralized and it is a real problem in ad hoc networks. Distributed versions have been proposed, but they require a huge transmission overhead for information exchange. Other localized protocols have been proposed, but none of them has ever reached the performances of BIP. In this paper, we propose and analyze an incremental localized version of this protocol. In our method, the packet is sent from node to node based on local BIP trees computed by each node in the broadcasting chain. Local trees are constructed within the k-hop neighborhood of nodes, based on information provided by previous nodes, so that a global broadcasting structure is incrementally built as the message is being propagated through the network. Only the source node computes an initially empty tree to initiate the process. Discussion and results are provided where we argue that k = 2 is the best compromise for efficiency. We also discuss potential conflicts that can arise from the incremental process. We finally provide experimental results showing that this new protocol obtains very good results for low densities, and is almost as efficient as BIP for higher densities.     

Facebook as a second screen: An influence on sport consumer satisfaction and behavioral intention

Little research has examined the use of social media as people watch live sporting telecasts—an activity that has been referred to as the second screen phenomenon. The paper proposes and tests a second screen consumer engagement model that captures the actions of Facebook users (N = 299) while watching a live sport telecast. Findings highlight the direct and indirect effect of social camaraderie, subjective norm, fan emotion and purposive needs on sport consumers’ satisfaction and behavioral intention. The behavioral intention of consumers when using Facebook as a second screen was associated with the increased likelihood of using the platform to purchase team products, make recommendations and investigate sponsors. The proposed model contributes to the emerging literature highlighting the increasing importance of social media as an interactive support channel when people watch live telecasts. The findings have practical implications for managers by providing insights and understanding of consumers when watching telecast sport. Although tested with Thai English Premier League fans, the findings will have relevance across different sports and other business sectors.     

Campaign Tone,Political Affect,and Communicative Engagement

Research suggests that, overall, campaign advertising encourages citizen political communication. Extending this line of inquiry, this study aims to provide a more nuanced understanding of ad effects by distinguishing campaign ads based on advertising tone, the candidate on whose behalf the ads work, and voters' candidate preference. Analyses of a national survey merged with ad tracking data for the 2000 presidential campaign demonstrate that different types of political advertising elicit a range of emotions about the candidates and that some of these emotions impact the likelihood and nature of political discussion. Formal testing of indirect effects reveals that attack advertising encourages homogeneous political discussion by eliciting feelings of anxiety about the opposing candidate. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Security considerations in ad hoc sensor networks

In future smart environments, ad hoc sensor networks will play a key role in sensing, collecting, and disseminating information about environmental phenomena. As sensor networks come to be wide-spread deployment, security issues become a central concern. So far, the main research focus has been on making sensor networks feasible and useful, and less emphasis has been placed on security. This paper analyzes security challenges in wireless sensor networks and summarizes key issues that need be solved for achieving security in an ad hoc network. It gives an overview of the current state of solutions on such key issues as secure routing, prevention of denial-of-service, and key management service.     

Facebook addiction and depression: Loneliness as a moderator and poor sleep quality as a mediator

Facebook addiction is considered as one of the potential behavior addictions. Data on Facebook addiction among Facebook users in Vietnam is scarce, although this is a research topic that is increasingly attracting the attention of researchers. This study aims to identify the mediating and moderating effects of poor sleep quality and loneliness in the association between Facebook addiction levels and depression among Vietnamese Facebook users. A cross-sectional study was conducted in October 2020 via an online survey. Participants received an invitation to join the study with a link to the questionnaire via Facebook. A total of 354 Facebook users completed survey about Facebook addiction, sleep quality, loneliness and depression. Results reveal that poor sleep quality partially mediated the association between Facebook addiction and depression (b = 0.117, SE = 0.027, CI = [0.066, 0.172]), and loneliness moderated this relationship (β = 0.023, SE = 0.008, CI = [0.007, 0.039]). This research not only enriches the theory of the association between Facebook addiction and depression, but also a basis for the development of intervention programs to prevent depression for Facebook addictors. Accordingly, the intervention should be paid attention to improving the quality of sleep and reducing loneliness for Facebook users.     

TCP-Gvegas with prediction and adaptation in multi-hop ad hoc networks

TCP Vegas performance can be improved since its rate-based congestion control mechanism could proactively avoid possible congestion and packet losses in multi-hop ad hoc networks. Nevertheless, Vegas cannot make full advantage of available bandwidth to transmit packets since incorrect bandwidth estimates may occur due to frequent topology changes caused by node mobility. This paper proposes an improved TCP Vegas based on the grey prediction theory, named TCP-Gvegas, for multi-hop ad hoc networks, which has the capability of prediction and self-adaption, as well as three enhanced aspects in the phase of congestion avoidance. The lower layers’ parameters are considered in the throughput model to improve the accuracy of theoretical throughput. The prediction of future throughput based on grey prediction is used to promote the online control. The optimal exploration method based on Q-Learning and Round Trip Time quantizer are applied to search for the more reasonable changing size of congestion window. Besides, the convergence analysis of grey prediction by using the Lyapunov’s second method proves that a shorter input data length of prediction implies a faster convergence rate. The simulation results show that the TCP-Gvegas achieves a substantially higher throughput and lower delay than Vegas in multi-hop ad hoc networks.     

Secure position-based routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

In large and dense mobile ad hoc networks, position-based routing protocols can offer significant performance improvement over topology-based routing protocols by using location information to make forwarding decisions. However, there are several potential security issues for the development of position-based routing protocols. In this paper, we propose a secure geographic forwarding (SGF) mechanism, which provides source authentication, neighbor authentication, and message integrity by using both the shared key and the TIK protocol. By combining SGF with the Grid Location Service (GLS), we propose a Secure Grid Location Service (SGLS) where any receiver can verify the correctness of location messages. We also propose a Local Reputation System (LRS) aiming at detecting and isolating both compromised and selfish users. We present the performance analysis of both SGLS and LRS, and compare them with the original GLS. Simulation results show that SGLS can operate efficiently by using effective cryptographic mechanisms. Results also show that LRS effectively detects and isolates message dropping attackers from the network.     

Engaging audiences on social media: Identifying relationships between message factors and user engagement on the American Cancer Society’s Facebook page

In this study, a content analysis was conducted with posts from American Cancer Society’s (ACS) Facebook page to explore the relationship between message relevance, source characteristics, and message features with the number of likes, comments, and shares received by them. Limited Capacity Model for Motivated Mediated Message Processing (LC4MP) was used as the theoretical foundation for the study. Findings showed that cancer-related posts received more likes, comments and shares than posts that were not related to cancer. Also, posts by the American Cancer Society received more likes, comments, and shares than other source categories. Findings also indicated that though message features were related to likes, comments, and shares, the nature of relationship and the role of different features varied with each measure. Overall, findings highlight the role of motivational activation through message factors in eliciting user response in social media environments.     

The interplay between social media virality metrics and message framing in influence perception of pro-environmental messages and behavioral intentions

Present study explored how message framing (gain vs loss) and social media virality metrics (e.g. the number of ‘likes’ and ‘shares’; SMVM) affect pro-environmental message’s influence perception and behavioral intention. In a 2 (framing: gain vs loss) × 2 (SMVM: high vs low) between-subjects experiment (N = 404), participants were exposed to Facebook posts about mitigating climate change. Major findings indicate: (1) gain framing, compared to loss, resulted in increased social desirability perception of pro-environmental messages when they are accompanied by high numbers of likes and shares; (2) social desirability perception mediated the effect of message framing on third person perception (TPP) but not on second person perception (SPP); (3) numbers of likes and shares affected participants’ message influence perceptions (TPP and SPP), and this was mediated by social desirability perception; and (4) message influence perceptions were found to be significant predictors of participants’ intentions for climate change mitigation actions. Study results implicate that SMVM can signal media content popularity and this can further affect social desirability and influence perceptions of the content. Message framing appeared to have an effect on how one thinks media content influence other people, especially in the presence of high levels of endorsement by others. The potential role of SPP, the perception of shared media influence, in augmenting public awareness and engagement is discussed in detail.