Consumer ethical judgement and controversial advertising avoidance on social media

Controversial advertising can be defined as advertising that offends or shocks viewers (Dahl et al. 2003). While some research on the ethical issues linked to controversial advertising offline can be found (Drumwright and Murphy 2009; Fam and Waller 2003), more research is needed on controversial advertising online and whether it may lead to ad avoidance on specific platforms, such as social media. This topic is important for marketers and researchers, given that the proliferation of social media advertising is driving brands to produce adverts which attempt to cut through the ad clutter with the use of controversial appeals (Dahl et al. 2003; Drumwright and Murphy 2009; Fam and Waller 2003; Waller 2005). Thus, this study aims to address this research gap and its objective is to examine the impact of controversial ad perception and consumer ethical judgment on ad avoidance, in the specific context of social media.