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This study aims to examine the content of health promotional web sites in two culturally distinct countries, the USA and South Korea, by investigating the level of interactivity and types of advertising appeals presented on antismoking web sites.

Antismoking web sites in the two countries were collected through the three major search engines (msn, Yahoo and Google) using relevant keywords. The final sample contained a total of 89 web sites (USA=67, South Korea=22) that met the condition of promoting antismoking behavior rather than just selling antismoking products. Three bilingual coders were hired for the analysis.

The South Korean antismoking web sites presented significantly higher levels of interactivity than their USA counterparts. By contrast, there is hardly any differentiation between the two countries in the amount of advertising appeals used on the health web sites.

Even though antismoking is certainly an important global issue, the findings related to antismoking web sites may not be generalizable to various other health‐related topics. Future research should replicate our findings on interactivity and advertising appeals in the context of various health issues.

To cross‐cultural researchers, the results provide more theoretical and practical rationales for cross‐cultural differences beyond such well‐known typologies as Hofstede's Individualism/Collectivism and Hall's high‐low context.

This study provided at least two useful findings for practitioners and researchers: better definition of the roles of cultural differences in the level of interactivity and the types of advertising appeals in promoting health information online and a broadening of the scope of cross‐cultural advertising research to health promotional contexts online.

This research examines global advertising strategies and tactics in a global media brand for a shared audience across seven countries (Brazil, China, France, India, South Korea, Thailand, and USA).

A content analysis of advertisements in local editions of Cosmopolitan magazine compares the extent of standardization in execution elements (advertising copy, models) across product nationality (multinational, domestic) and category (beauty, other).

Local editions deliver more multinational than domestic product ads across all countries, except India. Overall, multinational product ads tend to use standardized strategies and tactics more than domestic product ads, although this propensity varies across countries. Beauty products (cosmetics, fashion) are more likely to use standardized approaches than are other products (e.g. cars, food, household goods).

The research only examines one type of magazine and for one type of audience.

A global medium such as Cosmopolitan offers international advertisers an opportunity to reach a shared consumer segment of women with varying degrees of standardization, and that even in Asian countries, some standardization is possible.

This is the first multi‐country study to examine advertising executions for global advertising strategy within a transnational media brand. Unlike previous studies that advise against global strategy in Asia, we find that contemporary advertisers are practicing some global advertising strategies, but to varying degrees.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the content of food advergames and the nutritional quality of foods promoted in those advergames with the presence of child visitors.

This study integrates three different sources of data, first, characteristics of the audience from internet audience measurement metrics; second, an analysis of food advergame content; and third, an analysis of the dietary quality of the foods in advergames.

The results show that 83.2 percent of the total 143 advergames are sponsored by CFBAI participating companies and 79.5 percent of the total 44 advergames reaching children are sponsored by those companies. About 87 percent of the advergames reaching children do not include age limit specification. By contrast, about 71 percent of the advergames reaching children include ad breaks and about half of the advergames reaching children include healthy lifestyle information. Compared to the total, advergames reaching children seem to have a higher level of brand integration. Moreover, most foods that the advergames promote are classified as unhealthy. Finally, the results show that ad breaks and number of brand identifiers are the two significant predictors of food advergames with child unique visitors.

Despite the increased attention to and scrutiny of innovative and interactive food marketing targeting children, little is known about the extent to which such techniques actually reach children, nor about the content and nutritional quality of foods they promote. This study attempts to fill in the gap by focussing on food advergames.

This study aims to examine the extent to which anti‐smoking websites use intervention strategies that have been informed by four prominent theories of health‐related behavior change: the health belief model, the theory of reasoned action/theory of planned behavior, the transtheoretical model, and social cognitive theory.

Content analysis was applied to 67 unique and independent anti‐smoking websites to determine their use of 20 intervention strategies based on the four theories.

The findings reveal that anti‐smoking websites used the health belief model the most and social cognitive theory the least. In addition, websites devoted to smoking cessation used these theories more extensively than websites devoted to smoking prevention.

The sample size is somewhat small, which may result in lack of sufficient statistical power. Also, the analysis may have overlooked some important intervention strategies that are particularly effective for smoking intervention programs.

Anti‐smoking website designers should take more advantage of the internet as a health promotion medium and use more intervention strategies that have been informed by scientifically tested theories of behavior change, particularly with respect to affective and behavioral strategies.

This study contributes to current knowledge about which kinds of anti‐smoking messages are available online and how extensively they employ theory‐based intervention strategies.

Social media have become an increasingly important venue for prosocial campaigns. Competing for the public’s attention in the digital space is an ongoing challenge. This study aims to test the influence of ad-context congruence, ad position and ad type (i.e. public service advertising [PSA] vs cause-related brand [CRB] advertising) on the effectiveness of prosocial native advertising on social media.

Two experiments were conducted on different social media platforms (i.e. Twitter and Instagram) with varied prosocial issues (i.e. healthy eating and environmental sustainability).

Experiment 1 indicated that the congruence between prosocial native ads and social media feeds elicited greater ad involvement and a more favorable ad attitude, regardless of ad position. Experiment 2 revealed that such an impact was contingent on whether the prosocial native ad was a public service ad or a CRB ad. The positive influence of ad-context congruence was pronounced among public service ads but was not observed among CRB ads. Perceived ad involvement mediated the interaction effects between ad-context congruence and ad type on ad attitude and behavioral intention.

The study extends ad-context congruence research to the context of prosocial native advertising on social media. Moreover, it identifies ad type as a boundary condition for the congruence effects and reveals that increased ad involvement is the mechanism underlying the positive effect of congruent PSA.

This paper aims to shed new light on the consumer response toward sex appeal in advertising and investigates ad skepticism in a culturally diverse context.

By using the qualitative research methodology, the following study draws upon informant opinions regarding the extent of graphic nudity in print advertising is needed to avoid undesirable reactions from potential consumers and how religiosity influences their attitudes toward sexually appealing advertisements. The information was obtained through semi-structured in-depth interviews with 22 interviewees from four groups, namely, academia, advertising practitioners, religious figures and general consumers.

The remarkable findings to emerge from the interviews relate to the following: the role of religiosity vis-à-vis nudity and the “lowering of the gaze” concept in Islam, the objectification and stereotypical portrayals of women, the irrational depiction of sexuality and intimacy and factors that lead to contextual interpretation.

The result provides further evidence that skepticism does not only exist on a cognitive basis but also on an emotional level as a response to the exaggeration, unrealistic and irritating claims made in some adverts.

This study suggests that advertisers should advance their cultural comprehension by taking into account the moral and social differences.

This has been the first study to investigate the skepticism toward sex appeal in advertising and integrate both cognitive and affective context of skepticism.