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Digital Advertising as Service:

Introducing Contextually Embedded Selling

Anna-Greta Nyström

Åbo Akademi University

Jacob Mickelsson

Hanken School of Economics

Authors’ draft, do not quote.

Earlycite reference:

Nyström, A-G, Mickelsson, K-J (2019), "Digital advertising as service: introducing contextually embedded selling", Journal of Services Marketing, https://doi.org/10.1108/JSM-01-2018-0043

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Abstract

Purpose – Previous research on advertising in digital contexts has emphasized its persuasive and

information processing roles for the customer. This paper aims to problematize this point of view and argues

that the converged and interactive nature of digital media makes all advertising content into potential points

of engagement in a digital media journey.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper is conceptual in nature and applies service logic (SL) and

customer engagement to reconceptualize digital advertising and selling.

Findings – The authors present digital advertisements and digital media content as elements that contribute

to a digital media journey, which ideally leads to a purchase. Advertising content is regarded as a resource

used by consumers in their underlying value-creating processes. Thus, the digital advertising process is

conceptualized as a customer-driven process of engaging with digital media content, where a purchase is

incorporated in (and naturally follows from) the theme of engagement.

Research implications – The paper introduces the concept of contextually embedded selling, which refers

to a process where digital advertising content is thematically congruent with the surrounding editorial

content, so that both contribute to the same consumer journey. Otherwise, consumers experience a

contextual jump – a disconnect in theme, place or time during the consumer’s process of engagement with

the digital content.

Originality/value – The paper contributes to theory on advertising, engagement and the emerging research

on consumer journey design by presenting an approach based on SL, namely, contextually embedded digital

selling.

Keywords: service logic, digital media, advertising, value-in-use, engagement, embeddedness

Article Classification: Conceptual paper

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Introduction

In this paper we reframe digital advertising using a service logic lens. Traditionally, marketers have

regarded advertising as “a process of translating a brand, expressed as a benefit, a promise to the consumer,

a value proposition, or a positioning in the consumer’s mind into a message that is delivered to the consumer

through some medium” (Calder and Malthouse, 2008, p. 1). However, recent decades have seen large shifts

in advertising practices; this is especially due to digitalization enabling new contexts and platforms for

advertising messages. Thus, current changes in the consumers’ use of digital media indicate that there is a

need to critically consider the role of advertising in a digital media context, and consequently, its relation

to consumers’ digital media journeys.

The traditional view of advertising tends to present consumers as the passive recipients of advertising

messages (cf. Vakratsas and Ambler, 1999). Thus, the function of advertising has usually been understood

to conform to the hierarchy-of-effects model with its main objective being to influence prospective

customers to make a purchase on a later occasion (cf. Wijaya, 2015). Models such as this originated at a

time when advertisement and purchasing opportunities were mostly separated from each other in terms of

time and place. Advertisements appeared in the media of print and broadcasting and were a part of a

producer-controlled media flow (cf. Klein, 1981). Prospective customers were expected to make their

purchase at a later time and place; a location separate from the point at which they were exposed to the

advertising messages.

Today’s digital media environment is vastly different from the traditional, one-way media environment

(Dizard, 1997). Due to the interactive aspect of digital media, consumers are increasingly in control of the

experience (Cover, 2006). For instance, the increasing consumer control over digital media use process has

contributed to a disregard or avoidance of unwanted advertising (Wojdynski, 2016). Recently, a report by

the Ericsson ConsumerLab (2017) argued that consumers are increasingly likely to see advertisements as a

disruption of their media experience. Thus, advertisers are shifting towards new, consumer-driven means

of getting their messages across, entailing: consumer-generated content, consumer content sharing, and co-

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creation (Sheehan and Morrison, 2009), marketing in social media (Ashley and Tuten, 2015) and interactive

online advertising (Belanche et al., 2017). However, such approaches usually rely on the consumers’

engagement, and on whether consumers find the advertising content valuable in itself. Hence, advertisers

have begun to consider how to create advertisements that foster engagement or contribute to consumer

value, an approach found in, e.g., content marketing (cf. Jutkowitz, 2014).

Consequently, we argue that due to the increasing emphasis on consumer control, engagement, and

consumer value, digital advertising can be conceptualized in terms of service. In fact, interaction, value-in-

use and customer experience play fundamental roles from a service perspective on marketing (Ballantyne

and Varey, 2006; Grönroos, 2006; Vargo and Lusch, 2004). By a service perspective we refer to the

understanding of service as a logic or a perspective on value creation, rather than a type of offering

(Edvardsson et al., 2005). Thus, we argue that the emergent customer-driven, service-like nature of digital

media requires new conceptual approaches to advertising in digital media contexts.

The digital media context has been characterized as a set of networked bit-based objects available to

consumers through digital interfaces (Koiso-Kanttila, 2004). Examples of digital media content include

websites’ pages, communication on social media forums, as well as games, videos, audio, and images in

digital format. The networked nature of digital media has enabled consumers to move from one item of

media to the next based on their own whims or interests (Meikle and Young, 2011). This imposes another

important consequence for advertising: in digital media contexts the consumer can also move directly from

advertisement to purchase (Srinivasan et al., 2016). Therefore, we argue that advertising and sales functions

are converging in digital media and are becoming unified under a single consumer-driven process of media

use.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an approach to digital advertising and selling based on a service

logic perspective on marketing (Vargo and Lusch, 2004; Heinonen et al., 2010; Grönroos and Voima,

2013). Our research question is: What are the implications for the process of advertising in digital media

when reframing digital advertising as service that enables value-in-use for consumers? As follows, we

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problematize advertising’s traditional underlying assumptions of a sender-receiver division and separation

between advertisement and purchasing opportunity (Alvesson and Sandberg, 2011). We draw on service

literature and the service logic debates (Grönroos and Gummerus, 2014; Grönroos and Voima, 2013;

Heinonen et al., 2010; Vargo and Lusch, 2004) to discuss a revised view of digital advertising and selling.

From this perspective advertising can be viewed as an element in the service process (cf. Heinonen and

Strandvik, 2005). Following this notion, we identify customer engagement (Brodie et al., 2011; Kunz et al.,

2016) and customer journeys (Barwitz and Maas, 2018; Lemon and Verhoef, 2016) as core concepts in

conceptualizing our revised view of digital advertising. We present digital media engagement as the “glue”

that binds the customers’ digital media journeys together. We explicate the connection between media

engagement and value-in-use and propose that if the consumer is to stay engaged, all media content

(including advertisements and purchase opportunities) in a particular digital media context must support

the consumer’s ongoing value-creating process.

As its key contribution, the paper proposes a new approach to digital advertising and a revision of previous

conceptualizations (MacInnis, 2011), namely contextually embedded selling. This approach presents

consumers as orientating themselves in networked sets of media content (such as YouTube, blogs, or news

services), and moving from one item of media to the next according to their own interests or motivations.

The consumers’ underlying value-creating process provides the general “context” of their media use

journey. The degree to which advertisements, purchase opportunities, and additional media content

correspond to this context determines how likely the consumer is to stay engaged. If there is a discrepancy

or gap between the encountered media content and the ongoing media use context, we argue that the

consumer will experience a “contextual jump” which may lead to disengagement. In light of this, the role

of advertising will then be to support the prospective consumers’ media journey in such a way that making

a purchase becomes a seamless element, or a natural consequence, of the consumers’ value-creating

process.

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By reframing digital advertising from a service perspective, we provide a theoretical foundation for several

current concepts in digital advertising, such as covert marketing (Wei et al., 2008) and content marketing

(Jutkowitz, 2014). We augment the knowledge on digital service marketing by presenting media

engagement as a consequence of the correspondence between interactive media and the consumers’

underlying value-creating process. This also allows us to contribute with new knowledge on the consumers’

digital paths to purchase (Becker et al., 2017; Fulgoni, 2014; Jones and Runyan, 2016). In addition, we

suggest a shift in the focus of digital advertising from persuasion to value-in-use. This reframes the function

of advertising in digital media and opens new opportunities for research; these have been detailed under a

series of propositions presented at the end of the paper.

The paper is structured as follows. First, we problematize advertising in the digital media context by

combining research streams that offer an insight into the context; starting with a service perspective on

digital media, we proceed to apply it to the consumer’s value-creating process and journey in the digital

media context. We then introduce media engagement as a consequence of the connection between the digital

media journey and the value-creating process of the consumer. Contextually embedded selling and

contextual jumps are then presented to characterize the current intention-behavior gap found in the digital

advertising and sales context. We highlight contextual congruity as a key component of contextually

embedded selling. Finally, we provide future research directions, aiming at exploiting embeddedness and

contextuality in digital sales processes.

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Exploring the service perspective on digital media and advertising

Researchers have long argued that the nature of digital media changes the role of the prospective customer

(cf. Slywotzky and Morrison, 2001). Thus, current research increasingly views users or customers as active

participants and contributors in the marketing and service processes (Hanna et al., 2011; Mickelsson, 2013).

The customers’ use of digital media therefore is more in line with the tenets of service logic, which places

the customer in a central role and as the proprietor of value-creating processes.

In order to explore this further in the digital context, we introduce fundamental ideas from service-dominant

logic (SDL) (Vargo and Lusch, 2004), service logic (SL) (Grönroos and Gummerus, 2014) and customer-

dominant logic (CDL) (Heinonen et al., 2010), and show how they can be applied to reconceptualize digital

advertising. Despite the differences in the views of these three schools of service logic, they have some

common assumptions at their core. Most prominent are the ideas of service as mutual interaction and value-

in-use as the ultimate outcome of service.

The role of interaction in digital advertising

In their original SDL paper, Vargo and Lusch (2004) argue that service logic entails a changed role for the

customer1. Rather than simply being a recipient of goods, the customer becomes a co-producer of a service:

“Marketing is a process of doing things in interaction with the customer” (ibid, p. 7). In a similar vein,

recent conceptualizations of the advertising process consider the consumer to be empowered and involved

in shaping the outcomes (Acar and Puntoni, 2016). Moreover, SDL’s core concept of co-creation has been

applied as a means to study how consumers co-create brands (Boyle, 2007) and advertisements (Muñiz and

Schau, 2007), and communicate brand messages to other consumers (Gamble and Gilmore, 2013). Thus,

the ideas of interaction and collaboration with consumers are well established in contemporary advertising

1 When presenting the service logic perspectives, we use the term ‘customer’, which is the normal term in the service context. When we apply the concepts to advertising in digital media, we revert to the term ‘consumer’, which is the term generally used in advertising.

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thought. Another aspect of the interactive nature of digital media is that consumers increasingly expect to

assert control over the media experience, using interactive interfaces to decide what to consume, and in

which way to do it (Duff & Lutchyn, 2017). Thus, interaction plays a core role in digital media.

The value-in-use of digital advertising

In addition to the increased focus on interaction and collaboration, the three service logics also emphasize

the role of value-in-use, and how value emerges during consumer processes. Only when the resources in an

offering are put into action in a consumer process do they carry any type of value (i.e., value-in-use)

(Grönroos, 2008; Heinonen et al., 2010; Vargo and Lusch, 2004). Applied to the context of digital media,

this means that an advertisement can then be viewed in light of the value it has for the consumer.

Traditionally, the value of advertisements has been approached in terms of a set of traits, such as usefulness,

informativeness, entertainment, etc. (Ducoffe, 1995). However, more recently the value-in-use of an

advertising message has been viewed in terms of how it becomes integrated into the consumer’s life, i.e.,

communication-in-use (Finne and Grönroos, 2017). Communication-in-use refers to how consumers make

sense of (and engage with) market communication messages in the context of their ongoing lives. The

message becomes valuable in view of the consumer’s internal and external factors, as well as their perceived

past and future. However, the communication-in-use view assumes that separate messages are integrated

into the dynamic context of the consumer’s life. In digital media, advertisements do not appear in isolation,

but are often part of an overarching process of digital media use. Therefore, a service- and value-in-use

based view of digital advertising should not only take the consumer’s own context in consideration, but

also how the consumer interacts with a networked set of media content.

In practice, the idea of digital advertising having value for consumers is becoming progressively more

relevant. Due to the escalating consumer control in digital contexts, consumers can ignore content that is

not valuable to them. This can be seen in the phenomenon advertising avoidance (Seyedghorban et al.,

2016; Wojdynski, 2016), as well as in the growing popularity of content marketing, a practice where

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advertising content contributes to customer value (Jutkowitz, 2014). Researchers have argued that one way

for consumers to assert control over their media consumption is through media multitasking; this often

implies rapidly switching between different types of media content consumed through the same digital

device (Bardhi et al., 2010). Thus, to retain the attention of consumers, advertisements need to offer the

consumer something they want as well as supporting the consumers’ own processes of value-creation by

some means.

Digital advertising and the value-creating process

The value-in-use of digital advertising can be understood by relating it to the concept of the consumer’s

value-creating process (Grönroos and Gummerus, 2014). In SL, the consumer is characterized as the central

value-creator, which means that value is created in the consumer’s own processes, facilitated by a provider

(Grönroos and Voima, 2013). The provider can then capture some of the value that is created in the

consumer’s processes (Grönroos and Gummerus, 2014). Applied to advertising, this means that consumers

can be assumed to maintain some type of value-creating process, into which they integrate advertisements.

If the advertisement supports the consumer’s value-creating process, the advertisement becomes a valuable

resource to be used in the process. If not, it may be rejected or disregarded.

Advertisements as resources in the consumer’s value-creating process has not been explicitly discussed in

advertising research, but the general idea is gaining ground. Leboff (2016) argues that in digital selling,

consumers must be approached and engaged in relevant contexts where they might find the firm’s offerings

valuable, and within their own areas of interest, objectives, or current activities. In media studies, the uses

and gratifications perspective reflects a similar idea, where the consumer’s choice of digital media content

is driven by the ‘gratifications’ they desire to obtain from it (Sundar and Limperos, 2013). Thus, from an

SL perspective, Leboff’s (2016) ‘areas of interest’ or ‘current activities’, as well as the ‘user needs’ in the

uses and gratifications approach (Rubin, 2009) can be interpreted as reflecting the consumers’ value-

creating processes.

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The customer-dominant view of digital advertising

As noted, an emergent theme in digital advertising research is the idea of consumer control and

empowerment (Acar and Puntoni, 2016). Similarly, in service research, the CDL school has highlighted a

customer or consumer-driven view of how value emerges in service use (Heinonen et al., 2010). CDL sees

consumers as embedding service into their own lives. Consumers use service according to their own,

idiosyncratic logic and maintain control over the service process (Heinonen and Strandvik, 2015). Applied

to digital advertising, consumers can be understood as being in control of their media use and as embedding

encountered advertisements into their own individualized processes. “Embedding”, in the CDL sense, refers

to whether the consumer can find any use for the advertisement in their own tasks, activities, or experiences.

In practice, personalized digital advertisements based on prior online behaviour (cf. Kazienko and Adamski,

2007) can be regarded as an attempt to make advertisements correspond with the logic expressed by

individual consumers.

Based on the preceding discussion, we characterize the value-in-use of digital advertising as the degree to

which the advertisement can serve as a resource in the consumer’s own value-creating process. In line with

CDL we regard these processes as consumer-controlled. Thus, we characterize digital media use as the

consumer-controlled process of moving through – and interacting with – a network of interlinked digital

media content. The process of movement through interlinked media content is given direction by the

consumer’s underlying value-creating process, i.e., what the consumer wants to achieve, is interested in, or

simply feels like doing. Advertising content thus serves as an organic part of this orientation process and is

assessed according to how well it supports and becomes embedded in the consumer’s value-creating

processes.

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Media engagement in the consumer’s digital media journey

In order to understand how value in-use emerges in the context of digital media and advertising the

following section elaborates on how engagement (Kunz et al., 2016) can serve as a key element in consumer

journeys (Barwitz and Maas, 2018; Edelman and Singer, 2015; Lemon and Verhoef, 2016; Rosenbaum et

al., 2017) and the consumers’ paths to purchase (Becker et al., 2017; Fulgoni, 2014; Jones and Runyan,

2016; Srinivasan et al., 2016). In this context, digital advertisements serve as a type of media content, with

the additional role of steering the consumer onto (or further along) a path to purchase. Therefore, we make

use of literature on consumer journeys and paths to purchase to illustrate how the consumer moves along a

path in the digital landscape.

The consumer journey in digital media

Today, advertisers can directly link advertisements with purchase opportunities (Lewis et al., 2015). Digital

advertising coupled with a direct sales channel is the most effective route to sales (Cox, 2011). This implies

that advertising in digital contexts can be characterized as a set of touchpoints in one single customer

process, where sales do not have a separate role, but rather serve as an integrated part of the process (Wind

and Hays, 2016). Consequently, researchers have challenged the traditional sales funnel model of the

consumer’s path to purchase and have suggested that the current digital media context requires a more

nuanced understanding of the consumer’s process, one that consists of a non-linear path through different

channels and touchpoints (Fulgoni, 2014; Leboff 2016). As an alternative term, researchers have used the

concept of the consumer journey to describe the consumer’s independent movement through networked

touchpoints along a path to purchase (Barwitz and Maas, 2018; Lemon and Verhoef, 2016; Srinivasan et

al., 2016). Thus, consumers today have an almost endless range of options to customize their consumer

journeys (Verhoef et al., 2015). We next suggest that engagement serves as an indicator of value-in-use and

a driving force in such journeys through interlinked media.

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Engagement in the consumer journey

Lemon and Verhoef (2016) argue that engagement has a core role in the constitution of the consumer

journey due to the consumer’s initiation of interactions, as well as the digital and highly interactive nature

of many touchpoints. Traditionally, media engagement (ME) has been characterized as “the collective

experiences that readers or viewers have with a media brand” (Mersey et al., 2010, p. 40). Consumers

interact with aspects of the brand, and if the brand relates to integral roles in the consumer’s life,

engagement manifests itself as experiences. Calder and Malthouse (2008, p. 5) characterize ME as “how

the magazine or other media product is experienced motivationally in terms of making something happen

(or not happen) in the consumer’s life”. Interestingly, this characterization of ME is very similar to value-

in-use; if the media content has personal relevance for the consumer, engagement (or value) will emerge.

More recently, the term digital engagement (DE) has been defined in a similar way, namely as the

consumers’ interactions with a brand to strengthen emotional, psychological, or physical investments

(Rodgers and Thorson, 2018). In parallel, service researchers have developed the concept of customer

engagement (CE), defined as a “psychological state, which occurs by virtue of interactive customer

experiences with a focal agent/object within a specific service relationship” (Brodie et al., 2011, p. 258).

Thus, there are clear commonalities between the terms media engagement and customer engagement.

Advertising engagement and the context effect

In the context of advertising, engagement has been understood contrastively to the other perspectives on

engagement. Advertising engagement (AE) has been characterized as the contextual relevance of an

advertisement, i.e., how well it corresponds with the surrounding media content (Wang, 2006). Calder and

Malthouse (2008) argue that if the media content engages the consumer, it can make the advertisement

more effective. High engagement with an item of media content will positively impact the consumers’

response to an advertisement that appears in it (Wang and Calder, 2009). However, this occurs only if the

advertisement is thematically compatible with the consumed content. If the advertisement is experienced

as intrusive, it will disrupt the consumer’s engagement with the media content and lessen the impact of the

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advertisement (ibid). This is in accord with the logic behind the increasingly popular idea of native

advertising (Gillespie and Joireman, 2016; Lee et al., 2016; Wu et al., 2016), defined broadly as “branded

content that is integrated in or similar to the format or design of the platform, including the social

engagement features of the platform” (Lee et al., 2016, p. 1427). This has emerged as a tactic for dealing

with advertising avoidance (Wojdynski, 2016), and breaking through the clutter (Wojdynski and Evans,

2015). Thus, advertising engagement emphasises coherence (between consumed adjacent media content)

as a facilitator of the consumers’ transference of engagement from one item of media content to the next,

e.g., from an article to an advertisement (cf. Dahlén, 2005; Edwards et al., 2002).

Conceptualizing digital media engagement

We depict digital ME as the consumer’s engagement with a particular item of media content. Thus, we

diverge from earlier conceptualizations of ME by regarding digital media content as the main object of

engagement, rather than the media brand. This conceptualization is rather more in line with video game

engagement (Przybylski et al., 2010), where the media content itself serves as the object. We argue that

previous definitions of ME reflect an era when the media brand was considered the main object of

engagement for the consumer. Consumers in the digital media environment are proactive, i.e., follow and

seek out content that they regard as relevant in their lives (Jenkins, 2006). Thus, consumers may, for

example, be more likely to feel as if they are engaging with episodes of the show Stranger Things, rather

than with Netflix, the media brand behind the show.

We therefore define digital media engagement (DME) as a psychological state, arising from the interaction

with an item of digital media content. Moreover, based on ME literature, we argue that the consumer’s state

of engagement depends on the compatibility between the consumer’s underlying value-creating process

and the form, theme, and function of the media content. Compatibility can enable ME as well as value-in-

use.

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In addition, DME may also serve as a propelling force in the digital media journey. A consumer’s

engagement in an item of media content can be transferred onwards to a non-intrusive advertisement (Wang

and Calder, 2009), indicating that the state of engagement can move from one element of the media to

another. This can be compared to Van Doorn et al. (2010), who describe self-reinforcing cycles of

engagement behavior, where engagement begets engagement. Thus, we hypothesize that engagement can

be a driving factor in the digital consumer journey, and, conversely, that the journey can be disrupted by

disengagement. If an advertisement is incompatible with the underlying value-creating process, it can be

conjectured that the consumer will become disengaged and is thus unlikely to move forwards on the path

to purchase. This approach suggests an underlying reason for the successes of native advertising; when

consumers search for a particular type of media content, they do so to support their own value-creating

process. Advertisements that break with the style or context of the surrounding content will thus serve as

disruptions in the underlying value-creating process.

Introducing contextually embedded selling

Based on the previous discussion, we define contextually embedded selling as a process where the firm’s

advertising and sales functions are unobtrusively and congruously integrated into a single digital media

journey. The journey is given direction by the consumer’s underlying value-creating process. Contextually

embedded selling requires an integration of the efforts involved in building awareness of a brand (product

or service) and the presentation of an actual purchasing opportunity. Marketing and sales have traditionally

been separate functions (cf. Homburg et al., 2008). Contextually embedded selling does not, however,

distinguish between these two functions. Rather, effort (awareness) and effect (engagement or purchase)

can be integrated in the same media content. Moreover, contextually embedded selling is coherent with

regard to theme, place, and time. We next discuss how coherence and congruence in digital media content

serves as a foundation for contextually embedded selling.

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The seamless digital media experience and contextual jumps

Researchers have long emphasized the importance of a “seamless customer experience”, referring to how

all communication channels used by a brand must support one coherent customer experience (Payne and

Frow, 2004; Richardson, 2010). Similarly, we argue that all commercial elements embedded in media

content must support the same congruous experience, by adhering to a particular theme and value-creating

process. Thus, the potential action of making a purchase could be seamlessly integrated into a media

journey, where the customer engages with a particular theme using digital media, i.e. in that very “theme

context”. If the customer must switch to another website, compare products or prices, or visit a physical

store, the brand is not meeting the consumer’s expectation of a seamless experience. Irrelevant content and

advertisements do not support consumers’ value-creating processes nor their DME, and lead to what we

characterize as contextual jumps. A contextual jump is a cognitive, emotional, or behavioral disconnect

between the different stages in a consumer’s process of engagement in a digital environment.

Fig 1. Snapshot of a consumer’s media use process depicting contextually embedded selling

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The media journey, i.e., the consumer’s path from the act of consuming digital media content to the act of

buying, is connected by a series of intermediary steps. Figure 1 shows two different journeys, of which the

first ends in disengagement due to a contextual jump. A contextually embedded selling perspective entails

avoiding thematic, temporal, and spatial jumps, which fragment the customer experience and engagement

in today’s online advertising approaches. Avoiding contextual jumps allows for more seamless, non-

intrusive, and smooth media journeys (cf. Edwards et al., 2002; McCoy et al., 2008; Ritter & Cho, 2009).

Nonetheless, we recognize that in some cases contextual jumps are required and even desired, e.g., related

to purchases requiring high involvement from the consumer, or price-sensitive purchases, avoiding the

negative consequences of online impulse buying behavior (cf. LaRose, 2001).

Thematic jumps reflect research on thematic congruence (cf. King et al., 2004; Moorman et al., 2002),

which depicts advertising as being placed in a media which meets the brand thematically, e.g., a website

related to motor sports will display advertisements for cars, a life-style blog will feature advertisements on

clothes and makeup, etc. The setting facilitates comprehension of the advertisement (Kamins et al., 1991).

In our context, the main goal of avoiding thematic jumps is, however, not to ease comprehension, but to

add value to the digital media journey. As the consumer is continuously engaging in media content, the

advertisement serves as an additional value-adding touchpoint in the journey, enabling the consumer to

move forward to a purchase.

Temporal jumps refer to time-based breaks in the path to purchase. Temporal congruence has been used in

approaching the timing of brand messages and recommendations (Kim et al., 2009). In contextually

embedded selling, the temporal aspect is always present, as the call-to-action is imbued in the media

content, with which the consumer is engaging. For example, recent developments in the influencer

marketing domain and the increased co-operation between brands and social media influencers (cf. Evans

et al., 2017) describe the possibility of embedding purchasing options in the generated recommendations

and content of social media influencers (blog, video blog, etc.). When consumers engage with the content

of a blog, they are offered the opportunity to directly purchase the item (without having to wait for a specific

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point in time to complete the path to purchase), thus, temporal jumps are avoided. In a similar vein,

researchers refer to temporal proximity in their studies, e.g., the temporal gap between product evaluation

and purchase decisions (e.g., Theriault et al., 2008). Timing is becoming an increasingly popular research

area in advertising, as automated systems, machine learning, and artificial intelligence penetrate online

marketing functions.

Spatial jumps include elements from both thematic and temporal jumps, as they emerge from the omni-

channel behavior of consumers (cf. Manser Payne et al., 2017). A spatial jump refers to a disconnect

between the consumed media context and the (physical or virtual) place where a purchase is made. Whereas

the temporal jump refers to a mismatch between the advertisement and purchasing opportunity in terms of

call-to-action made easy, the spatial jumps concern alignment. The spatial jump aligns the advertisements

along the media journey and path to purchase with the location of the purchase, either physically or

virtually/online. The spatial jump also displays characteristics of thematic jumps, as consumers in their

digital media journey may be moved to another site (e.g., brand owner) to complete a purchase, which may

disengage the consumer and interrupt the media journey.

Comparing traditional advertising and the contextually embedded selling approach

The function of advertising has traditionally been to persuade audiences and motivate towards purchase.

The service perspective emphasizes a different role of advertising, namely advertising as a resource in the

digital consumer journey and digital media engagement. Table 1 summarizes the differences between the

traditional advertising and sales approach and the contextually embedded selling approach according to a)

media content, b) engagement, c) media use, d) value-in-use, and e) purchasing opportunity. These themes

are drawn from the theoretical discussion and impose important consequences for marketing in the ne digital

era.

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Theme Traditional

advertising and sales

Contextually embedded selling (CES) Consequences of CES for marketing

Media content

Media content is static and sequential (Vakratsas and Ambler, 1999).

Media content is networked and potentially interactive (Cover, 2006; Meikle and Young, 2011).

The consumers interact with and move through a networked set of media content, seeking to create value-in-use for themselves.

Every item of media content is a point of interaction, leading onwards on a consumer media journey.

Engagement

Engagement occurs between consumer and brand (Mersey et al., 2010).

Engagement occurs between consumer and media content (cf. Przybylski et al., 2010).

Commercial aspects are integrated into media content to foster engagement and allow the consumer to move onwards on a path to purchase.

Engagement depends on the match between the consumer’s underlying value-creating process and the form, theme, and function of the media content.

Media use

Media content is consumed linearly, linked only through turning over pages or watching linear broadcasts (Fulgoni, 2014; Leboff, 2016)

Media content is consumed in a non-linear fashion, leading to individual media journeys (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016; Verhoef et al., 2015).

The consumer may reject content that does not correspond with the current journey. Contextual jumps have a disruptive effect.

The customer controls the media use process and is a co-producer.

Advertisement value

The value of an advertisement relates to informativeness, entertainment and usefulness (DuCoffe, 1995).

Valuable content can help build customer relationships (Jutkowitz, 2014).

Advertisements and purchasing opportunities are designed and timed with the consumers’ value-creating processes in mind.

The value of an advertisement relates to how well it supports the consumer’s underlying value-creating process.

Advertising vs. selling

Exposure to advertisement is separate from purchase opportunity (Wijaya, 2015).

Advertisements can link directly to purchase opportunity (Lewis et al., 2015; Srinivasan et al., 2016).

Advertisements and purchasing opportunities are seamlessly integrated into consumed media content.

Advertisements and purchases serve as parts of the consumer’s ongoing value-creating process.

Table 1. Overview of the contextually embedded selling framework compared to the traditional advertising

and sales view

19

Firstly, the contextually embedded selling approach entails that every item of media content is a point of

interaction (including advertising) leading the consumer onwards on a media journey. Secondly, as

engagement perplexes both academics and practitioners as to how it supports the consumer journeys, the

contextually embedded approach asserts that engagement links the consumer’s underlying value-creating

process with the form, theme, and function of the media content. Advertising fosters engagement and the

continuation of the digital media journey. Thirdly, media use does not occur linearly, but rather according

to unpredicted paths, which the consumer rather than the company or brand controls. Fourthly, if the

consumer experiences value-in-use, contextual jumps are avoided. Fifthly, for advertising to serve as

elements of the value-creating process, advertisements and purchasing opportunities should be seamlessly

integrated into the consumed media content.

Conclusions and outline for further research

In this paper we reframed advertising and selling in digital media by viewing it utilizing a service logic

lens. A service perspective emphasizes advertising as an element in the service process (cf. Heinonen and

Strandvik, 2005). Thus, the interaction between a consumer and a set of digital media content can be

understood as part of a service process. We contribute to service research by reconsidering digital media

use from a service perspective as a process that aims at value-in-use. This reframes digital media and digital

advertisements as resources that consumers use in their own value-creating process. Thus, we address recent

calls for revising the definition of advertising (cf. Dahlen and Rosengren, 2016) and contribute to

advertising research with a novel perspective.

We identified the fit between media content and the consumer’s underlying value-creation process as a

prerequisite for digital media engagement and media journeys, contributing to research on engagement

(Brodie et al., 2011). We defined digital media engagement as a psychological state, arising from the

interaction with an item of digital media content. Based on literature, we argued that this state of

engagement can transfer from one piece of media content to another. Thus, digital media engagement links

20

pieces of media content together, forming a digital media journey. However, we also highlighted the role

of disengagement, which we presented as a possible consequence of what we named contextual jumps; the

cognitive, emotional, or behavioral disconnections between the different stages in a consumer’s process of

engagement in a digital environment. The idea of contextual jumps is novel to both consumer journey

research (e.g. Barwitz and Maas, 2018), and digital advertising research (e.g. Rodgers et al., 2017).

We also contributed to research on consumer journeys by depicting consumers’ digital media journeys as

consumer-controlled paths through sets of interlinked digital media content, driven by the consumers’

value-creating processes. This characterization draws on the customer-dominant view of service (Heinonen

and Strandvik, 2015). In marketing, researchers have divided the consumer journey into pre-purchase,

purchase, and post-purchase interactions (e.g. Lemon and Verhoef, 2016). In contrast, we characterize

advertising and sales efforts as recurring, organic elements in a single consumer-controlled journey. Thus,

in digital media the two functions do not need to be separated from each other but can be regarded as part

of the same path to purchase.

The main contribution of this paper is nevertheless a novel approach to advertising and selling in digital

media contexts, which we called contextually embedded selling. Contextually embedded selling entails

elements of embeddedness, congruity with surrounding content, and non-intrusiveness; the approach

advocates the practice of seamlessly integrating advertisements that will support a consumer’s ongoing

value-creating process, into the surrounding media content during the consumer’s digital media journey.

To conclude, we elaborate further on the novel research avenues by means of three propositions. They

summarize our call for more research exploring and challenging the underlying assumptions (Alvesson and

Sandberg, 2011) of digital advertising, as technological advances continue to complicate the digital media

context.

21

Proposition 1: The consumers’ degree of engagement with digital media content depends on its congruence

with the consumer’s underlying value-creating process.

A similar idea to this proposition has been explored in pervasive advertising (Bauer and Spiekermann,

2011) where researchers have considered how to adapt advertisements according to consumer tasks, or the

consumer’s current temporal and spatial context. Thus, adapted advertisements are more likely to have the

correct message or the correct content for a consumer. Proposition 1 hints at the underlying rationale as to

why this works, namely that advertisements supporting the consumer’s value-creating process are also

likely to foster engagement. Thus, there is a need for research on how to align digital advertisements with

value-creating processes, and to explore whether, how, and when this leads to DME. Future research

avenues are thus concerned with the empirical mapping of consumers’ value-driven use of media content

in order to, on one hand, purposefully design for contextually embedded selling in digital media, and, on

the other hand, align empirical studies on DME with identified value-creating processes in the consumption

of digital media content. Thus, we suggest the following questions for future research:

• How can we locate critical points in the correspondence between digital media content and the

consumer’s value-creating processes?

• How does the correspondence between digital media content and the consumer’s value-creating

processes facilitate DME?

Proposition 2: Engagement in a digital advertisement can lead the consumer onwards along a path to

purchase

We argued that engagement can serve as a propelling force moving the consumer from one item of digital

media to the next. Due to interactivity, the value-creating process can manifest in engagement with digital

media. Engagement in a digital advertisement is likely to lead the consumer forwards on the path to

purchase, from one instance of digital media to the next. The proposition can be used to explain the purpose

of content marketing (Jutkowitz, 2014); valuable advertising content stimulates engagement, and by means

22

of linking forward to other content, this engagement can be used to shift the consumer onto a path to

purchase along a set of digital media content. Thus, there is a need to study the role digital media

engagement plays in shaping consumers’ paths to purchase. An even more challenging question is how a

path to purchase can be seamlessly integrated into a consumer’s wider digital media journey by means of

advertising efforts. When embarking on a digital media journey, consumers wish to engage in a media

context that continuously supports their ongoing value-creation process. Thus, future research could

consider the following questions:

• How does DME lead the consumer forward along a path to purchase?

• How can engaging paths to purchase be integrated into the consumer’s digital media use?

Proposition 3: If the consumer encounters media content that is not congruent with the context of the

surrounding content, it leads to a contextual jump. This can result in disengagement, breaking the

consumer’s potential path to purchase.

The notion of contextual jumps illustrates the challenges of digital sales efforts. Thematic, temporal, and

spatial jumps may have negative consequences on customer engagement, and subsequently on the media

journey from consuming relevant content to the point of purchase. Digital media content per se offers the

opportunity to integrate sales functions but requires contextual congruity in order to be meaningful and

create value for the consumer. For example, a third-party blogger may become a key element in the

company’s consumer journey, endorsing the brand through an embedded sales function. In such a case,

there is contextual congruity, as the social media influencer endorses the topic or use of the brand in

question, similar to covert marketing strategies (cf. Wei et al., 2008). The sales function is embedded in

content that the consumer is drawn to voluntarily. The most important aspect to avoid is thus a disconnect

in the media engagement process.

Consequently, there is need for further research on digital media congruence and seamless digital media

journeys (Barwitz and Maas, 2018; Edelman and Singer, 2015; Lemon and Verhoef, 2016; Rosenbaum et

23

al., 2017). More specifically, we suggest that future research on consumer journeys attempt an

understanding of how thematic congruence can lead to perceived seamlessness. Moreover, we suggest a

research focus on the nature of contextual jumps and their impact on DME. For instance, in relation to the

thematic jump, it is important to study the nature of the digital media theme and context in order to

determine those cases where a shift in theme during a digital media journey is acceptable, and in which

cases it is not. Thus, we suggest the following questions for further research:

• What constitutes the context of a digital media journey, and what demands do different contexts

place on the congruency and seamlessness of the journey?

• How do contextual jumps disrupt digital media journeys, and in which cases do they not?

Managerial implications

Contextually embedded selling constitutes as a tool for designing meaningful media journeys, that align

with the consumers’ value-creating processes. The role of the consumer has shifted from being a passive

object to an active contributor, which puts pressure on advertising to become more “service-like”, focusing

more on adding value for – and building engagement with – the consumer, rather than on direct persuasion.

Contextually embedded selling thus requires a shift in consumer journey design, towards a more embedded

and coherent, as well as a time- and space-specific framework.

Contextually embedded selling should take the following conditions into consideration: (i) embeddedness,

(ii) non-intrusiveness, (iii) willingness of the consumer, (iv) congruity, and above all (v) digital media

engagement. The concepts of spatial, thematic, and temporal jumps provide marketing managers with a

checklist related to how well the digital media journeys are designed, and whether there are challenges and

obstructions for the consumers on the way to purchase. Contextual jumps reflect the disconnect between

media content and subsequent steps in the digital media journey. An example of a large contextual jump is

between reading the content of a blog, and then clicking a banner-ad that advertises a completely unrelated

product or service. As consumers in digital contexts can choose which content to engage in, the contents of

any sales process should reflect the consumers’ current engagements and interests. For example, a blog

24

about DIY renovations could contain interactive elements, where the consumer can play with different

aspects of renovation (e.g., combining elements of bathroom tiling). These interactive elements in

themselves can contain the opportunity to make a purchase so as to avoid contextual jumps. The interactive

nature of digital media makes it a fruitful context for embedding activities, such as engagement with

interactive advertisements or online purchases, thus enabling a seamless, non-intrusive and desired setting

for advertising efforts that can lead the consumer forwards on the path to purchase.

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