An Exploration of Advertorials Used to Attract Foreign Direct Investment

Abstract Native advertising has attracted a lot of attention among academics interested in the ad format designed to mimic editorial content and provide consumers with often hard-to-find and detailed information. Yet its earlier predecessor, the advertorial, is used more frequently for information dissemination in the economic development and finance sectors. To better understand how advertorials are used today, we use computer-aided text analysis (CATA) to content analyze 843 advertorial pages used by 57 countries to promote themselves as ideal locations for foreign direct investment. Interview data from communication agency personnel involved in advertorial development provides subsequent insight. Our quantitative analysis finds limited differences in how countries promote themselves, but our interviews suggest that the communication agencies used to create the advertorials may explain the homogeneity in the data.