The survival strategy of branded content in the over-the-top (OTT) environment: Eye-tracking and Q-methodology approach in digital product placement

The goal of this paper is to discuss how branded content may be adopted to succeed with the over-the-top (OTT) market using digital product placement (PPL). Analyzing the eye movements of 34 subjects with manipulated experimental materials we also examined their fundamental attitudes toward branded content using digital PPL in the OTT environment. In the first part of the experiment, eye-movements and fixation durations on our nine equally divided areas of interest (AOIs) were analyzed. In the second part, we used the Q-method to classify users' underlying factors for the digital PPL into three types, namely pragmatism, conservatism, and rationalism. Despite intensive differences, there are some common attitudes among these three types with respect to regulations. Based on three research questions, our results recommend that both practitioners and researchers should identify the physically optimized places that would attract users' visual attention based on their brand characteristics. At the same time, they should formulate psychological strategies whereby users are unable to recognize the intentional exposure of a particular brand or the brand becomes integral to the plot.