Enhancing Brand Experience in Advertising by Implementing UGC and CSR Initiatives in Digital Advertisements

With digitalization constantly advancing, businesses have various choices to improve their marketing activities in a trackable, testable, and scalable way, including digital advertising. Marketers can deliver their advertised messages to the defined audience across channels to effectively interact with them in every stage of a buying cycle. However, consumers' judgments on advertising overload, relevancy, and trustworthiness signify a trust crisis in the advertising industry. As recent surveys and research show that consumers increasingly distrust online advertising, a question is raised: How can brands create engaging digital advertisements that signal a connection between them and consumer life goals to enhance the brand experience and yet be credible? After reviewing literature and recent research, the authors suggested that using usergenerated content and corporate social responsibility initiatives in digital advertisementscould enhance advertising engagement and thus brand experience. This study evaluates brand experience through brand awareness, brand trust, and purchase intention. Then, this paper examines the relationships between consumers' positive attitudes towards user-generated content and corporate social responsibility and advertising awareness, advertising trust, and advertising purchase intention using quantitative data analysis with data collected from the study's survey. This study concludes that using user-generated content and corporate social responsibility initiatives in digital advertisements positively influences brand experience