When AI personalisation becomes persuasive: the roles of trust and consumer response in digital advertising

<title>Abstract</title> <p>Artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed digital advertising by enabling firms to deliver highly personalized, predictive, and context‑aware advertising experiences. While prior work shows that personalisation increases perceived relevance and effectiveness, most studies conceptualize personalisation primarily as a targeting capability and pay limited attention to its persuasive role and the boundary conditions under which it drives behavioural responses (Bleier &amp; Eisenbeiss, 2015; Aguirre et al., 2015). Addressing this gap, this study develops an integrated framework to examine how AI‑driven personalisation dimensions shape perceived personalisation quality, persuasion, and purchase intention in digital advertising environments. Drawing on the Stimulus–Organism–Response model, the Elaboration Likelihood Model, and Trust Theory, the study conceptualizes AI‑driven personalisation as a multidimensional construct comprising relevance, accuracy, consumer control, timeliness, and contextual fit. Data from 401 consumers with prior experience of AI‑generated personalized advertisements on digital and social media platforms were analysed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling. The results show that all five personalisation dimensions significantly enhance perceived personalisation quality, with relevance and contextual fit exerting the strongest effects. Perceived personalisation quality strongly influences persuasion and purchase intention, and persuasion partially mediates the relationship between personalisation and purchase intention. Furthermore, trust in AI advertising significantly strengthens the positive effect of persuasion on purchase intention. These findings extend prior personalisation research by shifting the focus from personalisation as a technical feature to personalisation as a perceived quality that activates persuasive processing in AI advertising. They also add to recent AI advertising work by identifying trust in AI advertising as a key boundary condition that amplifies the behavioural impact of persuasive personalized messages. The study provides theoretical and managerial implications for designing AI‑driven advertising strategies that align personalisation quality, persuasion, and consumer trust.</p>