Programmatic advertising (PA) has gained its popularity in the field of marketing. According to the literature review, there has been various studies about PA’s characteristics and exploring PA from business’s perspective. Research has also created a link between the PA and metaverse since metaverse has largely been considered as a new digital advertising channel and medium through which brands can connect with customers. However, there are dearth studies about PA’s effect on consumers. Therefore, this study aims to contribute to the aforementioned research gap so that consumer’s perspective about PA-empowered ads can be brought to light and how it leads to their correspondent behaviours such as intention to purchase and ad avoidance.

Driven by the TRA and SOR theories, this thesis studies the effect of PA-empowered ads on customer attitude in the context of online retailing. Quantitative methodology using a pre-tested survey owing to its effectiveness in proving causal relationships between variables and it has been widely applied in consumer behaviours and attitudes studies, was used to collect the data during March 2023. Research data is collected via online survey due to its budget and time effectiveness. Perceived relevance, timeliness, and intrusiveness are chosen as triggering elements towards consumer attitudes, which leads to their behaviour performance of intention to purchase and avoidance ads.

The findings reveal that perceived relevant and timeliness have significantly positive relationships with consumer attitude towards the ads. In contrast, when consumers perceived the ads as intrusive, they develop a negative impression towards the ads. Positive attitude about the ads will increase consumers’ intention to purchase the advertised product or service whilst negative consumer attitude will increase their avoidance towards the ads. These results confirm and support previous studies in the context of PA and online retailing. More importantly, the scope of this study justifies that consumer attitudes have direct and positive impact on ad avoidance, which has not been observed in prior studies.