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In this episode, we speak with Yongwoog Andrew Jeon (Northern Illinois University) to discuss his article, "How Small Talk and Co-Viewing with AI Companions Boost Advertising Effectiveness and Persuasion: Chat, Watch, and Buy," coauthored with Yuhosua Ryoo (University of Minnesota Duluth), Sangwook Lee (University of Colorado Boulder), and Hye Jin Yoon (University of Georgia), published in the June 2026 issue of JAR. Andy explains the question driving the paper: as AI companions move into living rooms, can watching TV with one feel like genuinely watching together, and does that change how people respond to the ads on screen? A preliminary scenario study found that people imagining co-viewing with Alexa reported the same sense of shared viewing as those imagining a human partner. The main study moved into a living room-style lab, where participants made small talk about movies with either an Alexa Echo or a human confederate for one or three minutes, then watched a college football clip with food commercials while galvanic skin response sensors tracked their arousal in real time. Longer conversations made the AI seem more humanlike, a shift that never happened with the human partner, and that perceived humanness set off two chains: higher arousal and lower ad irritation during the commercials, which lifted purchase intentions for the advertised products, and stronger social identification with the AI, which made its own product recommendations more persuasive.

The practical takeaway is to build the relationship before the pitch. Pointing to ChatGPT's move toward embedding ads in conversations, Andy argues that AI agents shouldn't sell too aggressively: let rapport form first, then persuade gently, or risk a backfire from users who expect a companion rather than a salesperson.  Our conversation also digs into the project's origins in the final year of Andy's PhD, when "what if we watch TV with a robot?" went from crazy thought to research team, the grind of in-person data collection, and where Andy is headed next: agentic AI and the question of what would make consumers comfortable letting an AI agent spend their money on their behalf.

Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1080/00218499.2025.2537503

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