Exploring Genre Evolution: Characterizing the Cybergenre of Consumer Netvertising

The Internet continues to revolutionize the way in which genres, initially designed for different situations, have developed on the Web. The study of these unstable generic forms needs to consider how the electronic medium and its idiosyncratic functionalities constrain cybergenres. This paper focuses on the cybergenre of consumer netvertising, used by business companies to sell their products/services to online consumers. The twofold aim was: 1. to characterize the features embedded in consumer netads; 2. to explore how the attribute of functionality challenges the evolution of consumer netvertising, and channels business-oriented discourse practices. Outcomes support the attempt to classify consumer netvertising using the taxonomy of genre evolution (Shepherd and Watters 1998), and to speculate on how new functionality attributes induce ongoing genre development.