•Influencer-product congruence affects product attitude and advertising recognition.•Sponsorship disclosure is linked to the calculative motive inference of the influencer.•Sponsorship disclosure ...affects product attitude through a serial mediation.•Social media users infer multiple alternative motives of the influencer.
This study investigates the effects of influencer advertising attributes on consumer responses via multiple motive inference processing. Influencer-product congruence and sponsorship disclosure are manipulated as independent variables. In so doing, this study examines whether social media users infer two types of motives (Affective vs. Calculative) of the influencer derived from perceived congruence (High vs. Low) and sponsorship disclosure (Presence vs. Absence). Results suggest that influencer-product congruence can be used to enhance product attitude and reduce advertising recognition by generating a higher affective motive inference. Sponsorship disclosure can also affect product attitude in a serial mediation of calculative motive inference and advertising recognition. The multiple motive inference model explained the dual processing of influencer advertising by attributing to the prior persuasion knowledge and situational characteristics simultaneously. The findings discussed theoretical and managerial implications on native advertising on social media.
Influencer marketing is the practice of compensating individuals for posting about a product or service on social media. Influencer marketing is on the rise, and many marketers now plan either to ...start using influencers or to increase their use of them in their media mixes. Despite such growth, relatively little strategic or academic insight exists that is specific to influencers. In this article, we describe the roots of influencer marketing and the many different types of influencers that now exist. We identify influencers’ three functional components: the audience, the endorser, and the social media manager. We then detail for each of these components the different sources of value influencers potentially offer marketers. We draw on relevant academic research to offer advice about how to leverage each component strategically. We close by describing how the interplay of these functional components makes influencers a potentially powerful—and undervalued—marketing tool.
Children nowadays spend many hours online watching YouTube videos in which their favorite vloggers are playing games, unboxing toys, reviewing products, making jokes or just going about their daily ...activities. These vloggers regularly post attractive and entertaining content in the hope of building a large follower base. Although many of these vloggers are adults, the number of child vloggers is flourishing. The famous child vlogger Ryan of Ryan's World, for instance, has more than 19 million viewers and he is (at age seven) a social media influencer. The popularity of these vloggers incited advertisers to include them as a new marketing communication tool, also referred to as influencer marketing, in their marketing strategy. Accordingly, many influential vloggers now receive free products from brands in return for a mention in one of their videos and their other social media (e.g., TikTok or Instagram) and some are even paid to create a sponsored post or video and distribute it to their followers. This sponsored content appears to be highly influential and may affect young children's brand preferences. Given the limited advertising literacy skills (i.e., knowledge of advertising and skills to critically reflect on this advertising) of children under age 12, they are a vulnerable target group when it comes to persuasion. Therefore, caution is needed when implementing this marketing tactic to target them. However, research on how influencer marketing affects young children (under 12) is scarce and it is unclear how these young children can be empowered to critically cope with this fairly new form of persuasion. This paper therefore aims to shed light on why and how social media influencers have persuasive power over their young followers. The paper starts with providing insights into how and why social media influencers became a new source in advertising. We then discuss the few studies that have been conducted on influencer marketing among young children (under 12), based on a systematic literature review, and take these findings to formulate societal and policy implications and develop a future research agenda.
Consumers do not always recognize the persuasive intent of covert forms of advertising. Thus, when exploring consumers' evaluations of these specific ads it is important to measure if, and to what ...extent, they recognize it as an ad. Amidst the current research, conflicting findings exist on what effect ad recognition exerts on attitudinal reactions. This quantitative systematic review found that the effects observed in most studies are negative. Additionally, among these studies, those employing an article-style ad display more negative relationships than social media-style ads. Similarly, studies using binary measures of recognition uncovered more negative relationships compared to continuous measures. Moreover, brand attitudes had fewer negative relationships with ad recognition compared to advertising attitudes and publisher/poster attitudes.
There are growing discussions of social media influencers and their effectiveness in endorsing products. Further, recent policy regulations are requiring social media influencers to disclose ...sponsored content when using a form of native advertising. This research examined the effect of macro-influencers (high likes) and micro-influencers (low likes) and their disclosure of native advertising sponsorship on consumer evaluations of products. Results from a 2 × 2 experiment first show that consumers exposed to the micro-influencer condition report higher levels of product knowledge, and consumers exposed to the disclosure condition reported the products endorsed by social media influencers to be more attractive. The results also show that when exposed to micro-influencers who disclose, consumers have higher levels of purchase intentions than when exposed to macro-influencers who do not disclose, as well as higher purchase intentions than for posts where sponsorship is not disclosed by influencers. The important findings of this research for theory, practice and policy are discussed.
Native advertising is a relatively new form of online advertising that matches the format of surrounding non-advertising content. The fact that native advertising blends into its context risks ...deceiving consumers who may be unaware the content they are viewing is actually advertising. Article-style native advertising, a native ad form that mimics the style of online news articles, is particularly concerning since consumers may not expect advertising to appear in such a format. Such concern is supported by research finding low efficacy of traditional disclosures on article-style native advertisements. We investigate a novel means of increasing ad recognition through the use of companion banner advertising. Across two experiments we demonstrate that inclusion of a companion banner boosts consumer recognition of the paid nature of article-style native advertising to the same degree as a traditional disclosure. In both cases we also find that the negative reactions caused by ad recognition are muted when a native ad is perceived as having higher sponsorship transparency. These effects occur for both familiar and unfamiliar brands. Taken together, results not only detail the efficacy of a new means of achieving adequate disclosure, but also develop greater understanding of how consumers respond to article-style native advertising.
•Recognition of native advertising can be triggered by companion banner advertising.•Companion banner advertising results in the same ensuing effects as text disclosure.•Companion banner advertising is effective for both familiar and unfamiliar brands.•Perceptions of sponsorship transparency mitigate negative effect of ad recognition.
This study focused on the effects of sponsorship disclosure timing on children's ability to understand that social influencer videos are sponsored. The study also investigated how sponsorship ...disclosure timing affects children's attitudes toward the sponsoring brand, the video, and the influencer. An experiment among 272 children in early adolescence (10–13 years of age) was conducted using eye tracking. Results show that a disclosure shown prior to the start of the videos leads to more visual attention than a disclosure shown concurrently with the start of videos. Consequently, disclosure prior to the start of videos is better processed, as indicated by disclosure memory, which then leads to a better understanding that the content is sponsored. This understanding evokes a more critical attitude toward the sponsored content in the video, and results in less positive attitudes toward the brands, the videos, and the influencers. Theoretically, this study provides insights into the mechanisms that explain disclosure timing effects among children in early adolescence. Practically, this study offers recommendations to policy makers to develop sponsorship disclosures that can increase transparency of online embedded advertising to minors.
•Disclosures before the sponsored video lead to more visual attention than disclosures during the video.•Disclosures before the video lead to a better understanding among children that the content is sponsored.•This understanding evokes a more critical attitude among children toward the sponsored content.•Disclosures before the video eventually result in less positive brand, video, and influencer attitudes.
Professional journalism’s normative commitment to autonomy has long dictated the separation of editorial functions from advertising. However, the emergent practice of online native advertising ...complicates this division, resulting in conflicting visions of how journalistic authority should be established for digital news. This study examines reactions to a controversial Church of Scientology native advertisement on the Atlantic web site to assess how competing processes of norm-making and boundary work shape normative understandings of online journalism. Emergent understandings of content comprising both editorial and advertising components require new models for critical inquiry sufficiently sensitive to the online news environment.
Covert advertisements, or those that utilize the guise and delivery mechanisms of familiar non-advertising formats, differ from other more direct forms of advertising in several ways that are ...important for understanding users' psychological responses. Research across various covert advertising formats including various forms of sponsored editorial content, other native advertising formats, and product placement has shown that variation consumers' persuasive responses to such messages is largely driven by whether they recognize that such messages are advertising at all. After reviewing the findings of empirical research into covert advertising effects, we present a model of covert advertising recognition effects (CARE) that outlines potential antecedents and processes underlying the recognition of covert advertising, and maps several pathways to persuasive outcomes that are contingent on advertising recognition and perceptions related to the information in and perceived presentation of the advertisement itself.
This experiment with a representative sample of US adults (N = 800) examines the effects of disclosure design characteristics in sponsored news on readers’ ability to recognize such content as paid ...advertising, and examines whether such recognition differently affects perceptions of legacy and digital-first publishers. Although fewer than 1 in 10 participants were able to recognize native advertising, our study shows that effectively designed disclosure labels facilitate recognition. However, participants who did recognize native advertising had lessened opinions of the publisher and the institution of advertising, overall.
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