Parenting “YouTube Natives”: The Impact of Pre-Roll Advertising and Text Disclosures on Parental Responses to Sponsored Child Influencer Videos

By Nathaniel J. Evans, Mariea Grubbs Hoy, C. Childers. Journal of Advertising, 2018

89 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The Children's Advertising Review Unit's recent press releases involving child influencer unboxing videos expressed concern that they did not appropriately disclose sponsorship. Placement of pre-roll advertising was also cited as contributing to the blurring between content and advertising. This study investigated parents’ understanding of and responses to sponsored child influencer unboxing videos. We conducted a 2 × 3 online experiment among 418 parents that examined the influence of sponsorship text disclosure (present or absent) and sponsor pre-roll (sponsor pre-roll, nonsponsor pre-roll, and no pre-roll) on conceptual persuasion knowledge, perceptions of sponsorship transparency, and several outcome measures. We also tested the potential moderating variable of parental mediation. We found that sponsor pre-roll advertising positively impacted parents’ perceptions of sponsorship transparency, which in turn mediated attitudinal and perceptual outcomes. In addition, high levels of parental mediation conditionally impacted the indirect effect of a sponsor pre-roll advertisement via sponsorship transparency on perceptions of the unboxing video and attitudes toward the sponsor. Based on the findings, we discuss theoretical, managerial, and public policy implications.

Subfields: Education, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/539f61c97b0ed942577ce85f6045f4b5b5345523

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Citations in the corpus

Social Media Influencers and Followers: Theorization of a Trans-Parasocial Relation and Explication of Its Implications for Influencer Advertising (2021, background): “…have further examined the agency perspective on influencer campaigns (Childers, Lemon, and Hoy 2019), as well as the effect of sponsorship disclosure on consumer reactions (e.g., De Veirman and Hudders 2020; Evans, Hoy, and Childers 2018; Lou, Tan, and Chen 2019; Van Reijmersdal et al. 2020).”
The Covert Advertising Recognition and Effects (CARE) model: Processes of persuasion in native advertising and other masked formats (2020, background): “…(Evans et al. 2018), sponsored news content (Campbell and Evans 2018; Krouwer, Poels, and Paulussen 2019a), and sponsored YouTube unboxing videos (Evans, Hoy, and Childers 2018) demonstrate that consumers’ advertising or publisherrelated attitudes, perceptions, or behavioral intention can be…”
Blind trust? The importance and interplay of parasocial relationships and advertising disclosures in explaining influencers’ persuasive effects on their followers (2021, background): “Study 2 Advertising disclosures and persuasion knowledge As already mentioned, influencer marketing can be considered a form of native advertising and thus has raised ethical concerns (e.g., Evans, Hoy, and Childers 2018).”