Disclosing sponsored Instagram posts: the role of material connection with the brand and message-sidedness when disclosing covert advertising

By Marijke De Veirman, Liselot Hudders. International Journal of Advertising, 2019

339 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Regulation prescribes that sponsored social media posts should clearly disclose their material connection with brands. However, research on the impact of such disclosures is limited. This study used an experimental 4 × 2 between-subjects design (N = 414), reflecting different types of material connections between the influencer and the brand and two kinds of message sidedness, to investigate how the sponsorship disclosure affects consumers' responses to sponsored Instagram posts. Findings show that including a sponsorship disclosure (compared to no disclosure) negatively affects brand attitude through enhanced ad recognition, which activates ad skepticism, which, in turn, negatively affects the influencer's credibility. Further, results show a significant moderated mediation effect in that source's credibility and, consequently, brand attitude was only negatively affected when the influencer used a one-sided message and not when the message was two-sided. Also, influencers who post genuine product recommendations and thus have no commercial relationship with the brand, do well by explicitly mentioning this. Iincluding a statement that a post is not sponsored, rather than leaving thisit unclear whether their post is sponsored, may generate more positive brand responses through lowered ad recognition and skepticism.

Subfields: Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ea62ce1cbdde0743c2ddd9ab13a29206dd75953d

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In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Under the Influence: Social Media Influencers’ Impact on Response to Corporate Reputation Advertising (2021, background): “Similarly, De Veirman and Hudders (2019) found that disclosing sponsorship activated PK regardless of the type of the compensation (monetary versus material) and increased ad skepticism, which in turn, leads to negative evaluations about the brand”
Blind trust? The importance and interplay of parasocial relationships and advertising disclosures in explaining influencers’ persuasive effects on their followers (2021, neutral): “…ad recognition and persuasion knowledge and thus lessened the persuasive impact (e.g., Boerman 2020; Boerman, Willemsen, and van der Aa 2017; De Veirman and Hudders 2020; Stubb and Colliander 2019); a few studies, however, have reported non-significant results or even an enhanced persuasive…”
Keeping up with influencers: exploring the impact of social presence and parasocial interactions on Instagram (2021, background): “More importantly, sponsorship disclosure not only affects brand attitudes but also influencers’ credibility by activating consumers’ skepticism (de veirman and Hudders 2020).”
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).”