Effects of Disclosing Influencer Marketing in Videos: An Eye Tracking Study among Children in Early Adolescence

Abstract

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.

Social media influencer marketing: A systematic review, integrative framework and future research agenda

“…According to Van Reijmersdal et al (2020), a disclosure prior to a video triggers critical attitudes regarding the sponsored content, which results in more negative attitudes towards the brand, the content and the influencer. helped reconcile the disparate outcomes of disclosure pointed out in extant research.…”

Understanding which cues people use to identify influencer marketing on Instagram: an eye tracking study and experiment

“…Some studies even show that disclosures cannot activate persuasion knowledge when people do not attend to them (e.g. Boerman and Van Reijmersdal 2020;Van Reijmersdal et al 2020).…”

Testing the Effectiveness of a Disclosure in Activating Children’s Advertising Literacy in the Context of Embedded Advertising in Vlogs

“…Research on children's advertising literacy activation traditionally measures this concept using self-reported questionnaires (e.g., Rozendaal et al, 2016a;De Pauw et al, 2017). The few studies that explored the effects of a sponsorship disclosure in sponsored vlogs (De Jans et al, 2019a;Van Reijmersdal et al, 2020) also used selfreport questionnaires to measure the extent to which children activate their advertising literacy while watching sponsored vlogs. However, there are several disadvantages of using self-reporting (for an overview, see Hoek et al, 2019).…”