Advertising disclosure in sponsored vlogs: an eye-tracking study on the effects of disclosure timing and the moderating role of disclosure type

Abstract

Regulations prescribe that sponsored influencer vlogs on social media should clearly disclose the embedded advertising to naive viewers. This study conducts an eye-tracking experiment involving 200 Chinese college students (18–30 years of age) to investigate how disclosure timing and disclosure type affect advertising effectiveness, including brand trust, brand attitude, purchase intention, and electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) intent. The results showed that, compared to post-disclosure, prior disclosure attracted more viewers’ visual attention, leading to higher persuasion knowledge activation, and then negatively affected para-social interaction (PSI), resulting in decreased advertising effectiveness. Meanwhile, the higher visual attention allocation to the prior disclosure also activated higher sponsorship transparency perception, which then increased the PSI and, subsequently, led to more positive advertising effectiveness. However, these relationships were only significant for implicit (vs. explicit) disclosure. This study provides theoretical and practical implications for disclosure usage in Chinese influencer marketing.

Keywords:

• Chinese influencer marketing
• disclosure
• sponsored vlogs
• eye-tracking
• advertising effectiveness

Acknowledgments

The authors thank all the team members in the Human Factors Engineering Laboratory of Northeastern University and all the experiment participants in this research. The authors also express their appreciation to the editors and reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 72071035 and 71771045.

Notes on contributors

Fu Guo

Fu Guo is a professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering, School of Business Administration, Northeastern University, Shenyang, China. Her research interests include Human Factors, Kansei Engineering, User Experience Design, Human-Robot Interaction, and Occupational Safety and Health. She has published many research studies in a range of journals, including The Journal of Advertising, The International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, Ergonomics, and Human Factors.

Jingyu Li

Jingyu Li is an employee of Chinergy. Co., LTD. She received her master’s degree in Management Science and Engineering at the School of Business Administration, Northeastern University, China. Her research interests include Influencer Marketing, Brand Placement, Human-Computer Interaction, and Human Factors. She has published research in The International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction.

Guoquan Ye

Guoquan Ye is an assistant professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Xiamen University, China. His research interests focus on Brand Placement, Influencer Marketing, Media Multitasking, and Computational Communication. He has published many research works in a range of journals, including The Journal of Advertising, Frontiers in Psychology, and The Journal of Consumer Behaviour.

Zeyu Zhang

Zeyu Zhang is currently working toward his Ph.D. degree in Management Science and Engineering at the School of Business Administration, Northeastern University, Shenyang, China. His current research interests include Human-Computer Interaction, User Experience, and Sentiment Analysis in Natural Language Processing. He has published research in China Mechanical Engineering and The Chinese Journal of Ergonomics.

Jiahao Chen

Jiahao Chen is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Industrial Engineering, School of Business Administration, Northeastern University, China. He obtained his master’s degree in Human Factors from Northeastern University in 2020. His research interests include Human Factors, Human-Chatbot Interaction, Voice Interaction, User Experience Design, and Human-Robot Interaction. He has published research in Universal Access in the Information Society.