How Much Influencer Marketing Is Undisclosed? Evidence from Twitter

Daniel Ershov, He Yanting and Stephan Seiler

No 10743, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We study the disclosure of influencer posts on Twitter across a large set of brands based on a unique data set of over 100 million posts and a novel classification method to detect undisclosed sponsorship. Using our preferred empirical specification we find that 96% of sponsored posts are not disclosed. This result is robust to a series of specification tests and even a lower bound classification still yield an undisclosed share of 82%. Despite stronger enforcement of disclosure regulations, the share of undisclosed posts decreases only slightly over time. Compared to disclosed posts, undisclosed posts tend to be associated with young brands with a large Twitter following. Using an online survey we find that many consumers are not able to identify sponsored content without disclosure. Our findings highlight a potential need for further regulatory scrutiny and suggest that researchers studying influencers must account for non-disclosed sponsored content.

Keywords: social media; influencer marketing; advertising disclosure; consumer protection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C55 M31 M37 M38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mkt and nep-pay
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