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

While influencer marketing is gaining importance as a social media advertising strategy and guidelines require influencers to disclose the practice, it is still unclear whether Instagram users recognize and understand this type of advertising. This study aims to gain insights into the level of persuasion knowledge of influencer marketing on Instagram, and which cues Instagram users use to identify influencer marketing. An eye tracking study (N = 67) and an online experiment (N = 371) reveal that (1) Instagram users seem to be aware of influencer marketing but also make mistakes in identifying it within their Instagram feed, (2) users pay most attention to brand tags in pictures and ‘Paid partnership’ labels and least attention to #ad, and (3) disclosures, brand presence, and influencer type all influence the level of conceptual persuasion knowledge. Although previous research has shown that disclosures can be important drivers of persuasion knowledge activation, this study is the first to reveal that bottom-up factors such as brand presence and the type of influencer can also have this effect. Importantly, our findings signal that the lines between non-commercial and commercial content on Instagram are still blurred.