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.