IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_10743.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Much Influencer Marketing Is Undisclosed? Evidence from Twitter

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel Ershov
  • Yanting, He
  • Stephan Seiler

Abstract

We quantify the prevalence of undisclosed influencer posts on Twitter across a large set of brands based on a unique data set of over 100 million posts. We develop a novel method to detect undisclosed influencer posts and find that 96% of influencer posts are not disclosed as such. 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 younger brands with a large Twitter following and are posted from smaller accounts that generate higher engagement per follower.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel Ershov & Yanting, He & Stephan Seiler, 2023. "How Much Influencer Marketing Is Undisclosed? Evidence from Twitter," CESifo Working Paper Series 10743, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10743
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10743.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dina Mayzlin & Yaniv Dover & Judith Chevalier, 2014. "Promotional Reviews: An Empirical Investigation of Online Review Manipulation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(8), pages 2421-2455, August.
    2. Matthew Mitchell, 2021. "Free ad(vice): internet influencers and disclosure regulation," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 52(1), pages 3-21, March.
    3. Itay P. Fainmesser & Andrea Galeotti, 2021. "The Market for Online Influence," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(4), pages 332-372, November.
    4. Sherry He & Brett Hollenbeck & Davide Proserpio, 2022. "The Market for Fake Reviews," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(5), pages 896-921, September.
    5. Amy Pei & Dina Mayzlin, 2022. "Influencing Social Media Influencers Through Affiliation," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(3), pages 593-615, May.
    6. Michael Luca & Georgios Zervas, 2016. "Fake It Till You Make It: Reputation, Competition, and Yelp Review Fraud," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(12), pages 3412-3427, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christoph Carnehl & Maximilian Schaefer & André Stenzel & Kevin Ducbao Tran, 2022. "Value for Money and Selection: How Pricing Affects Airbnb Ratings," Working Papers 684, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    2. Georgios Zervas & Davide Proserpio & John W. Byers, 2021. "A first look at online reputation on Airbnb, where every stay is above average," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 32(1), pages 1-16, March.
    3. Wang, Qiang & Zhang, Wen & Li, Jian & Ma, Zhenzhong, 2023. "Complements or confounders? A study of effects of target and non-target features on online fraudulent reviewer detection," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    4. Alexei Parahonyak & Nick Vikander, 2024. "Strategic Use of Product Delays to Shape Word-of-Mouth Communication," Economics Series Working Papers 1032, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    5. Young Joon Park & Jaewoo Joo & Charin Polpanumas & Yeujun Yoon, 2021. "“Worse Than What I Read?” The External Effect of Review Ratings on the Online Review Generation Process: An Empirical Analysis of Multiple Product Categories Using Amazon.com Review Data," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(19), pages 1-22, September.
    6. Harrison-Walker, L. Jean & Jiang, Ying, 2023. "Suspicion of online product reviews as fake: Cues and consequences," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).
    7. M. Narciso, 2022. "The Unreliability of Online Review Mechanisms," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 45(3), pages 349-368, September.
    8. Sungsik Park & Woochoel Shin & Jinhong Xie, 2021. "The Fateful First Consumer Review," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(3), pages 481-507, May.
    9. Lingfang (Ivy) Li & Steven Tadelis & Xiaolan Zhou, 2020. "Buying reputation as a signal of quality: Evidence from an online marketplace," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 51(4), pages 965-988, December.
    10. Plé, Loïc & Demangeot, Catherine, 2020. "Social contagion of online and offline deviant behaviors and its value outcomes: The case of tourism ecosystems," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 886-896.
    11. Gesche, Tobias, 2018. "Reference Price Shifts and Customer Antagonism: Evidence from Reviews for Online Auctions," VfS Annual Conference 2018 (Freiburg, Breisgau): Digital Economy 181650, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    12. Zhuang, Mengzhou & Cui, Geng & Peng, Ling, 2018. "Manufactured opinions: The effect of manipulating online product reviews," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 24-35.
    13. Vollaard, Ben & van Ours, Jan C., 2022. "Bias in expert product reviews," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 202(C), pages 105-118.
    14. Hung-Pin Shih & Pei-Chen Sung, 2021. "Addressing the Review-Based Learning and Private Information Approaches to Foster Platform Continuance," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 649-661, June.
    15. Surachartkumtonkun, Jiraporn (Nui) & Grace, Debra & Ross, Mitchell, 2021. "Unfair customer reviews: Third-party perceptions and managerial responses," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 631-640.
    16. Wen Zhang & Qiang Wang & Jian Li & Zhenzhong Ma & Gokul Bhandari & Rui Peng, 2023. "What makes deceptive online reviews? A linguistic analysis perspective," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-14, December.
    17. Apostolos Filippas & John J. Horton & Joseph M. Golden, 2022. "Reputation Inflation," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(4), pages 733-745, July.
    18. Theodoros Lappas & Gaurav Sabnis & Georgios Valkanas, 2016. "The Impact of Fake Reviews on Online Visibility: A Vulnerability Assessment of the Hotel Industry," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 27(4), pages 940-961, December.
    19. Weijia Dai & Hyunjin Kim & Michael Luca, 2023. "Frontiers: Which Firms Gain from Digital Advertising? Evidence from a Field Experiment," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(3), pages 429-439, May.
    20. Yassine Lefouili & Leonardo Madio, 2022. "The economics of platform liability," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 53(3), pages 319-351, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    social media; influencer marketing; advertising disclosure; consumer protection;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C55 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Large Data Sets: Modeling and Analysis
    • M31 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Marketing
    • M37 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Advertising
    • M38 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Government Policy and Regulation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10743. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.