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New in Marketing Science has found that 95% of sponsored influencer posts on Twitter (now X) are not disclosed.

The authors of the study are Daniel Ershov from University College London and the Center for Economic Policy Research in London; Yanting He from Imperial College London; and Stephan Seiler from the Center for Economic Policy Research and Imperial College London.

The researchers further found that when compared with posts that disclose a sponsorship arrangement, undisclosed posts tend to be associated with young "brands" with a large social media following.

"Our study findings highlight a potential need for further regulatory scrutiny," says He.

What is influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing is an emergent means to reach the consuming public through alternative channels to traditional advertising, such as broadcast and print media. Influencer marketing leverages private individuals to promote brands, products or services, in which those individuals are compensated for their endorsements. Typically, "influencers" are selected on the basis of their large social media followings and/or celebrity status.

"Because consumers might find it difficult to distinguish paid influencer posts from genuinely organic content, regulators in many countries now require any paid content to be disclosed," says Ershov. "But because of the novelty associated with influencer marketing, the evolving regulatory framework has not caught up."

Study researchers used a novel dataset of over 100 million brand-related posts on Twitter from 268 brands, along with a new text-based classification approach that identified undisclosed sponsored content. They then quantified the overall importance of undisclosed influencer posts to evaluate whether consumers could detect undisclosed commercial content. They tracked the evolution of undisclosed posts over time, and were able to identify the brands from which undisclosed posts originated.

"We found that a large number of participants in an online survey were not able to identify commercial content when that content did not provide disclosure," says Seiler. "We also demonstrated that although regulations did tighten during our sample period from 2014 to 2021, the share of undisclosed content decreased only slightly."

In addition, the researchers found that undisclosed sponsored posts tended to originate from younger brands with large Twitter followings.