The development and testing of a pictogram signaling advertising in online videos

Abstract

Although influencer marketing has become an important advertising strategy, it has one major challenge: its lack of transparency. Young people often struggle to distinguish commercial from non-commercial content, making them particularly susceptible to influencer marketing. In response to the Dutch Media Act, we aim to develop and test a Kijkwijzer pictogram that that clearly signals advertising (i.e. influencer marketing) in online videos to minors (8–18 year-olds). The project comprised three phases: (1) an inventory phase including a cocreation workshop, (2) a survey (N = 248) gaining insights into minors’ associations with a selection of pictograms, and (3) a preregistered online experiment (N = 656) to compare the effectiveness of selected pictograms in increasing advertising literacy. The cocreation workshop and the survey resulted in three pictograms that were associated with advertising and sponsored content and deemed appropriate by the minors to signal influencer marketing in online videos. However, results of the online experiment showed no effects of these pictograms on conceptual and affective advertising literacy. Overall, the findings show the difficulty of creating one effective pictogram that is preferred by all age groups, and the value of the different research phases.

Keywords:

• Influencer marketing
• transparency
• pictogram
• advertising literacy
• minors
• online video
• persuasion knowledge

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available via figshare (https://figshare.com/projects/Kijkwijzer_icon/173697):

Boerman, Sophie C., Esther Rozendaal, and Eva A. van Reijmersdal (2023). Data Phase 2 Survey. figshare. Dataset. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.23775648.v1

Boerman, Sophie C., Esther Rozendaal, and Eva A. van Reijmersdal (2023). Data Phase 3 Experiment. figshare. Dataset. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.23775711.v1

The preregistration of the experiment can be found at: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/KYW2X.

Notes

1 The pre-registration included two additional RQs (RQ4: What do minors think the three pictograms mean?; RQ5: a) which pictogram do minors prefer, b) why, and c) does pictogram preference differ between age groups?) to replicate the survey findings. For reasons of conciseness and clarity, and because these RQs do not fit the experimental logic, we report the findings for these RQs in the online appendix.

Additional information

Funding

This project is funded by the NWA Ideas Generator (NWA.1228.192.016).