DISCLOSURE PRACTICES IN SPONSORED CONTENT ON YOUTUBE
Open Access
- Author:
- Then, Weng Ee
- Graduate Program:
- Media Studies
- Degree:
- Master of Arts
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- February 25, 2019
- Committee Members:
- Denise Sevick Bortree, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Francis Erin Dardis, Committee Member
Fuyuan Shen, Committee Member - Keywords:
- sponsored content
youtube
disclosure - Abstract:
- In an attempt to identify the most effective disclosure practices in sponsored content on YouTube, this thesis presents a study that looks at different disclosure practices (i.e. positioning and duration) and its potential effects on advertisement recognition and people’s purchase intention, brand attitude, brand credibility and source credibility. This thesis specifically examined these practices and effects on sponsored beauty content created by beauty gurus on YouTube. To investigate these effects, this thesis utilized parasocial interaction theory and the persuasion knowledge model. Based on previous literature, different disclosure practices have led to different levels of advertisement recognition. When an advertisement is recognized as such, it activates people’s persuasion knowledge, which in turn has been found to lead to lower levels of purchase intention, brand attitude and brand credibility. However, when the current participants watched a sponsored beauty video with different disclosure practices, none of the conditions led to lower level of purchase intention, brand attitude and brand credibility. The results did show that when there was disclosure, the presence of a strong parasocial relationship between the participant and the beauty guru in the video led to participants perceiving the beauty guru as more credible. This thesis discusses these results and attempted to understand why they occurred.