The Effects of Influencer Advertising Disclosure Regulations: Evidence From Instagram
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We collect data from fifty top Instagram influencers in Germany and Spain from 2014 to 2019. Germany experienced changes in disclosure regulation for social media sponsorship during the sample period. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we study the impact of the the rules on the content of posts and the nature of interaction of followers with the posts. On the content side, we measure whether posts include suggested disclosure terms and show variable but substantial adoption of disclosure. We use an approach based on a fixed list of words associated with sponsorship (i.e. links, mentions of brands, use of words like "sale") as well as natural language processing to assess the likelihood that a post is sponsored. We show that sponsored content use may have increased after changes in disclosure and that followers may have been negatively affected. On the other hand, there is evidence that consumers' reaction to sponsored posts, measured by likes, may be quite different under stricter disclosure rules, suggesting that the rules could have a substantial impact on information transmission.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.014 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".