Proceedings of the 56th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences | 2023
Content Creator versus Brand Advertiser? The Effect of Inserting
Advertisements in Videos on Influencers Engagement
Tengteng Ma
University of Illinois at Chicago University of Illinois at Chicago
tma24@uic.edu yingdalu@uic.edu
Xi Chen
Zhejiang University
chen_xi@zju.edu.cn
Abstract
Influencer advertising has become an
indispensable component of online marketing due to
the exponential growth of social influencers and their
influence. Whereas the effectiveness of using
influencer endorsements is well studied from the brand
or company perspective, how the commercial
endorsements affect influencers themselves is an
important yet unrevealed question. We empirically
examine the instantaneous (measured using live
comment sentiment) and longer-term (measured using
video feedback and follower number change)
influence of inserting advertisements in videos on
influencers’ reputation. We further investigate how
this effect can be moderated when influencers
demonstrate stronger endorsement by showing their
faces during advertisements. Our result suggests that
inserting advertisements have a negative impact on
both instantaneous and longer-term viewer
engagement; advertisements with influencers’ face
showing moderate the negative effect of
advertisements on viewers’ instantaneous response,
while the different impact between advertisements
with/out influencers showing their faces is not
significant in the longer term.
Keywords: influencer marketing, video
advertisement, social media.
1. Introduction
Social media platforms such as YouTube,
Instagram, and more recently TikTok, have reached
unprecedented success in breeding social media stars
who have a significant number of followers online.
These social media stars, or micro-celebrities have
built strong bonds with followers by sharing extensive
experience and insight into their followers (Hudders et
al. 2021). Given the emergence of social media
influencers, ever-increasing brands are using social
media influencers to broadcast their products. On
URI: https://hdl.handle.net/10125/103068
978-0-9981331-6-4
(CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Yingda Lu Yuheng Hu
University of Illinois at Chicago
yuhenghu@uic.edu
Yuxin Chen
NYU Shanghai
yc18@nyu.edu
social media, brands collaborate with influencers by
providing monetary incentives in exchange for
brand/product mention, review or endorsement in their
videos (Stubb et al. 2019). Unlike the pop-up ads on
YouTube, these inserted advertisements are usually
designed by the influencer, thus can be related to the
video content (e.g., a food blogger endorses a cheese
brand when making a cheesecake). Influencers also
decide the position and the length of the
advertisement. This flexibility enables influencer
advertising to target users accurately and potentially
alleviate negative attitudes toward advertisements,
which further explain the prosperity of influencer
marketing in recent years. In this paper, we define
“inserted advertisements in influencers’ videos” as
sponsored content and advertisements designed and
inserted by the influencers in their videos. Note that
these advertisements are highly embedded in the video
content and usually cannot be skipped through ad-
blockers.
To date, existing studies in the influencer
marketing literature primarily focus on how brands
can benefit from using influencer advertising and the
corresponding strategy of prompting product exposure
(Lou and Yuan 2019; Ren 2021; Schouten et al. 2020).
Yet, there is a scarcity of studies on the impact of
product endorsement on influencers themselves. In
fact, social media influencers face a trade-off between
endorsing products and maintaining popularity. On
one hand, sponsorship is a major source of income for
influencers. On the other hand, advertisements have a
negative effect on viewers’ experience (Evans et al.
2017; Kelly et al. 2010), which can be detrimental to
influencers’ popularity. Therefore, a comprehensive
analysis of advertisement effect on viewer responses
from an omni-dimensional perspective is needed.
Specifically, we distinguish instantaneous feedback
(measured using Live Comments) versus relatively
long-term feedback (measured using videos’ numbers
of likes, favorites, coins, shares and influencers’
follower change) in this study. Figure 1 illustrates an
example of the omni-dimensional audience feedback.
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The key difference between instantaneous and long-
term feedback is that, viewers can post live comments
at the moment while watching the video content, so
that live comments reflect the instantaneous attitude of
audiences towards advertisement; however, long-term
feedback usually happens when audiences finish
watching the entire video (e.g., give a thumbs up after
watching a YouTube video), the evaluation of which
is based on the overall content of the video or the
impression of the influencer. While traditional
marketing literatures attempt to examine the lasting
effect of advertising compared with the short-term
change in purchasing decisions (Wang et al 2009),
there is a dearth of literature examine the
instantaneous versus long term effect of advertising on
content generators’ reputation. To this definitive end,
it is requisite to answer the following question:
RQ1: How do inserted advertisements affect
different types of audience feedback (i.e.,
instantaneous feedback v.s. long-term feedback)?
While researchers are overwhelmingly leveraging
multiple methods to explore strategies to enhance the
efficacy of influencer marketing in the light of product
or brand broadcasting and promotion, we focus on a
rarely studied angle on the optimal advertising strategy
for influencers: face showing. Influencers can control
the way of communicating with audiences by
manipulating the degree of self-disclosure and social
presence by adopt various strategies to endorse
sponsored products or brand, such as changing voice
(Hwang et al. 2021) and mentioning the brand in a
particular time (Rajaram and Manchanda 2021).
However, the role of face communication is a vital but
understudied aspect in influencer marketing. Face
showing has displayed its avails of prompting viewers’
engagement rate indicated by the number of likes and
comments (Bakhshi et al. 2014). Whether this result
can be generalized to influencer marketing on social
media platforms is yet not clear. On one hand,
advertising products with displaying faces might
increase a sense of trust for viewers; on the other hand,
identified as a group of people who are both organic
content creators and brand advertisers, influencers
should be extremely carefully in their way of product
endorsement as it is a reputation consumption. Thus
we propose the second research question:
RQ2: Whether influencers’ face showing
moderates the effect of advertisement on different
types of audience feedback?
To answer the above research questions, we
collect data from Bilibili.com, one of the major
Chinese video platforms. Bilibili.com is a Chinese
video sharing website similar to YouTube where users
can submit, view and add overlaid commentary on
videos. On Bilibili.com, there are several channels for
viewers to express their feedbacks (Figure 1),
including: (1) posting live comments while watching
the video, i.e., a unique feature of Bilibili.com that
enables viewers to post comments. Distinguished from
traditional comments that are listed below the video
together, live comments are recorded and rolling
displayed in sync with video content; (2) leaving
feedback toward the video (e.g., like, favorite, coin,
share), (3) following or unfollowing the video author.
Figure 1. Example of audience feedback on
Bilibili.com
We collect live comments and video feedback
indicators of more than 344,130 videos that are
generated by the top 5,000 popular influencers on the
website from Jun.01 2020 to Jun.01 2021, as well as
the influencers’ daily follower number during the
same time period. We leverage Propensity Score
Matching and difference-in-differences (DID) models
to empirically examine the effect of inserting
advertisements on viewers’ preference toward
influencers by exploiting instantaneous feedback (i.e.,
live comments) and long-term feedback (i.e., like,
favorite, coin, share, follower change). Next, we
employ deep learning based face recognition
techniques to identify whether the influencer shows up
during the advertisement, and further examine whether
enhanced endorsement can moderate the effect of
inserted advertisement on audience feedback. The key
result from our empirical estimation suggests that 1)
inserting advertisements have a negative impact on
viewers’ instantaneous and long-term feedback; 2)
Compared with advertisements without influencers’
faces, influencers’ face displaying moderate the
negative effect on instantaneous audience attitude in
live comments. 3) however, the difference impact
between advertisements with/out influencers’ face
showing in long term is not significant.
This study contributes to prior literature in three
ways. First, we are one of the first research that
examines the impact of advertising on influencers’
reputation. We emphasize the important question of
influencers’ dilemma on balancing between
maintaining popularity and earning income from
sponsored content, and we pioneer in exploring the
effect of inserting advertisements in videos from the
perspective of influencers, rather than brands or
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companies. In particular, we distinguish the
instantaneous viewer feedback from long-term
feedback using a unique dataset. Second, we are one
of the first studies that investigate the moderate effect
of influencers’ face showing during advertisements. In
addition, we also show that using deep learning
algorithms can extract important video features that
are critical for the managerial decisions of influencers
and platforms. Lastly, our findings provide guidelines
for both influencers and social media platforms.
2. Theoretical Background and Related
Literature
2.1. Influencer Marketing
With the flourish of social media platforms such
as Instagram and TikTok, brands are increasingly
favoring social media influencers for advertisement
compared to traditional celebrity. Influencer
endorsements now become a popular way for
marketers to promote their brands, products, and
services. Ever-increasing studies have evidenced the
advantages of influencer marketing. A recent study
(Schouten et al. 2020) investigates the impact of
celebrity vs. influencer endorsements on advertising
effectiveness and finds that consumers identify more
with influencers than celebrities, feel closer to
influencers than celebrities, and trust influencers more
than celebrities. Due to the extensive experience with
and insight into their followers, influencers build
strong bonds with followers by creating a sense of
shared interests in a specific area (Campbell and
Farrell 2020). A wealth of research shows that
increasing influencer-product congruence has a
positive effect on followers’ product attitude, brand
engagement, brand awareness and purchase intentions
(Argyris et al. 2020; Kim and Kim 2021; Lou and
Yuan 2019). Parasocial relationship between
influencers and audience has also received substantial
attention in influencer marketing domain in the past
years. Explicit evidence is provided to show that a
strong parasocial relationship increases the perceived
credibility of the influencer (Reinikainen et al. 2020;
Shan et al. 2020; Yuan and Lou 2020).
2.2. Audience Perception of Sponsorship
Disclosure
Some studies explore the audience perception or
feedback on sponsorship disclosure in influencer
marketing. By conducting an online survey, Lou and
Yuan (2019) find that informative value of influencer-
generated content and the influencer’s trustworthiness
positively affect followers’ trust in influencers’
branded posts. Evans et al. (2017) reveal that
advertising disclosure will lead to higher advertising
recognition compared to no advertising disclosure, yet
no evidence on more negative attitudes or lower
purchase intention. Gerrath and Usrey (2020) examine
how followers react to influencers’ incentivized
review, and the results of one survey, three
experiments, and one field study indicate that
influencer type (e.g., review vs. lifestyle) plays an
important role in determining followers’ perception of
influencer authenticity.
However, most existing studies on audience
perception of sponsorship disclosure focus on brand or
product related outcomes, such as self-reported
purchase intention and brand awareness. Despite the
rapid growth of influencer marketing, the possible side
effect of such product endorsement content on
influencers themselves has been understudied in
academia. One exception is Cheng and Zhang (2022),
who investigate the impact of brand sponsorship on
social influencers by examining sponsored videos on
YouTube and corresponding audience engagement
and sentiment toward influencers. Their result shows
that the negative effect of brand sponsorship on
reputation involves less engagement with sponsored
videos and less trust in the video/influencer. However,
they focus on relatively longer-term viewer feedbacks
(i.e., like action or comment sentiment), hence missing
a comprehensive reveal of the overall effect at
different levels. Different from traditional comments
that are usually posted by audiences after watching the
video and listed below the video, live comments
provide a function that allows audiences to post
comments while watching video play synchronously.
This unique feature enables us to capture
instantaneous feedbacks.
2.3. Advertising Strategy and Enhanced Face
communication
The optimal strategy of influencer marketing has
been increasingly discussed in recent literature.
Hwang et al. (2021) examine the voice change during
influencers’ sponsored videos and find that influencers
choose a soft selling strategy and tone down their
voice loudness significantly in sponsored videos. This
voice modulation strategy can help influencers win
back favorable consumer sentiment. Ren (2021)
proposes that high real-time interactivity should be
adopted to prompt brand loyalty during live stream
shopping. Rajaram and Manchanda (2021) find that
brand mentions in the first 30 seconds of a video are
on average associated with a significant increase in
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attention to the brand but a significant decrease in
sentiment expressed towards the video.
While the voice and time related strategies are
explored in existing studies, the visual factors are still
understudied. In the context of video sharing platforms
such as Bilibili.com, face showing during
advertisement can be regarded as an indicator of
enhanced endorsement. To understand whether face
communication influences the relationship between
inserted advertisements and audience feedback, we
turn to social presence theory, which refers to the
degree of sociable, warm and personal of the
communication perceived by people (Kim 2021). In a
computer-mediated communication environment,
more anthropomorphic (human-like) computer
representations elicit more social responses from
people (Gong 2008). Theory of self-disclosure
indicates that communication through sharing intimate
personal information about themselves enhances
feelings of connection (Utz 2015) and perceived
closeness (Lin and Utz 2017). Leite and Baptista
(2021) find that self-disclosure is positively related to
parasocial relationship intensity, in turn casts a
positive effect on consumers’ purchase intention.
Therefore, face showing is a typical format of social
presence and self-disclosure in social media, which
might reduce audiences’ negative feedback. This line
of reasoning is further supported by a wealth of
research showing that showing face can improve
viewer engagement (Bakhshi et al. 2014; Zhao et al.
2021).
3. Research Methodology
To investigate the abovementioned research
questions, we collect data from Bilibili.com, a leading
Chinese video sharing website that has over 233
million active users. Through Bilibili API, we collect
information of top 5000 popular influencers (ranked
by follower numbers), including their id, name,
number of followers and account created time. Then,
we collect the video information posted by these
influencers between Jun.01 2020 and Jun.01 2021,
including video id, length, description, type id, created
time, play count, audience feedback indicators (like
count, favorite count, coin count, share count), and the
corresponding live comments that consist of text
content, timestamp and user id of each comment.
Furthermore, we also gather the number of follower
1 new products to influencers for free and ask them to produce a
“Sponsored videos” refer to videos that are purely commercial
collaboration between influencers and brands where the entire
video content is product promotion. This is in comparison with
advertisement inserted into videos where only a small proportion
of videos are advertisements. For instance, some brands send their
information of the influencers during the same period
mentioned above. Our dataset consists of 344,130
videos generated by 5000 influencers, including video
information, live comment information, author
information and their follower number history during
the collection period.
Compared with popup advertisement, it is much
more challenging in identifying in-video
advertisements as such advertisements are generally
not labeled by influencers. To address this challenge,
we utilize a unique comment culture among viewers to
identify advertisements inserted into videos. On
Bilibili.com, viewers usually post specific slangs in
live comment channel to indicate their recognition of
advertisements. We take advantage of this convention
to identify the presence and location of endorsement
content through investigating related keywords. Given
the large amount of viewership for each video, even if
a small percentage of viewers post these slangs, we can
still observe a reasonable number of slangs to help
identify the existence and location of product
endorsement within video. To further validate this
strategy, we recruit a renowned data labeling company
to manually watch and identify the videos that might
have inserted advertisements. Specifically, we
distinguish the sponsored videos 1 and those regular
videos with inserted advertisements and label the
corresponding starting and ending position of the
inserted advertisements in the latter case. The labeling
result is further validated by two professional research
assistants, suggesting an above 95% accuracy. After
data cleaning and removing outliers (e.g., extremely
long/short videos), we obtain 10,100 videos with
inserted advertisements. We further exploit propensity
score matching to match videos with inserted
advertisements using the remaining videos without
advertisements, and regard them as a control group for
inserted advertisement videos. We use both influencer
information (number of followers, account created
time, and total number of videos) and video
information (video length, type id, upload time, play
count) in our propensity score matching. The well-
aligned distribution illustrates the balanced matching
performance (Figure 2). To further ensure no ads are
inserted in videos in control group, we again recruit
the data labeling company to manually watch the
videos to confirm. Finally, we are able to match the
10,100 videos and build balanced treated and control
groups.
product review/evaluation video to achieve the effect of
broadcasting new products. This study does not focus on how the
purely sponsored content affect influencers’ reputation. Instead, we
examine the effectiveness of inserting advertisement in
influencers’ regular videos on influencers reputation.
Page 3570
 Follo The follower number
wersh on day 𝑑 minus the -
Follower_ 1027
ip follower number on 973 3543 5650
change 793
day 𝑑 − 1 for 82
influencer 𝑖.

4. Empirical Model and Results

4.1. Instantaneous feedback

(a) Distribution of propensity score
We use live comments to measure viewers’
Figure 2. Distribution of propensity score and
variable before and after propensity score instantaneous feedback. To investigate such
matching instantaneous change of audience engagement and
To address our research questions, we conduct sentiment influenced by advertisements, we examine
face recognition using deep learning method to detect the live comments posted between a specific time
whether the influencer shows his or her face during window. Specifically, we set the starting position of
advertisements. First, we collect the 10,100 treated the inserted advertisement as time 𝑡0 , and label 1-
videos and capture frames every 5 seconds. Next, we minute sessions before and after 𝑡0 respectively, that
perform face recognition using a deep learning model is [𝑡0 − 1 𝑚𝑖𝑛, 𝑡0 + 1 𝑚𝑖𝑛].
named “face_recognition” to detect whether a face 𝐸𝑛𝑔𝑎𝑔𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑣𝑖𝑡 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1 ∙ 𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖𝑡 ∙
shows in each frame. If a human face is detected, we 𝐴𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑡 + 𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖𝑡 + 𝐴𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑡 + 𝐼𝑛𝑓𝑙𝑢𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑖 +
identify whether the face is from the influencer. We 𝜖𝑣𝑖𝑡 (1-1)
extract each influencer’s face manually and compare Here 𝑡 represents the index of 5-second time slots,
them with the faces captured in the videos. As a result, ranging from -12 (1 minute before 𝑡0 ) to 12 (1 minute
we find 3,858 videos have the influencer’s face during after 𝑡0 ). The dependent variable 𝐸𝑛𝑔𝑎𝑔𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑣𝑖𝑡
advertisement period. captures instantaneous feedback at an aggregated
We propose nine measurements to level, including the number of comments,
comprehensively depict audience reaction to inserted commenters, comments per commenter, and average
advertisements, which reveal the effect on influencers’ comment sentiment at time slot 𝑡 in video 𝑣 that are
reputation. Specifically, we consider live comment posted by influencer 𝑖 . The treatment variable
level, video feedback level and followership level 𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖𝑡 equals 1 if the video 𝑣 belongs to treated
variables to measure the omni-dimensional effect. The group (i.e., videos with inserted advertisements), and
detailed descriptions of measurements are listed in zero otherwise. The time variable 𝐴𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑡 equals 1 if
Table 1. time slot 𝑡 is greater or equal to 𝑡0 , and 0 otherwise.
Table 1. Descriptive statistics of key variables We also control unobserved heterogeneity across
Variable Description Mean SD Min Max influencers by introducing fixed effects of
Live Number of comments
com
Comment_
posted for video 𝑣 11.16 15.62 1 1181 𝐼𝑛𝑓𝑙𝑢𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑖 . 𝜖𝑣𝑖𝑡 is the error term.
count
ment within session 𝑡. Table 2 shows the key results. We observe a
Number of viewers significant increase in the number of live comments
Commenter who post comment for
_count video 𝑣 within session
10.95 15.27 1 1054 (column (1), 3.249, p<0.001), number of live
𝑡. commenters (column (2), 3.228, p<0.001). However,
Comment_p
The average comment the comment frequency indicated by
number for each
er_comment
viewer for video 𝑣
1.02 0.12 1 18 comment/commenter decreases after advertisements
er (column (3), -0.0032, p<0.1). In terms of average
within session 𝑡.
The averaged sentiment of live comments, we see a significant drop
sentiment score of off (column (4), -0.027, p<0.001). Apparently, after
Sentiment 0.59 0.15 0 1
comments for video 𝑣
within session 𝑡. seeing inserted advertisements, more viewers tend to
Video
Like
The number of likes of
24211 56854 65
1307 post live comments, and they are more likely to post
feedb the video 𝑣. 926 negative live comments. Therefore, inserting
ack The number of
Favorite favorites of the
4200.
14409 0
4731 advertisements leads to negative instantaneous
85 80 feedback in live comments.
video 𝑣.
Coin
The number of coins
7972 33899 1
1347 Table 2. Estimation result for live comment (model
of the video 𝑣. 057 1-1)
The number of shares 1745 (1) (2) (3) (4)
Share 1175 4520 0
of the video 𝑣. 88 Dep. Comment Comment Comment_per_ Average
_count er_count commenter sentiment
After* 3.249*** 3.228*** -0.003* -0.027***

Page 3571
 Treat (0.250) (0.244) (0.002) (0.002) hypothesis of these two coefficients at 1% level for
Treat -0.681*** -0.667*** 0.002 -0.002
(0.238) (0.233) (0.002) (0.002) comment count, commenter count and average
After -0.797*** -0.793*** 0.00165 0.004* sentiment, 10% for comment per commenter, which
(0.239) (0.233) (0.00174) (0.002) means that the coefficients 𝛽1 and 𝛽2 are
Const_ 10.970*** 10.76*** 1.017*** 0.589***
ant (0.225) (0.219) (0.00164) (0.002) statistically different from each other, indicating
FE Y Y Y Y that advertisements without influencers’ faces
N 188,103 188,103 188,103 188,103 prompt audience engagement in terms of number of
R^2 0.165 0.167 0.153 0.107
Standard errors in parentheses *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1 comment and commenters, yet leading to worse
To further examine the moderate role of face sentiment. The result reveals that the negative
showing, we stratify the videos with inserted instantaneous feedback posted by audiences can be
advertisements into two groups according to moderated if influencers show faces during
influencers’ face showing during the advertisement. advertisements.
The treatment variable 𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖𝑡 equals 1 if the Table 4 Wald test result of linear hypotheses
video 𝑣 belongs to treated group and has the estimation for live comments (𝑯𝟎 : 𝜷𝟏 = 𝜷𝟐 )
influencer’s face showing during advertisement time (1) (2) (3) (4)
Dep. Commen Commen Comment_per Average_se
as well. The other treatment variable, t_count ter_count _commenter ntiment
𝑁𝑜𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖𝑡 equals 1 if the video 𝑣 belongs to Prob > F 0*** 0*** 0.0713* 0***
treated group but with no face showing of the
influencer during the advertisement time. For the 4.2. Long-term feedback
control group, videos have no advertisement, thus two
treatment variables are zero. We introduce the We categorize long-term feedback into two types:
estimation model (1-2). 1) video level feedback based on video content and 2)
𝐸𝑛𝑔𝑎𝑔𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑣𝑖𝑡 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1 ∙ 𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖𝑡 ∙ influencer level feedback based on followership
𝐴𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑡 + 𝛽2 ∙ 𝑁𝑜𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖𝑡 ∙ change.
𝐴𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑡 + 𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖𝑡 + 𝑁𝑜𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖𝑡 + On Bilibili.com, there are four types of video
𝐴𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑡 + 𝐼𝑛𝑓𝑙𝑢𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑖 + 𝜖𝑣𝑖𝑡 (1-2) feedback actions through which viewers can express
As shown in Table 3, both coefficients of their preference towards the video. Viewers have the
𝐴𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟 ∗ 𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡 and 𝐴𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟 ∗ 𝑁𝑜𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡 on option to “like”, “favorite”, “give coin” or “share” the
most of the columns are significant, except the video they like. Note that the effort required by
coefficient of 𝐴𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟 ∗ 𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡 for different endorsement actions varies among each other
𝐶𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡_𝑝𝑒𝑟_𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟 . The estimation results (Table 5). For example, compared with a “like” action
are consistent with the average main effect in (1-1). that requires no additional effort, “Give coin” action
Table 3. Estimation result for live comment with costs a virtual coin of the viewer/donator (note that
grouped treatment (model 1-2) most users on Bilibili.com only get one free coin
(1) (2) (3) (4) daily); “favorite” action adds the video to a private list
Dep. Comment Commente Comment_ Average
_count r_count per_ sentiment (invisible to public) of the viewer for future reference,
commenter while “share” action adds the video to the viewer’s
After* 2.305*** 2.292*** -0.002 -0.022*** Bilibli.com personal page that are visible to the public.
FaceTreat (0.261) (0.255) (0.002) (0.003) Table 5. Video feedback description
After*No 4.155*** 4.127*** -0.004** -0.032*** Action Description
FaceTreat (0.260) (0.254) (0.002) (0.003) Like Click a button to express love to the video.
FaceTreat -0.256 -0.249 0.001 -0.005** Favorite Add the video to favorite lists.
(0.252) (0.246) (0.002) (0.002) Coin Donate a coin (a virtual currency use on the platform)
NoFace -1.081*** -1.060*** 0.004** -0.000 to the influencer.
Treat (0.250) (0.244) (0.002) (0.002)
Share Share the video on personal page that can be viewed
After -0.793*** -0.788*** 0.002 0.004*
by visitors.
(0.239) (0.233) (0.002) (0.002)
Constant 10.970*** 10.770*** 1.017*** 0.589*** We examine the treatment effect of inserting
(0.225) (0.219) (0.002) (0.002) advertisement on video level feedback indicated by the
FE Y Y Y Y four endorsement actions mentioned above separately.
N 188,103 188,103 188,103 188,103 Furthermore, we investigate whether influencers’ face
R^2 0.166 0.168 0.153 0.107
Standard errors in parentheses *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
showing during advertisements moderates the effect
Next, we employ Wald test to investigate using a two-way interaction:
𝐸𝑛𝑑𝑜𝑟𝑠𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑣𝑖 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1 ∙ 𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖 ∙
whether the coefficients before two treatments
𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖 + 𝛽2 ∙ 𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖 ∙ 𝑁𝑜𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖 +
differ from each other. The result is reported in
𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑜𝑙𝑉𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑠 + 𝐼𝑛𝑓𝑙𝑢𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑖 + 𝜖𝑣𝑖 (2)
Table 4. We find that we can reject the equality

Page 3572
 The dependent variable, 𝐸𝑛𝑑𝑜𝑟𝑠𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑣𝑖 FE Y Y Y Y
represents the number of 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 , 𝑓𝑎𝑣𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 , 𝑐𝑜𝑖𝑛 N 14,161 14,161 14,161 14,161
R^2 0.663 0.402 0.411 0.374
or 𝑠ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑒 of video 𝑣 posted by influencer 𝑖 . The Standard errors in parentheses *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
treatment variable 𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖 equals 1 if the video 𝑣 has In the next step, we aim to examine the moderate
inserted ads, and 0 otherwise. The treatment variable role of face showing on video feedback level. Wald
𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖𝑡 equals 1 if the video 𝑣 belongs to test is adopted to reveal whether the showing faces
treated group and has the influencer’s face showing moderate the negative effect. The result is shown in
during advertisement time. The other treatment Table 7. Interestingly, the result indicates that there is
variable, 𝑁𝑜𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖𝑡 equals 1 if the video 𝑣 no significant difference between the coefficients of
belongs to treated group but with no face showing of 𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖 ∙ 𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑣𝑖 and 𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖 ∙ 𝑁𝑜𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑣𝑖 , and we
the influencer during advertisement time. The cannot reject the null hypothesis that 𝛽1 and 𝛽2 are
interaction terms 𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖 ∙ 𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑣𝑖 and 𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖 ∙ equal. Therefore, whether showing faces during
𝑁𝑜𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑣𝑖 aim to capture if the effect differs among advertisements does not affect the relationship
groups with/out influencers’ face showing during between inserting advertisement and audience video
advertisements. We add an influencer-level fixed level feedback.
effect to control the time-invariant heterogeneities Table 7. Wald test result of linear hypotheses
among videos. In addition, we introduce two control estimation for video level feedback (𝑯𝟎 : 𝜷𝟏 = 𝜷𝟐 )
variables, the number of video endorsement of the (1) (2) (3) (4)
most recent video posted by the same influencer Dep. Like_ Favorite Coin_ Share_
𝑃𝑟𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠_𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑜𝑟𝑠𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑣𝑖 and the influencers’ count _count coint count
number of followers 𝐹𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑖 on the day of video Prob > F 0.1727 0.1087 0.2488 0.1437
post, to eliminate the time-variant heterogeneities Moreover, we capture the effect of inserting
among videos. Here 𝜖𝑣𝑖𝑡 is the error term. advertisement on follower number change through the
As shown in Table 6, the coefficients of both following model. We set the day of video posting as
𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖 ∙ 𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑣𝑖 and 𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖 ∙ 𝑁𝑜𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑣𝑖 in all 𝑑0 , and define the following model:
columns are significantly negative. Specifically, 𝐹𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑟_𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑑 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1 ∙ 𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖𝑑 ∙ 𝐴𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑑 +
posting a video with inserted advertisements lead to + 𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖𝑑 + 𝐴𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑑 + 𝐼𝑛𝑓𝑙𝑢𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑖 + 𝜖𝑣𝑖𝑑 (3-1)
8,833 (column (1), p<0.001) decrease of like count, Where 𝐹𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑟_𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑑 is the follower
2,382 (column (2), p<0.001) decrease of favorite count, number change between adjacent two days which can
5,080 decrease of coin count (column (3), p<0.001) be positive (follower increased) or negative (follower
and 658.8 decrease of share count (column (4), decreased). The treatment variable 𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖𝑑 equals 1
p<0.001) if influencers show their faces during if the video 𝑣 belongs to treated group, otherwise 0.
advertisements, whereas a video without influencers’ The time variable 𝐴𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑑 equals 1 if day 𝑑 is greater
face showing tend to reduce 7,149 (column (1), or equal to 𝑑0 , and 0 otherwise. Fixed effects of
p<0.001) likes, 1,749 (column (2), p<0.001) favorites, 𝐼𝑛𝑓𝑙𝑢𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑖 is also employed in the model. 𝜖𝑣𝑖𝑑
3,975 (column (3), p<0.001) coins, 476 (column (4), represents the error term.
p<0.001) shares. To explore whether there is a time decay trend of
Table 6 Estimation result for video level feedback the inserting advertisement effect of followership
(model 2) change, we run the same model with a different time
(1) (2) (3) (4) range, that are 7 days, 5 days, 3 days, 2 days and 1 day.
Dep. Like_ Favorite_ Coin_coun Share_co Result presented in Table 8 shows that within the next
count count t unt following 3 days of video posting, there is a significant
Treat*Fac -8,833*** -2,382*** -5,080*** -658.8*** decrease in followership change. Specifically, on
eTreat (1,059) (338.6) (821.6) (107.2) average, the number of followers decreases by 133 in
Treat*No -7,149*** -1,749*** -3,975*** -476.0***
FaceTreat (996.5) (318.7) (773.3) (100.9) the next day (column (5), p<0.001). And this effect is
Follower -0.016*** -0.003*** -0.005*** -0.002*** 161.3 (column (4), p<0.001) and 130.7 (column (3),
(0.002) (0.001) (0.002) (0.000) p<0.001) for day 2 and day 3 respectively. However,
Previous 0.158*** the negative effect becomes weaker on day 5, and
_like (0.009)
unsignificant on day 7. Note that the influencer might
Previous 0.023**
_faveorite (0.009) upload new videos within the 7-day time window
Previous 0.084*** (usually after day 5). To sum up, we observe that there
_coin (0.009) is a negative effect of posting videos with
Previous 0.003 advertisements inserted on followership change,
_share (0.008)
Constant 35,574*** 7,493*** 12,854*** 2,992***
whereas the negative effect is gradually vanishing in a
(1,532) (486.7) (1,179) (154.1) relative long term.

Page 3573
 Table 8. Estimation result for followership level Constant 804.7*** 924.4*** 880.8*** 869.0*** 860.4***
feedback (model 3-1) (15.34) (20.01) (17.19) (21.01) (29.33)
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) FE Y Y Y Y Y
Dep. 7 days 5 days 3 days 2 days 1 day N 218,180 159,917 101,631 72,505 43,396
follower follower follower follower follower R^2 0.182 0.186 0.331 0.339 0.349
change change change change change Standard errors in parentheses *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
After* -26.07 -64.61* -130.7*** -161.3*** -133.0*** Table 10. Wald test result of linear hypotheses
Treat (26.48) (34.24) (28.87) (34.60) (46.43) estimation for follower change (𝑯𝟎 : 𝜷𝟏 = 𝜷𝟐 )
Treat -39.66* -27.60 -18.21 -23.29 -46.09
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
(23.17) (30.19) (25.84) (31.44) (43.45)
After 168.6*** 95.87*** 206.4*** 251.7*** 226.4*** Dep. 7 days 5 days 3 days 2 days 1 day
(18.98) (24.55) (20.71) (24.83) (33.34) follower follower follower follower follower
Cons- 804.4*** 924.1*** 880.4*** 868.5*** 859.5*** change change change change change
tant (15.33) (20.01) (17.19) (21.00) (29.33) Prob > F 0.9140 0.6481 0.7702 0.9114 0.6990
FE Y Y Y Y Y
N 218,180 159,917 101,631 72,505 43,396 Combining the results above, we believe that face
R^2 0.182 0.186 0.331 0.339 0.349 showing does have a moderating role in the negative
Standard errors in parentheses *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1 effect of inserting advertisements on audience
Similar to the examination method adopted in live feedback, whereas this only holds in the case of
comment, here the treatment variable 𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣 equals 1 instantaneous feedbacks, i.e., live comments.
if the video 𝑣 has inserted advertisements, and zero if
not (control group). The treatment dummy variable 4.3. Robustness check
𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖𝑑 equals 1 or 0 depending on whether the
video 𝑣 has the influencer’s face showing during We validate the parallel trends assumption using
advertisement time. The other treatment variable, the dynamic difference-in-differences associated with
𝑁𝑜𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖𝑑 equals 1 if the video 𝑣 belongs to the event of inserting advertisement at time 𝑡 in model
treated group but with no face showing of the (1-1) and day 𝑑 in model (3-1). This analysis allows
influencer during advertisement time. For the control us to detect the pre-advertising effect on the audience
group, both two treatment variables are zero. feedback outcome variables. Taking live comment
𝐹𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑟_𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑑 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1 ∙ 𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖𝑑 ∙ sentiment and follower number change as two
𝐴𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑑 + 𝛽2 ∙ 𝑁𝑜𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖𝑑 ∙ example outcomes, we observe that the test of
𝐴𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑑 + 𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖𝑑 + 𝑁𝑜𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑣𝑖𝑑 + common trend assumption is passed (Figure 3).
𝐴𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑑 + 𝐼𝑛𝑓𝑙𝑢𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑖 + 𝜖𝑣𝑖𝑑 (3-2)
The results of model regression and Wald test are
demonstrated in Table 9 and Table 10 respectively.
Result presented in Table 9 shows that the average
negative effect of inserting advertisements on
followership growth is similar between group
𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡 and 𝑁𝑜𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡, that is significant in
(a)Instantaneous feedback, (b)Long-term feedback,
the first three days, and decays gradually. According outcome variable: sentiment; outcome variable: follower change;
to the Walt test result shown in Table 10, we can pre=4, post=4; F(4, 93698) = 1.52; pre=3, post=3; F(3,106658) = 1.81;
neither reject the null hypothesis that 𝛽1 and 𝛽2 are Prob > F = 0.1928; Prob > F = 0.1430;
equal, which indicates that there is no difference Parallel-trend passed Parallel-trend passed
between whether influencers show their faces during Figure 3. Dynamic difference-in-differences
advertisements regarding to the negative effect of While results thus far have shown remarkable
advertisements on followership growth. consistency, it remains plausible that the results are
Table 9. Estimation result for live comment with falsely significant due to serial correlation in the
grouped treatment (model 3-2) dependent variable or spurious effects. We implement
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) a random treatment test to exclude this possibility. We
Dep. 7 days 5 days 3 days 2 days 1 day first randomly shuffle the treatment variables (i.e.
follower follower follower follower follower
change change change change change 𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡), then run the Difference-in-differences models
After*Fa -23.95 -53.11 -124.5*** -164.2*** -119.8** using the shuffled treatment variables. As expected, all
ceTreat (32.87) (42.51) (35.85) (42.96) (57.64) coefficients of 𝐴𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟 ∗ 𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡 term are insignificant.
After*No -27.95 -74.93* -136.3*** -158.8*** -145*** Table 11. Estimation result for live comments after
FaceTreat (31.73) (41.03) (34.59) (41.44) (55.58)
FaceTreat -56.15* -49.09 -42.64 -52.02 -106.6*
treatment shuffle (Model 1-1)
(29.57) (38.52) (32.94) (40.02) (55.13) (1) (2) (3) (4)
NoFace -25.87 -9.316 2.304 0.438 4.681 Dep. Comment Commenter Comment Average
Treat (27.98) (36.45) (31.18) (37.91) (52.30) _count _count _per_com sentiment
After 168.6*** 95.86*** 206.4*** 251.7*** 226.4*** menter
(18.98) (24.55) (20.71) (24.83) (33.34) After* -0.183 -0.180 0.001 -0.000

Page 3574
 Treat (0.188) (0.184) (0.001) (0.002) side for brands and companies, our finding shows that
Treat 1.432*** 1.432*** 0.001 -0.020*** product endorsement in videos negatively affects
(0.174) (0.170) (0.001) (0.002)
After 2.330*** 2.314*** -0.002 -0.020*** audience feedback, including instantaneous feedback
(0.186) (0.181) (0.001) (0.002) via live comments, video feedback via feedback
Cons- 8.983*** 8.793*** 1.019*** 0.605*** buttons (e.g., like, favorite, coin, share), as well as
tant (0.165) (0.161) (0.001) (0.002) follower number change. This finding further
FE Y Y Y Y
highlights the importance of this study, and point out
N 188,103 188,103 188,103 188,103
R^2 0.164 0.166 0.153 0.106 the dilemma of influencers, that is, how to take
Standard errors in parentheses advertising without affecting popularity. By
*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1 decomposing the empirical analysis into different
Table 12. Estimation result for followership groups according to influencers’ face showing, we
change after treatment shuffle (Model 3-1) propose two meaningful suggestions for influencers
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
Dep. 7 days 5 days 3 days 2 days 1 day
that can be used as guidelines in advertisement design.
follower follower follower follower follower First, influencers should pay attention to the frequency
change change change change change of inserting advertisements in videos as it hurts their
After* -8.630 0.352 -13.68 -12.80 -0.135 reputation and popularity in an omni-dimensional
Treat (15.49) (19.52) (18.47) (21.77) (27.24) manner. Second, showing faces during advertisement
Treat -53.57*** -62.80*** -92.86*** -120.1*** -134.7***
(11.68) (14.82) (14.20) (16.95) (21.69) can mitigate negative emotions from audience to some
After 167.0*** 62.77*** 138.4*** 164.3*** 149.1*** extent.
(10.96) (13.88) (13.31) (15.94) (20.84) Our work makes theoretical contributions to the
Cons- 848.0*** 984.9*** 967.4*** 971.0*** 957.9*** influencer marketing literature. To best of our
tant (9.278) (11.84) (11.53) (14.03) (18.93)
knowledge, we are one of the first studies that
FE Y Y Y Y Y
N 368,117 269,844 171,525 122,347 73,255 examines the product endorsement effect on
R^2 0.221 0.229 0.334 0.339 0.348 influencers empirically. Moreover, we introduce
Standard errors in parentheses omni-dimensional measurement for social media
*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1 video platforms, including live comment level, video
feedback level and follower number level. This allows
5. Conclusion and Discussion us to evaluate the instantaneous and long-term
feedback when advertisings were inserted into videos.
With the prevalence of social media platforms, This study also demonstrates the potential of using
many social media users have gained online fame and deep learning algorithms to extract important
become social media influencers who have a strong managerial information.
online identity as well as a significant number of Besides, our study has several implications. Our
followers. This phenomenon flourishes influencer research demonstrates the overall effect of commercial
marketing in which influencers endorse products in endorsement on influencer advertising from the
their generated video clips. However, it is unclear how perspective of influencers and offers meaningful
commercial endorsement can affect influencers’ strategies for influencers to guide advertisement
popularity, and what is the optimal strategy that design. One of the strategies to alleviate these negative
influencers should adopt when designing endorsement impacts is to enhance social present by showing faces
content. during the advertisement, which can make viewers
To tackle the abovementioned problems, we feel connected and increase the perceived closeness
collect data from Bilibili.com and conduct an (Utz 2015). Social media platforms can also gain
empirical examination. We find a negative effect of insights about how to establish rules for advertisement
product endorsement on viewers’ live comment regularization to maintain user volume.
sentiment, video feedback and follower number Our research has limitations, which also open
change. Particularly, this negative effect on opportunities for future research. In the next step, we
instantaneous feedback represented by live comments would like to introduce more control variables and
is stronger when the influencer does not show his/her conduct extensive robustness check experiments to
face during the inserted advertisement, whereas this further validate the results. While we examined that
moderating role is insignificant for long term the inserted advertisements cast a negative effect on
feedback. the influencers’ reputation and popularity, it is unclear
Our findings augment existing literature on whether the impact varies among different types of
influencer advertising, one of the latest forms of influencers. Additionally, the content of product
influencer marketing. Whereas existing research on endorsement is another important aspect of
influencer advertising mainly focus on the positive investigating advertisement effect, thus leveraging

Page 3575
such information is another topic we would like to
explore for future research. Moreover, we would like
to examine the underlying reasons behind the negative
comments further using Natural Language Processing
techniques.
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