Now you see me, now you don’t: how subtle ‘sponsored content’ on social media tricks us into viewing ads

(Press-News.org) How many ads do you see on social media? It might be more than you realize. Scientists studying how ads work on Instagram-style social media have found that people are not as good at spotting them as they think. If people recognized ads, they usually ignored them - but some, designed to blend in with your friends’ posts, flew under the radar.

“We wanted to understand how ads are really experienced in daily scrolling — beyond what people say they notice, to what they actually process,” said Maike Hübner, PhD candidate at the University of Twente, corresponding author of the article in Frontiers in Psychology. “It’s not that people are worse at spotting ads. It’s that platforms have made ads better at blending in. We scroll on autopilot, and that’s when ads slip through. We may even engage with ads on purpose, because they’re designed to reflect the trends or products our friends are talking about and of course we want to keep up. That’s what makes them especially hard to resist.”

Learn more

The scientists wanted to test how much time people spent looking at sponsored versus organic posts, how they looked at different areas of these different posts, and how they behaved after realizing they were looking at sponsored content. They randomly assigned 152 participants, all of whom were regular Instagram users, to one of three mocked-up social media feeds, each of which was made up of 29 posts — eight ads and 21 organic posts. 

They were asked to imagine that the feed was their own and to scroll through it as they would normally. Using eye-tracking software, the scientists measured fixations — the number of times a participant’s gaze stopped on different features of a post — and dwell time, how long the fixations last. A low dwell time suggests that someone just noticed the feature, while a high dwell time might indicate they were paying attention. After each session, the scientists interviewed the participants about their experience.

Although people did notice disclosures when they were visible, the eye-tracking data suggested that participants paid more attention to calls to action — like a link to sign up for something — which could indicate that this is how they recognize ads. Participants were also quick to recognize an ad by the profile name or verification badge of a brand’s official account, or glossy visuals, which caused participants to express distrust. 

“People picked up on design details like logos, polished images, or 'shop now' buttons before they noticed an actual disclosure,” said Hübner. “On brand posts, that label is right under the username at the top, while on influencer content or reels, it might be hidden in a hashtag or buried in the ‘read more’ section.”

Although the scientists found that the ads often went unnoticed, if people realized that the content wasn’t organic, many of them stopped engaging with the post. Dwell time dropped immediately.

#ad

This was less likely to happen to ads that blended in better, with less polished visuals and a tone and format more typical of organic content. If ad cues like disclosures or call-to-action buttons weren’t noticed right away, they got similar levels of engagement to organic posts. 

“Many participants were shocked to learn how many ads they had missed. Some felt tricked, others didn’t mind — and that last group might be the most worrying,” said Hübner. “When we stop noticing or caring that something is an ad, the boundary between persuasion and information becomes very thin.”

The scientists say these findings show that transparency goes well beyond just labelling ads. Understanding how people really process ads should lead to a rethink of platform design and regulation to make sure that people know when they’re looking at advertising. 

However, this was a lab-based study with simulated feeds, and it’s possible that studies on different cultures, age groups, or types of social media might get different results. It’s also possible that ads are even harder to recognize under real-life conditions.

“Even in a neutral, non-personalized feed, participants struggled to tell ads apart from regular content,” Hübner pointed out. “In their own feeds which are shaped around their interests, habits, and social circles it might be even harder to spot ads, because they feel more familiar and trustworthy.”

END