Show me that you are advertising: Visual salience of products attenuates detrimental effects of persuasion knowledge activation in influencer advertising

In the realm of social media influencer advertising, the organic nature of sponsored content can deceive users by concealing persuasive intent. Regulators seek to reinforce users' persuasion knowledge through sponsorship disclosure guidelines, while advertisers explore ethical tactics to prevent the adverse effects of users' ad recognition on the effectiveness of influencer endorsements. With the increasing prevalence of image-based content, the investigation of visual factors, such as the presentation of products, and their moderating influence on the effects of ad recognition becomes ever more relevant. However, previous research has primarily focused on textual factors. Building on congruence theory, we demonstrate that marketers can harness bottom-up attention induced by high visual salience to counteract the detrimental effects of users’ ad recognition. Our findings indicate that ad recognition undermines favorable brand attitudes, word-of-mouth intentions, and purchase intentions by diminishing perceived influencer integrity and enhancing post skepticism. These effects are alleviated when the visual appearance of sponsored products is highly salient in terms of brightness or color. Our work offers a simple yet effective image-based solution for marketers to mitigate ad-related skepticism and elevate the persuasive potential of influencer advertising in the visually-driven realm of computer-mediated communication.