The present study investigates the moderating effect of usage intensity of the social networking site (SNS) Instagram (IG) on the influence of advertisement disclosure types on advertising performance. A national sample (N = 566) participated in a randomized online experiment including a real influencer and followers in order to investigate how different advertisement disclosure types affect advertising performance and how usage intensity moderates this effect. We find that disclosing an influencer’s postings with “#ad” increases the trustworthiness of the influencer and the general credibility of the posting for heavy users, but not for light users. Followership of a user has been found to strongly improve all researched variables (attitude toward product placement, trustworthiness of the spokesperson and general credibility of the posting). This study adds to literature the first distinction on heavy and light usage intensity, and on followership of an IG user when regarding the effects of advertisement disclosure types on advertising performance. To conclude, we present a number of recommendations regarding how advertisers, influencers, and SNS providers should develop strategies for monitoring, understanding, and responding to different social media users, e.g., to closely monitor an influencer’s audience to identify heavy users and optimally target them.

本研究调查了社交网站 (SNS) Instagram (IG) 的使用强度对广告披露类型对广告绩效的影响的调节作用。一个国家样本（N = 566）参与了一项随机在线实验，其中包括一名真正的影响者和追随者，以调查不同的广告披露类型如何影响广告效果以及使用强度如何调节这种效果。我们发现，使用“#ad”披露影响者的帖子可以增加影响者的可信度和帖子对于重度用户的总体可信度，但对于轻量级用户则不然。已发现用户的关注度极大地改善了所有研究变量（对产品放置的态度、发言人的可信度和发布的一般可信度）。这项研究在关于广告披露类型对广告绩效的影响时，在文献中增加了关于重度和轻度使用强度以及 IG 用户的关注度的第一个区别。最后，我们就广告商、影响者和 SNS 提供商应如何制定监控、理解和响应不同社交媒体用户的策略提出了一些建议，例如，密切监控影响者的受众，以识别重度用户并以最佳方式定位他们.