Social Media Sponsorship: Metrics and Strategies for Finding the Right Content Creator-Sponsor Matches

References

• Abbasi MA, Liu H (2013) Measuring user credibility in social media. Greenberg AM, Kennedy WG, Bos ND, eds. Social Comput. Behavioral-Cultural Modeling Prediction. SBP 2013, vol. 7812 (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg), 441–448.Google Scholar
• Adamopoulos P, Ghose A, Todri V (2018) The impact of user personality traits on word of mouth: Text-mining social media platforms. Inform. Systems Res. 29(3):612–640.Link, Google Scholar
• Angst CM, Agarwal R, Sambamurthy V, Kelley K (2010) Social contagion and information technology diffusion: The adoption of electronic medical records in US hospitals. Management Sci. 56(8):1219–1241.Link, Google Scholar
• Aral S, Walker D (2014) Tie strength, embeddedness, and social influence: A large-scale networked experiment. Management Sci. 60(6):1352–1370.Link, Google Scholar
• Armstrong JS (2012) Illusions in regression analysis. Internat. J. Forecasting 28(3):689–694.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Bampo M, Ewing MT, Mather DR, Stewart D, Wallace M (2008) The effects of the social structure of digital networks on viral marketing performance. Inform. Systems Res. 19(3):273–290.Link, Google Scholar
• Bandiera O, Barankay I, Rasul I (2009) Social connections and incentives in the workplace: Evidence from personnel data. Econometrica 77(4):1047–1094.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Beaman L, BenYishay A, Magruder J, Mobarak AM (2021) Can network theory-based targeting increase technology adoption? Amer. Econom. Rev. 111(6):1918–1943.Google Scholar
• Beauchamp MA (1965) An improved index of centrality. Behav. Sci. 10(2):161–163.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Beukeboom CJ, Kerkhof P, De Vries M (2015) Does a virtual like cause actual liking? How following a brand’s Facebook updates enhances brand evaluations and purchase intention. J. Interactive Marketing 32(1):26–36.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Boerman SC (2020) The effects of the standardized Instagram disclosure for micro- and meso-influencers. Comput. Human Behav. 103:199–207.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Boerman SC, Van Reijmersdal EA, Neijens PC (2012) Sponsorship disclosure: Effects of duration on persuasion knowledge and brand responses. J. Comm. 62(6):1047–1064.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Castillo C, Mendoza M, Poblete B (2011) Information credibility on Twitter. Proc. 20th Internat. Conf. World Wide Web (Association for Computing Machinery, New York), 675–684.Google Scholar
• Chakraborty I, Chiong K, Dover H, Sudhir K (2025) Can AI and AI-hybrids detect persuasion skills? Salesforce hiring with conversational video interviews. Marketing Sci. 44(1):30–53.Link, Google Scholar
• Chatterjee P, Hoffman DL, Novak TP (2003) Modeling the clickstream: Implications for web-based advertising efforts. Marketing Sci. 22(4):520–541.Link, Google Scholar
• Chellappa RK, Saraf N (2010) Alliances, rivalry, and firm performance in enterprise systems software markets: A social network approach. Inform. Systems Res. 21(4):849–871.Link, Google Scholar
• Chen Y, Farzan R, Kraut R, YeckehZaare I, Zhang AF (2024) Motivating experts to contribute to digital public goods: A personalized field experiment on Wikipedia. Management Sci. 70(5):3264–3280.Link, Google Scholar
• Colicev A, O’Connor P, Vinzi VE (2016) Is investing in social media really worth it? How brand actions and user actions influence brand value. Service Sci. 8(2):152–168.Link, Google Scholar
• Crowley AE, Hoyer WD (1994) An integrative framework for understanding two-sided persuasion. J. Consumer Res. 20(4):561–574.Crossref, Google Scholar
• De Cicco R, Iacobucci S, Pagliaro S (2021) The effect of influencer–product fit on advertising recognition and the role of an enhanced disclosure in increasing sponsorship transparency. Internat. J. Advertising 40(5):733–759. Crossref, Google Scholar
• De Matos MG, Ferreira P, Krackhardt D (2014) Peer influence in the diffusion of iPhone 3G over a large social network. MIS Quart. 38(4):1103–1134.Google Scholar
• De Veirman M, Cauberghe V, Hudders L (2017) Marketing through Instagram influencers: The impact of number of followers and product divergence on brand attitude. Internat. J. Advertising 36(5):798–828.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Devlin J, Chang M-W, Lee K, Toutanova K (2018) BERT: Pre-training of deep bidirectional transformers for language understanding. Preprint, submitted October 11, https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.04805.Google Scholar
• Dewan S, Ho YJ, Ramaprasad J (2017) Popularity or proximity: Characterizing the nature of social influence in an online music community. Inform. Systems Res. 28(1):117–136.Link, Google Scholar
• Dijkstra EW (1959) A note on two problems in connexion with graphs. Numerische Mathematik 1(1):269–271.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Dobele A, Lindgreen A, Beverland M, Vanhamme J, van Wijk R (2007) Why pass on viral messages? Because they connect emotionally. Bus. Horizons 50(4):291–304.Google Scholar
• Duan W, Gu B, Whinston AB (2008) The dynamics of online word-of-mouth and product sales—An empirical investigation of the movie industry. J. Retailing 84(2):233–242.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Friestad M, Wright P (1994) The persuasion knowledge model: How people cope with persuasion attempts. J. Consumer Res. 21(1):1–31.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Girvan M, Newman ME (2002) Community structure in social and biological networks. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 99(12):7821–7826.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Gordon BR, Zettelmeyer F, Bhargava N, Chapsky D (2019) A comparison of approaches to advertising measurement: Evidence from big field experiments at Facebook. Marketing Sci. 38(2):193–225.Link, Google Scholar
• Grootendorst M (2022) BERTopic: Neural topic modeling with a class-based TF-IDF procedure. Preprint, submitted March 11, https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2203.05794.Google Scholar
• Gwinner KP, Eaton J (1999) Building brand image through event sponsorship: The role of image transfer. J. Advertising 28(4):47–57.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Han Y, Lappas T, Sabnis G (2020) The importance of interactions between content characteristics and creator characteristics for studying virality in social media. Inform. Systems Res. 31(2):576–588.Link, Google Scholar
• Heckman JJ (1978) Dummy endogenous variables in a simultaneous equation system. Econometrica 46(4):931–959.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Influencer Marketing Hub (2024) The state of influencer marketing. Accessed October 20, 2025, https://influencermarketinghub.com/ebooks/Influencer_Marketing_Benchmark_Report_2024.pdf.Google Scholar
• Interactive Advertising Bureau (2023) The creator economy opportunity: Where authenticity meets impact. Accessed October 20, 2025, https://www.iab.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/IAB-TalkShoppe-Creator-Economy-Report-2023.pdf.Google Scholar
• Jain S, Qian K (2021) Compensating online content producers: A theoretical analysis. Management Sci. 67(11):7075–7090.Link, Google Scholar
• Johar GV, Pham MT (1999) Relatedness, prominence, and constructive sponsor identification. J. Marketing Res. 36(3):299–312.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Johnson SL, Safadi H, Faraj S (2015) The emergence of online community leadership. Inform. Systems Res. 26(1):165–187.Link, Google Scholar
• Kaplan AM, Haenlein M (2011) Two hearts in three-quarter time: How to waltz the social media/viral marketing dance. Bus. Horizons 54(3):253–263.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Keller KL (1987) Memory factors in advertising: The effect of advertising retrieval cues on brand evaluations. J. Consumer Res. 14(3):316–333.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Kim DY, Kim HY (2021) Influencer advertising on social media: The multiple inference model on influencer-product congruence and sponsorship disclosure. J. Bus. Res. 130:405–415.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Lee D, Hosanagar K, Nair HS (2018) Advertising content and consumer engagement on social media: Evidence from Facebook. Management Sci. 64(11):5105–5131.Link, Google Scholar
• Lee DDK, Cheng ZZQ, Mao C, Manzoor E (2025) Guided diverse concept miner (GDCM): Uncovering relevant constructs for managerial insights from text. Inform. Systems Res. 36(1):370–393.Link, Google Scholar
• Liu X, Wang GA, Fan W, Zhang Z (2020) Finding useful solutions in online knowledge communities: A theory-driven design and multilevel analysis. Inform. Systems Res. 31(3):731–752.Link, Google Scholar
• Ma L, Krishnan R, Montgomery AL (2015) Latent homophily or social influence? An empirical analysis of purchase within a social network. Management Sci. 61(2):454–473.Link, Google Scholar
• Malthouse EC, Hessary YK, Vakeel KA, Burke R, Fudurić M (2019) An algorithm for allocating sponsored recommendations and content: Unifying programmatic advertising and recommender systems. J. Advertising 48(4):366–379.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Marquardt DW, Snee RD (1975) Ridge regression in practice. Amer. Statist. 29(1):3–20.Crossref, Google Scholar
• McPherson M, Smith-Lovin L, Cook JM (2001) Birds of a feather: Homophily in social networks. Annual Rev. Sociol. 27(1):415–444.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Mercer S (2015) Social network analysis and complex dynamic systems. Dörnyei Z, MacIntyre PD, Henry A, eds. Motivational Dynamics in Language Learning (Multilingual Matters, Bristol, UK), 73–82.Google Scholar
• Monge-Benito S, Elorriaga-Illera A, Olabarri-Fernández E (2020) YouTube celebrity endorsement: audience evaluation of source attributes and response to sponsored content. A case study of influencer verdeliss. Comm. Soc. 33(3):149–166.Google Scholar
• Mousavi R, Gu B (2024) Resilience messaging: The effect of governors’ social media communications on community compliance during a public health crisis. Inform. Systems Res. 35(2):505–527.Link, Google Scholar
• Naik PA, Raman K, Winer RS (2005) Planning marketing-mix strategies in the presence of interaction effects. Marketing Sci. 24(1):25–34.Link, Google Scholar
• Netzer O, Lemaire A, Herzenstein M (2019) When words sweat: Identifying signals for loan default in the text of loan applications. J. Marketing Res. 56(6):960–980.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Papies D, Ebbes P, Van Heerde HJ (2017) Addressing endogeneity in marketing models. Leeflang PSH, Wieringa JE, Bijmolt THA, Pauwels KH, eds. Advanced Methods for Modeling Markets (Springer, Cham, Switzerland), 581–627.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Park S, Gupta S (2012) Handling endogenous regressors by joint estimation using copulas. Marketing Sci. 31(4):567–586.Link, Google Scholar
• Park K, Lee S, Doosti S, Tan Y (2023) Provision of helpful review videos: Effects of video characteristics on perceived helpfulness. Production Oper. Management 32(7):2031–2048.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Peng J, Agarwal A, Hosanagar K, Iyengar R (2018) Network overlap and content sharing on social media platforms. J. Marketing Res. 55(4):571–585.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Pöyry E, Parvinen P, Malmivaara T (2013) Can we get from liking to buying? Behavioral differences in hedonic and utilitarian Facebook usage. Electronic Commerce Res. Appl. 12(4):224–235.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Quester PG, Farrelly F (1998) Brand association and memory decay effects of sponsorship: The case of the Australian Formula One Grand Prix. J. Product Brand Management 7(6):539–556.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Rifon NJ, Choi SM, Trimble CS, Li H (2004) Congruence effects in sponsorship: The mediating role of sponsor credibility and consumer attributions of sponsor motive. J. Advertising 33(1):30–42.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Rodgers S (2003) The effects of sponsor relevance on consumer reactions to internet sponsorships. J. Advertising 32(4):67–76.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Rosenbaum PR, Rubin DB (1983) The central role of the propensity score in observational studies for causal effects. Biometrika 70(1):41–55.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Schivinski B, Dabrowski D (2015) The impact of brand communication on brand equity through Facebook. J. Res. Interactive Marketing 9(1):31–53.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Schweidel DA, Knox G (2013) Incorporating direct marketing activity into latent attrition models. Marketing Sci. 32(3):471–487.Link, Google Scholar
• Scott J (1988) Social network analysis. Sociology 22(1):109–127.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Shen XL, Li YJ, Sun Y, Chen Z, Wang F (2019) Understanding the role of technology attractiveness in promoting social commerce engagement: Moderating effect of personal interest. Inform. Management 56(2):294–305.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Shin D, He S, Lee GM, Whinston AB, Cetintas S, Lee K (2020) Enhancing social media analysis with visual data analytics: A deep learning approach. MIS Quart. 44(4):1459–1492.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Shmueli G, Koppius OR (2011) Predictive analytics in information systems research. MIS Quart. 35(3):553–572.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Sniedovich M (2006) Dijkstra’s algorithm revisited: The dynamic programming connexion. Control Cybernetics 35(3):599–620.Google Scholar
• Sperber D, Wilson D (1986) Relevance: Communication and Cognition, vol. 142 (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA).Google Scholar
• Susarla A, Oh JH, Tan Y (2012) Social networks and the diffusion of user-generated content: Evidence from YouTube. Inform. Systems Res. 23(1):23–41.Link, Google Scholar
• Syrdal HA, Briggs E (2018) Engagement with social media content: A qualitative exploration. J. Marketing Theory Practice 26(1–2):4–22.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Thorgren E, Mohammadinodooshan A, Carlsson N (2024) Temporal dynamics of user engagement on Instagram: A comparative analysis of album, photo, and video interactions. Proc. 16th ACM Web Sci. Conf. (Association for Computing Machinery, New York), 224–234.Google Scholar
• Valente TW, Pumpuang P (2007) Identifying opinion leaders to promote behavior change. Health Ed. Behav. 34(6):881–896.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Vassio L, Garetto M, Chiasserini C, Leonardi E (2021) Temporal dynamics of posts and user engagement of influencers on Facebook and Instagram. Proc. 2021 IEEE/ACM Internat. Conf. Adv. Soc. Networks Anal. Mining (Association for Computing Machinery, New York), 129–133.Google Scholar
• Venkatesan S, Valecha R, Yaraghi N, Oh O, Rao HR (2021) Influence in social media: An investigation of tweets spanning the 2011 Egyptian revolution. MIS Quart. 45(4):1679–1714.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Verlet L (1967) Computer “experiments” on classical fluids. I. Thermodynamical properties of Lennard–Jones molecules. Phys. Rev. 159(1):98.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Walsh P, Clavio G, Lovell MD, Blaszka M (2013) Differences in event brand personality between social media users and non-users. Sport Marketing Quart. 22(4):214–223.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Wasserman S, Faust K (1994) Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK).Crossref, Google Scholar
• Woodside AG (2013) Moving beyond multiple regression analysis to algorithms: Calling for adoption of a paradigm shift from symmetric to asymmetric thinking in data analysis and crafting theory. J. Bus. Res. 66(4):463–472.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Wooldridge JM (2015) Control function methods in applied econometrics. J. Human Resources 50(2):420–445.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Wu D (2024) Text-based measure of supply chain risk exposure. Management Sci. 70(7):4781–4801.Link, Google Scholar
• Yang K, Lau RY, Abbasi A (2023) Getting personal: A deep learning artifact for text-based measurement of personality. Inform. Systems Res. 34(1):194–222.Link, Google Scholar
• Yang M, Ren Y, Adomavicius G (2019) Understanding user-generated content and customer engagement on Facebook business pages. Inform. Systems Res. 30(3):839–855.Link, Google Scholar
• Yelp Report (2024) The biggest digital marketing trends of 2024 for agencies. Yelp Business Report (June 26), https://business.yelp.com/resources/articles/digital-marketing-trends-agencies/.Google Scholar
• Yoganarasimhan H (2012) Impact of social network structure on content propagation: A study using YouTube data. Quant. Marketing Econom. 10(1):111–150.Crossref, Google Scholar