Review of Professional Management

Empirical Study on Online Media Participation Through Paid Posts: Analysing Influencer Marketing on Facebook

Pankaj Sharma^1,2 and Rakesh Kumar Yadav¹

First Published 3 Nov 2025. https://doi.org/10.1177/09728686251384381

Article Information

Corresponding Author:

Pankaj Sharma, Assistant Professor, IILM University, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, 201306, India.
Email: pankaj.competent@gmail.com

¹School of Business Management, IFTM University, Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, India

²Current affiliation: IILM University, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India

Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-Commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed.

Abstract

As the use of paid posts (PPs) by online influencers (OIs) grows on Facebook, there is limited scientific data on their effectiveness. This study investigates how consumer engagement with PPs compares to that of unpaid posts (UPPs) and how engagement is influenced by whether the posts are shared by major or mini influencers. It also examines the impact of different advertising appeals, distinguishing between informational and transformational appeals. Using binomial regression on a dataset of 55,067 paid Facebook posts, the study finds: (a) Users engage more with PPs than UPPs, (b) mini influencers see a more significant increase in engagement, and (c) major influencers’ informational appeals generate higher engagement than mini influencers’ posts. These findings offer valuable insights for OIs and advertisers in influencer marketing.

Keywords

Facebook, social media analytics, field data, influencer marketing, online influencers, electric cars

References

Abdullah, T., Deraman, S. N. S., Zainuddin, S. A., Azmi, N. F., Abdullah, S. S., Anuar, N. I. M., Mohamad, S. R., Hashim, N., Amri, N. A., & Abdullah, A.-R. (2020). Impact of social media influencer on Instagram user purchase intention towards the fashion products: The perspectives of UMK Pengkalan Chepa Campus students. European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine, 7(1), 2589–2598.

Abell, A., & Biswas, D. (2023). Digital engagement on social media: How food image content influences social media and influencer marketing outcomes. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 58(1), 1–15.

Andreani, F., Gunawan, L., & Haryono, S. (2021). Social media influencer, brand awareness, and purchase decision among Generation Z in Surabaya. Jurnal Manajemen Dan Kewirausahaan, 23(1), 18–26.

Bakker, D. (2018). Conceptualising influencer marketing. Journal of Emerging Trends in Marketing and Management, 1(1), 79–87.

Booth, N., & Matic, J. A. (2011). Mapping and leveraging influencers in social media to shape corporate brand perceptions. Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 16(3), 184–191.

Brooks, G., Drenten, J., & Piskorski, M. J. (2021). Influencer celebrification: How social media influencers acquire celebrity capital. Journal of Advertising, 50(5), 528–547.

Cameron, A. C., & Trivedi, P. K. (1990). Regression-based tests for overdispersion in the Poisson model. Journal of Econometrics, 46(3), 347–364.

Campbell, C., & Farrell, J. R. (2020). More than meets the eye: The functional components underlying influencer marketing. Business Horizons, 63(4), 469–479.

Carpenter, J. P., Shelton, C. C., Curcio, R., & Schroeder, S. (2021). The education influencer: New possibilities and challenges for teachers in the social media world. In D. Becker & R. H. Chen (Eds.), Proceedings of society for information technology & teacher education international conference (SITE 2021) (pp. 1712–1721). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/219407/

Chandawarkar, A. A., Gould, D. J., & Grant Stevens, W. (2018). The top 100 social media influencers in plastic surgery on Twitter: Who should you be following? Aesthetic Surgery Journal, 38(8), 913–917.

Chekima, B., Chekima, F. Z., & Adis, A.-A. A. (2020). Social media influencer in advertising: The role of attractiveness, expertise and trustworthiness. Journal of Economics and Business, 3(4), 1582–1592.

Cheng, Y., Hung-Baesecke, C.-J. F., & Chen, Y.-R. R. (2021). Social media influencer effects on CSR communication: The role of influencer leadership in opinion and taste. International Journal of Business Communication. https://doi.org/10.1177/232 94884211035112

Coates, A. E., Hardman, C. A., Halford, J. C., Christiansen, P., & Boyland, E. J. (2019). Social media influencer marketing and children’s food intake: A randomized trial. Pediatrics, 143(4), e20182554.

Coco, S. L., & Eckert, S. (2020). #Sponsored: Consumer insights on social media influencer marketing. Public Relations Inquiry, 9(2), 177–194.

Enke, N., & Borchers, N. S. (2021). Social media influencers in strategic communication: A conceptual framework for strategic social media influencer communication. In Social media influencers in strategic communication (pp. 7–23). Routledge.

Farivar, S., Wang, F., & Turel, O. (2022). Followers’ problematic engagement with influencers on social media: An attachment theory perspective. Computers in Human Behavior, 133, 107288.

Freberg, K., Graham, K., McGaughey, K., & Freberg, L. A. (2011). Who are the social media influencers? A study of public perceptions of personality. Public Relations Review, 37(1), 90–92.

Gammoudi, F., Sendi, M., & Omri, M. N. (2022). A survey on social media influence environment and influencers identification. Social Network Analysis and Mining, 12(1), 145.

Ge, J., & Gretzel, U. (2018). Emoji rhetoric: A social media influencer perspective. Journal of Marketing Management, 34(15–16), 1272–1295.

Glucksman, M. (2017). The rise of social media influencer marketing on lifestyle branding: A case study of Lucie Fink. Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications, 8(2), 77–87.

Gräve, J.-F. (2019). What KPIs are key? Evaluating performance metrics for social media influencers. Social Media + Society, 5(3), 2056305119865475.

Gräve, J.-F., & Greff, A. (2018). Good KPI, good influencer? Evaluating success metrics for social media influencers. In Proceedings of the 9th international conference on social media and society (SMSociety ’18, July 18–20, 2018, Copenhagen, Denmark) (pp. 291–295). Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). https://doi.org/10.1145/3217804.3217932

Greene, W. H. (2007). Functional forms for the negative binomial model for count data. Economics Letters, 99(3), 585–590.

Gupta, N., Dorfman, R., Saadat, S., & Roostaeian, J. (2020). The plastic surgery social media influencer: Ethical considerations and a literature review. Aesthetic Surgery Journal, 40(6), 691–699.

Han, J., & Chen, H. (2022). Millennial social media users’ intention to travel: The moderating role of social media influencer following behavior. International Hospitality Review, 36(2), 340–357.

Harrigan, P., Daly, T. M., Coussement, K., Lee, J. A., Soutar, G. N., & Evers, U. (2021). Identifying influencers on social media. International Journal of Information Management, 56, 102246.

Hudders, L., & De Jans, S. (2022). Gender effects in influencer marketing: An experimental study on the efficacy of endorsements by same- vs. other-gender social media influencers on Instagram. International Journal of Advertising, 41(1), 128–149.

Hund, E., & McGuigan, L. (2019). A shoppable life: Performance, selfhood, and influence in the social media storefront. Communication, Culture & Critique, 12(1), 18–35.

Jin, S. V., Muqaddam, A., & Ryu, E. (2019). Instafamous and social media influencer marketing. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 37(5), 567–579.

Kim, D. Y., & Kim, H.-Y. (2021). Influencer advertising on social media: The multiple inference model on influencer-product congruence and sponsorship disclosure. Journal of Business Research, 130, 405–415.

Koay, K. Y., Teoh, C. W., & Soh, P. C. (2021). Instagram influencer marketing: Perceived social media marketing activities and online impulse buying. First Monday, 26(9), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v26i9.11691

Koay, K. Y., Tjiptono, F., Teoh, C. W., Memon, M. A., & Connolly, R. (2023). Social media influencer marketing: Commentary on the special issue. Journal of Internet Commerce, 22(sup1), S1–S3.

Lê Giang Nam, H. T. D. (2018). Impact of social media influencer marketing on consumer at Ho Chi Minh City. The International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Invention, 5(05), 4710–4714.

Lee, M. T., & Theokary, C. (2021). The superstar social media influencer: Exploiting linguistic style and emotional contagion over content? Journal of Business Research, 132, 860–871.

Lou, C. (2022). Social media influencers and followers: Theorization of a trans-parasocial relation and explication of its implications for influencer advertising. Journal of Advertising, 51(1), 4–21.

Lou, C., Taylor, C. R., & Zhou, X. (2023). Influencer marketing on social media: How different social media platforms afford influencer–follower relation and drive advertising effectiveness. Journal of Current Issues & Research in Advertising, 44(1), 60–87.

Lou, C., & Yuan, S. (2019). Influencer marketing: How message value and credibility affect consumer trust of branded content on social media. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 19(1), 58–73.

Malik, A. Z., Thapa, S., & Paswan, A. K. (2023). Social media influencer (SMI) as a human brand: A need fulfillment perspective. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 32(2), 173–190.

Masuda, H., Han, S. H., & Lee, J. (2022). Impacts of influencer attributes on purchase intentions in social media influencer marketing: Mediating roles of characterizations. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 174, 121246.

More, J. S., & Lingam, C. (2019). A SI model for social media influencer maximization. Applied Computing and Informatics, 15(2), 102–108.

Nafees, L., Cook, C. M., Nikolov, A. N., & Stoddard, J. E. (2021). Can social media influencer (SMI) power influence consumer brand attitudes? The mediating role of perceived SMI credibility. Digital Business, 1(2), 100008.

Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes to attitude change. Springer-Verlag.

Reinikainen, H., Tan, T. M., Luoma-Aho, V., & Salo, J. (2021). Making and breaking relationships on social media: The impacts of brand and influencer betrayals. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 171, 120990.

Szczurski, M. (2017). Social media influencer: A lifestyle or a profession of the 21st century? Open ICM. https://open.icm.edu.pl/items/a374cea5-3ca6-493a-8a00-691c9961f2a5

Valsesia, F., Proserpio, D., & Nunes, J. C. (2020). The positive effect of not following others on social media. Journal of Marketing Research, 57(6), 1152–1168.

Weismueller, J., Harrigan, P., Wang, S., & Soutar, G. N. (2020). Influencer endorsements: How advertising disclosure and source credibility affect consumer purchase intention on social media. Australasian Marketing Journal, 28(4), 160–170.

Zheng, C., Zhang, Q., Young, S., & Wang, W. (2020). On-demand influencer discovery on social media. In Proceedings of the 29th ACM international conference on information & knowledge management (CIKM ’20) (pp. 2337–2340). Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). https://doi.org/10.1145/3340531.3412057

Zhou, S., Blazquez, M., McCormick, H., & Barnes, L. (2021). How social media influencers’ narrative strategies benefit cultivating influencer marketing: Tackling issues of cultural barriers, commercialised content, and sponsorship disclosure. Journal of Business Research, 134, 122–142