ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Decision Neuroscience
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1636910
This article is part of the Research TopicNeuroJourney: decoding customer behavior through brain pathwaysView all 4 articles
Blending In or Standing Out? The Disclosure Dilemma of Ad Cues of Social Media Native Advertising
Provisionally accepted
- 1Ruhr West University of Applied Sciences, Mülheim, Germany
- 2Universiteit Twente, Enschede, Netherlands
- 3Universidade NOVA de Lisboa NOVA Information Management School, Lisbon, Portugal
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Introduction: As social media platforms increasingly rely on native advertising embedded within user feeds, an open question is whether sponsored posts garner comparable, greater, or reduced attention relative to surrounding non-sponsored content. Subtle cues (e.g., disclosures, call-to-action (CTA) buttons) may alert users to the commercial nature of these posts or remain unnoticed in rapid-scroll environments. In this study, we aimed to disentangle the dynamics of the "disclosure dilemma" in native advertising, examining whether ad cues blend into the content flow unnoticed or stand out and prompt rapid disengagement. Methods: This study adopted a mixed-methods design with 152 participants randomly assigned to one of three mock-up Instagram feeds containing both sponsored and organic posts. Eye-tracking measured visual attention (dwell time, fixation counts), while cuedretrospective think-aloud (CRTA) interviews probed underlying user rationales for focusing on or overlooking specific content. Results: Sponsored posts received significantly less dwell time and fewer fixations than their organic counterparts, indicating persistent ad avoidance despite a native design. Moreover, early fixation on disclosures or CTA elements in sponsored posts often triggered an immediate decline in further engagement, functioning as "flags" that activate learned avoidance. CRTA data revealed divergent user interpretations: some participants felt misled by the subtlety of sponsored posts, whereas others remained unaware of disclosures until late in their viewing. Discussion: These findings point to an evolving form of "native ad blindness," shaped by rapid heuristic scanning and schema-based recognition of minimal ad signals. Conceptually, this study refines theories of banner blindness, persuasion knowledge, and dual-process filtering, providing
Keywords: native advertising, Disclosure, visual attention, ad blindness, sponsorship, advertising effectiveness
Received: 28 May 2025; Accepted: 25 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hübner, Thalmann and Henseler. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Maike Hübner, Ruhr West University of Applied Sciences, Mülheim, Germany
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.