Skepticism and Sentiment Analysis to Understand Consumer Perception of Virtual Influencers in Social Media Advertising

Social media advertising has become one of the most popular forms of advertising in recent years. Advancements in video and image generation have led to the creation of avatars, which have changed the landscape of online marketing. The avatars used for social media advertising are known as virtual influencers. In this paper, we use Instagram comments to observe consumer perceptions of virtual influencers (VIs) and human influencers (HIs) in social media advertising. By investigating how consumers engage with and respond to VIs, the study aims to provide insights into their effectiveness compared to HIs. In this study, we consider two timelines, pre- and post-pandemic, for different types of posts by VIs and HIs. We focus mainly on two user-affective states: sentiment and skepticism. The results show that VIs are perceived with more negativity and skepticism compared to HIs, irrespective of the type of post in both time periods. However, negative and skeptical responses towards VIs decreased post-pandemic. This empirical study provides insights into the evolving field of influencer advertising and highlights changes in consumer perception pre- and post-pandemic towards VIs and HIs.