Do Sponsored Posts Decrease Engagement?
May 06, 2023
CleanKonnect conducted a deep analysis of 20+ Division I athletes across 8+ different sports to understand the engagement differences on Instagram posts and comments between regular and sponsored posts. These athletes included some of the biggest names in NIL, including UConn Women’s Basketball’s Paige Bueckers, Alabama Football’s Bryce Young, and LSU Gymnast, Livvy Dunne.
During our research, it became clear that many of the “traditional” posts, meaning content that the athlete would normally publish with no brand attachment, tended to have much higher engagement than posts that were sponsored. As shown below, University of Alabama quarterback Bryce Young had nearly 80,000 likes on a photo without any sponsorship.
A normal, non-sponsored post from Bryce Young
In contrast, a post announcing a collaboration with Dollar Shave Club had only a little over 5,000 likes (this has since been deleted when Bryce finished his time at Alabama).
Bryce Young’s sponsored advertisement with Dollar Shave Club
Bryce Young’s drop in engagement is not an isolated case. We noticed the same pattern with UConn Basketball social media star Paige Bueckers, as shown below.
Overall, the data showed that on average across all 20+ athletes, athletes saw a 53% decrease in Instagram likes and a 57% decrease in Instagram comments when they made a post dedicated to a specific brand.
On the contrary, certain athletes, such as Livvy Dunne, have not had a drop in engagement like others. In addition, our data shows that on average, a sponsored post from Livvy Dunne actually has a 31% increase in likes and a 53% increase in comments.
Why might this be? Many of Livvy Dunne’s sponsored posts do not reveal a huge logo from a brand or have an overly robotic caption, but instead, appear to align with her personal content. When viewing the photo examples above, one would argue that the sponsored posts from Bryce Young and Paige Bueckers vary greatly compared to the non-sponsored posts. However, if not captioned, could you tell which of Livvy Dunne’s posts was the sponsored one?
Athletes should be thoughtful when working with brands to ensure that sponsored content is true to their personality/social media voice to keep their engagement high and their content authentic.
To learn more about Engagement of Sponsored Posts, check out the CleanKonnect NIL Certification Course.
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