Bump

A similar pattern emerged in the remaining studies, which also showed that a companion’s presence made people more likely to buy the endorsed product and that the effects were driven by trust: Being shown with others made virtual influencers appear more human, which in turn made them seem more trustworthy. In fact, “including a companion in the image increased trust almost to the level of human influencers,” the researchers write. The presence of a companion in posts by human influencers had no effect on engagement levels, and the engagement bump was much smaller for virtual influencers that appeared highly human. It was stronger when trust was especially in doubt, as when the influencer was directly talking about a product. “Our results demonstrate a simple and easily implementable way to increase the impact of virtual influencer posts,” the researchers conclude.