The effect of image–text matching on consumer engagement in social media advertising

We empirically examined the impact on consumer engagement of the matching of images and text, a format that is commonly used in product information advertising, by analyzing 322 advertisements posted by Estée Lauder on Sina Weibo between January 2020 and January 2021. The results indicated that when the external product information conveyed in the images matched the internal product attributes described in the text, this created cognitive coherence for consumers and promoted their engagement. Our findings provide guidance for brand managers to skillfully combine images and text in advertising to increase the engaging effect of social media advertisements on consumers.