The Role of Messenger in Advertising Content: Bayesian Persuasion Perspective

We propose a model of advertising content that focuses on messenger selection, where advertising can generate product-match signals for consumers. We consider advertising as a problem of Bayesian persuasion with costly information processing, where the type of communication messenger is costless to observe and determines the information structure consumers will face, thereby affecting their attention decisions. Messengers are classified as high type or low type based on their likelihood of generating positive signals about product match. Our findings highlight that the optimal choice of messengers depends on their signal elasticities and the firm's decision on whether to induce consumer attention. In particular, we find that when it is crucial to raise prices and high-type messengers overshadow the product match value by providing generally positive signals, a low-type messenger can effectively capture consumer attention and persuade them to pay a higher premium. This holds true even if high-type messengers can better grab consumers' attention by providing additional entertainment value or when some consumers are naive in belief updating.