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Paid influencers must label some posts as ads, German court rules

reuters.com

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Re: Paid influencers must label some posts as ads, German court rules

#71

Post by space_fountain »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #51
ajhurliman wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sponsored content is the main income for creators, so if a platform banned it there would be a mass exodus and they'd lose their dominance.

And make money how? Creators are dependent on platforms to get and monetize attention. People aren't going to stop using Instagram and YouTube because a few superstars only post content on TikTok.

Even moderately successful YouTubers rely on sponsorship and because there's competition for creators between platforms it would take illegal coordination to present a united front and ban it

Re: Paid influencers must label some posts as ads, German court rules

#76

Post by Karawebnetwork »

glugc wrote: post #3

If you cannot see by yourself when an "influencer" is showing you an ad you are not the sharpest tool in the shed

Let's paint a story.

You are looking at a tool review channel. Most of the tools are items that the creator had in his shed.

Suddenly, one of the screwdrivers he reviews doesn't look as useful as the others and is clearly pristine. It is clearly an advertisement. The product is new because it was donated by a brand and the review is better than usual because of that.

Except that this is not the case.

The screwdriver was recently given to him for Christmas by their wife and the creator is emotionally attached to it, explaining why they review it more positively than previous items on the channel.

Meanwhile, he was wearing a new belt. The belt was donated by a clothing company in exchange for positive exposure. It is identical to his other belts with the brand name visible on the buckle, except that it has a magnet on the side to attach screws. No mention is made of the belt other than the fact it is used in the video.

The ads are not as easy to detect as one might think.

Re: Paid influencers must label some posts as ads, German court rules

#77

Post by ajhurliman »

xqcgrek2 wrote: post #23
ajhurliman wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sponsored content is the main income for creators, so if a platform banned it there would be a mass exodus and they'd lose their dominance.

But they would earn more money from regular ad revenue, presumably. You're painting a rather bleak picture -- that the majority of creators/influencers' content is advertising. If that's the case, I'm not sure why Youtube/Instagram should also tolerate that -- it's basically spam on their platform they haven't curated through their ad network.

Brand deals are the majority of their income, but not the majority of their content. This just means the platforms aren't paying very much, since the platforms are advertising on _all_ their content and yet creators are managing to earn ~80% of their income through brand deals on a tiny fraction of their content. 58% of creators post 16 or less sponsored posts a year, and those with more followers post even less[0], while the majority of creators post significantly more content than that.

Creators are very careful not to overwhelm their audience with ads; their audience (and their portability to new platforms/ channels) is their number one asset since they may need to jump to new platforms in the future as their channels can get demonetized/ banned for frivolous reasons.

[0] https://influencermarketinghub.com/creator-earnings-benchmar...

Re: Paid influencers must label some posts as ads, German court rules

#78

Post by mLuby »

jjcm wrote: post #12

Good. I'd love if we could go further and make requirements to disclaim if a photo's structure has been digitally altered. Combining these two would be very effective in increasing clarity of content online.

"Results not guaranteed" "Actor portrayal" "Real users compensated for appearing"

If everything would have the warning label (like "Don't try this at home" or California's "known to cause cancer" signs or arguably GMO food labels) then people ignore it.

It'd be better to know how different what's shown is from the median result, but that'd be hard to figure out, and if you could, why not just require the ads show that result instead?

Re: Paid influencers must label some posts as ads, German court rules

#80

Post by jrochkind1 »

eli wrote: post #44

US law already requires influencers to disclose ads. (And the FTC says that US law includes foreigners whose audience is reasonably likely to include Americans) https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/dis...

It seems to be WILDLY unenforced then, no?

In the USA, it doesn't seem to be done. I was actually shocked -- and then realized how naive I was -- when i was talking to someone at a party who had a tiktok where she reviewed garden products, to find out that it wasn't just "free product", she was literally getting paid by the companies to give them good reviews, and from the tiktok you wouldn't know she wasn't just reviewing things she had bought on her own independently.

It did seem to me like this was probably a problem for the FTC, but I realized, oh, this is just how it's done now, nobody ever discloses.

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