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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

#91

Post by mrweasel »

908B64B197 wrote: post #75

Shouldn't we assume that anything online is paid advertising? I mean, someone is paying for it. Same thing for newspaper and medias in general.

Who paid you to write that?

It would be sad if we have to go down that road. There's a guy who maintain a website about old local railroad in my area (and you are NOT allowed to share his content on Facebook), no one is paying him anything. Should he then be forced to label his content as: "Not sponsored", if he don't want readers to assume that he's sponsored by someone?

I'd say you where closer if you had suggested just labeling Instagram as an ad platform. Anyone with more than X number of follows, assume that their posts are sponsored.

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

#92

Post by jollybean »

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.

Content is King.

TikTok has a fund to pay people to make content to get them up off the ground.

Insta, despite it's growth, has a decay problem in that it's out of the zeitgeist of the key demos. it's growing in developing markets and maybe might have some incidental sign ups, but people are not flocking to it.

And TikTok - depsite it's popularity, has a very 'fad' feel to it. While FB has a bit of the 'e-mail' incumbency in that it's how people communicate with family and user groups, TikTok is a bit more fleeting.

These platforms would get hurt badly without a lot of those middle and upper tier content makers.

The current situation is a rational entente actually: Insta makes ads, influencers can make a buck however. The more popular YouTubers will monetize with ads anyhow.

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

#93

Post by dathinab »

ramboldio wrote: post #2

The headline in a domestic newspaper reads "There are some product placements that influencers do not need to label as ads" https://www.zeit.de/digital/internet/2021-09/bundesgerichtsh... :D it's all about framing

I just read the article and from the facts listed in it the decision seems fairly reasonable.

Hopefully this will generate a bit more legal reliability for them. The current legal situation was (and probably still is) somewhat absurd.

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

#94

Post by qwertox »

ramboldio wrote: post #2

The headline in a domestic newspaper reads "There are some product placements that influencers do not need to label as ads" https://www.zeit.de/digital/internet/2021-09/bundesgerichtsh... :D it's all about framing

> it's all about framing

My pet peeve are the news snippets in Google Discover or Google News, which then lead to a paywalled article.

From my point of view these snippets are all ads for the newspaper or magazine which is promoting them by giving Google access to index them.

One could argue that they are not actively promoting their articles, that it is Google who is "stealing" the content and publishing it, but then again, they want to be monetized through the "Leistungsschutzrecht" (Ancillary copyright for press publishers), so they are well aware that having their articles indexed is beneficial to them. They might as well add a robots.txt file, which is respected by Google.

They are also formatting their articles in such a way, that the snippets are as attractive as possible, which becomes obvious when you read an article and have the feeling that you're reading 3 times the same content until you get to the real information.

These snippets are clearly ads and Google should have to label them as such, unless the content is free-to-view.

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

#95

Post by dathinab »

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...

German law does so too since a long time, in a way absurd enough that some people started labeling everything as ad as it's too risky for them not to do so even through they might not do any "advertisement" at all.

The curt ruling wasn't about the curt now newly forcing posts to be labeled but it was about creating a bit more clarity when it needs to be labeled and when not.

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

#96

Post by djur »

katbyte wrote: post #62
hutzlibu wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spam is something nobody wants. The influencers videos quite some people want to see despite their sneaky ads. So youtube gets views, too.

Not all sponsored ads are sneaky, a number of YouTube channels I watch do hilarious skits for each one at the end of their videos which I think is a win for everyone involved.

At this point I don't think there's a single channel I watch that produces original content for YouTube (as opposed to, say, speedruns of video games or stream recordings) that is not sponsored. The last few holdouts gave in just a year or two ago. Just like podcasts, they'll do an ad read before, in the middle of, or after the video. I've gotten very used to skipping them.

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

#97

Post by mrweasel »

pessimizer wrote: post #65
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "anywhere else" just isn't true. Ads on TV as well as in the printed press and large online platforms are labeled either by law or more or less formal agreements between these publishers. The same is true for "native content" which tries to blend into the site with design and format, but is still clearly labeled as being "sponsored by BP" or whatever. Journalists at quality publications aren't allowed to accept a…

> Ads on TV as well as in the printed press and large online platforms are labeled either by law or more or less formal agreements between these publishers. Ads on TV are literally placed in news (local and national) broadcasts with no indication that they were paid for. Every morning show has a segment where they shill products, periodic "gift guides," and people being interviewed who are headlining or keynoting loc…

> Ads on TV are literally placed in news

That's pretty country specific. I'd almost assume that Germany prohibits that, I know Denmark does. You CANNOT insert ads in any way into a program. Ads must specifically ONLY reside in ad blocks, between programs.

Which is why many of Denmark commercial TV stations aren't technically Danish, but they also don't produce news shows.

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

#98

Post by fouc »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #83
jasode wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What I'm specifically interested in, is what happens when as an influencer you _don't_ disclose an ad? Are there fines? Of course, not everyone is caught and punished but if you're big enough to attract the scrutiny of the FTC, they do issue fines for not disclosing ad sponsorship. Example: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/ftc-fines-detox-tea-compa...

Thanks for link! In that case, fined the company, but not the influencers? I mean, it makes sense, the influencers are small potatos in many cases just hustling to get by. But... the company probably just takes the risk as a potential cost of doing business (especially when enforcement is so rare; in this case they were fined $1 million which isn't peanuts, but I wonder what % of their profits it was...), and the inf…

when an influencer is making $10k/mo or more, they probably have incorporated, or they're a sole proprietorship.

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

#100

Post by jimbob45 »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #80
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 rev…

FWIW, most Twitch/YT streamers I see label their sponsored content as #sponsored or #ad. There are certainly more pernicious ads that go unlabeled though,
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