Instagram is now adding a label to posts on their platform that were paid for by influencers and advertisers. This comes at a time where 93% of paid posts aren’t properly labeled according to FTC guidelines. Normally, content creators are required to indicate when a post is an ad and present this notice to end users. But this never tends to happen in a direct sense since advertisers have found different ways to get around this, like using hashtags similar to #partner or #sp. Now, a label that reads “Paid partnership with…” will appear at the top of all paid-for-posts.
The discovery that missing paid indications that go against the FTC on 93% of posts uploaded to Instagram was made by marketing firm Mediakix. The data was later analyzed by BuzzFeed’s Katie Notopoulos who broke it down to discover that 61% of the posts were fashion-related. Notopoulos also stated that 49% of these posts failed to disclose any sort of sponsorship, 16% presented an expensive one-off gift, 12% presented a cheaper gift, and the other 12% were single pay-to-post advertisements. All of these go against the regulations the FTC has set which state that paid posts on social media must have a clear reference to why they appear in your feed. Hopefully, more advertisers and influencers will begin indicating which posts are paid in a clearer form in the future.
In addition, Instagram released a statement where they say “an official policy and enforcement for creators to follow based off Facebook’s current practices” will be laid out in the coming months. More steps after this should follow to avoid any confusion between what’s paid content and what isn’t.
VIA: The Verge, 9to5Google
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