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Influencers must clearly identify promotional posts on social media as advertising content as of Sept. 14, the Advertising Standards Authority says in its new guidelines.
The authority (ASA) began consulting social media influencers about their guidelines earlier this year after receiving complaints about influencer Simone Anderson, who did not make it clear to her 314,000 Instagram followers that certain posts were essentially ads. .
The authority said in its ruling on those complaints that the use of the hashtag #gifted was not enough.
An influencer is defined by the ASA as a person with influence over “the choice, opinion or behavior of their followers” who has access to an audience for “their own organic content and advertising content from which they generate income.”
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CEO Hilary Souter said the authority recognized the need for strong guidance in rapidly evolving Influencer advertising.
Souter said the guidelines will be followed with training opportunities for the sector to support a level playing field in all media.
The authority said that influencers could label their content as advertising in a way that consumers could understand.
He said words and abbreviations like #sp or #collab, which are unlikely to be familiar to most consumers, should be avoided.
Chris McKeen / Stuff
The complaints against blogger Simone Anderson sparked the ASA guidelines for influencers.
The authority also recommended a list of phrases and words that influencers could post (but were not limited to) with or without hashtags to identify advertising content: “giveaway, giveaway, giveaway, free sample, product review, product test , free trial, ambassador, working with [advertiser name], partner, free loan and public relations sample “.
According to the guidelines, posts were likely to be advertisements when they were created or distributed in exchange for some form of payment.
This included, but was not limited to, money, free products or services, credit, event tickets, travel, and product loans.
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The ASA says that influencers should label their content as advertising in a way that consumers can understand.
Examples of ad content included content about a brand for which the influencer was a brand ambassador, content about an influencer’s own products, discount codes and affiliate links, and written and verbal agreements with an advertiser.
But content on behalf of an advertiser about free gifts was unlikely to be considered advertising content unless there was some form of payment or other business agreement with the advertiser, the ASA said.
The ASA defined “organic content” as related to the lifestyle or personal opinion of an influencer, saying “it is unlikely to be advertising content unless there is some form of payment for that content.”
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The ASA defines an influencer as a person with influence over “the choice, opinion or behavior of his followers” and access to an audience for his own content and advertising content from which he generates income.
The guidelines applied to national and international influencers who had a large New Zealand following.
If the ad violated ad codes, it could be removed or changed, which could incur considerable cost to the advertiser, depending on the type of ad or campaign, the ASA said.
The authority received 53 submissions and consulted with the advertising industry, public relations and talent management industry, influencers, government organizations and the public to form guidelines.
It received 463 advertising complaints last year.
