More and more marketers are actively working to spot fraud. The ACTIVATE State of Influencer Marketing 2019 study found that 51.82% of marketers surveyed have mechanisms in place to recognize bots or fake followers , up 24.49% from the previous year. Two-thirds believe social media should take more action to combat fraud. While Facebook and YouTube have added settings that allow brands to distinguish between branded and sponsored content, Instagram has announced measures to crack down on inauthentic activity on the platform. This is encouraging, but there is still more work to be done.
The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has developed a Guide for Influencers in partnership with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to help influencers follow the rules that define what social media posts are considered azerbaijan email list advertising under the ASA . If a post is considered sponsored content in the UK, it becomes subject to a set of rules, and the document serves as a blueprint for influencers to know what to do if they run afoul of the ASA or if someone makes a complaint.
In the case of the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been issuing guidelines on sponsored content disclosure since the late 2000s. The general rule is that if the average user cannot tell whether there is a paid or unpaid relationship between a social media post and a brand, that relationship should be made explicit . In 2018, the FTC noted that the disclosure practices in place on platforms like Facebook are not sufficient . Despite this, most of the lawsuits taken have been against brands that have failed to disclose that they have paid influencers to promote a product. There have been high-profile cases, such as Floyd Mayweather Jr. and DJ Khaled, who paid combined penalties of $700,000 to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for failing to disclose payments they received to promote Initial Coin Offering (ICO) investments. Until there is more regulation, most of the FTC’s actions against influencers themselves have been limited to simply sending warning letters .