Authority lays out advertising code for influencers

Wednesday, 2 September 2020

Influencers must clearly identify promotional social media posts as advertising content from September 14, the Advertising Standards Authority says in its new guidelines.

The authority (ASA) began consulting social media influencers on its guidelines earlier this year after receiving complaints about influencer Simone Anderson, who failed to make clear to her 314,000 Instagram followers that certain posts were essentially advertisements.

The authority said in its ruling on those complaints that using the hashtag #gifted was not enough.

An influencer is defined by the ASA as a person with influence over “the choice, opinion or behaviour of their followers” who has access to an audience for “their own organic content and ad content they generate income from”.

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Simone Anderson was instructed to remove or amend similar content in July 2020. (File photo)

Chief executive Hilary Souter said the authority recognised the need for strong guidance in the rapidly evolving Influencer advertising.

Souter said the guidelines would be followed up with training opportunities for the sector to support a level playing field across all media.

This year the Advertising Standards Authority brought in specific guidelines for influencer marketing.

The authority said influencers could label their content as advertising in a way consumers could understand.

It said words and abbreviations like #sp or #collab, which most consumers were unlikely to be familiar with, should be avoided.

The ASA defines an influencer as a person with influence over “the choice, opinion or behaviour of their followers” and access to an audience for their own content and ad content they generate income from.

The authority also recommended a list of phrases and words influencers could post (but were not limited to) either with or without hashtags to identify advertising content: “gifted, gift, free gift, free sample, product review, product trial, free trial, ambassador, working with [advertiser name], partner, free loan and PR sample.”

According to the guidelines, posts were likely to be advertising when they had been created or distributed in return for some form of payment.

This included, but was not limited to, money, free products or services, credit, event tickets, travel and product loans.

Examples of advertising content included content about a brand the influencer was a brand ambassador for, content about an influencer’s own products, giveaways, discount codes and affiliate links and written and verbal agreements with an advertiser.

But content about free giveaways was unlikely to be considered ad content unless there was some form of payment from, or other commercial arrangement with, the advertiser, the ASA said.

The ASA defined “organic content” as relating to an influencer’s lifestyle or personal opinion and said it was “unlikely to be advertising content unless there is some form of payment for that content”.

The guidelines applied to influencers based nationally and internationally who had a large following from New Zealand.

If the advertisement was in breach of the Advertising Codes, it could be removed or changed, which could be a considerable cost to the advertiser, depending on the type of advertisement or campaign, the ASA said.

The authority received 53 submissions and consulted with the advertising industry, public relations and talent management industry, individual Influencers, government organisations and the public to form guidelines.

It received 463 advertisement complaints last year.