As the Federal Trade Commission begins to crack down on creators for inappropriate disclosures of branded content, Instagram wants to keep its creators on the right side of regulators.
In June, Instagram began testing a tool allowing designers to tag when an article or organic story was paid for by a brand, similar to that of its parent company, Facebook, which has debuted in April 2016. Now the photo and … The video application makes the branded content tool available to more creators, especially those who receive a high level of quality. commitment on their publications and that represent a large part of the branded content on Instagram.
To make sure that creators use the tool when needed, Instagram began monitoring their posts for branded content disclosure violations. According to an Instagram spokesperson, the system combines computerized and human journals of creative publications. When a message is reported as violating the company's brand content policy, the creator receives a notification within the app to associate the tag "Paid Partnership With" to the post.
If embedded disclosures of Instagram branded content are gaining popularity among creators, the pseudo-standard could hold on a stronger foundation with the FTC. In September, at the same time that the regulator announced its first-ever agreement with social media influencers for failing to properly disclose a trademark approval agreement, the FTC also cast a shadow over the sufficiency of integrated disclosure tools.
The FTC's position that these tools are "not necessarily" sufficient will probably not mean that it plans to penalize the creators who use them. But the more the creators use them and the more the public becomes accustomed to their meaning, the more the FTC is likely to soften its vision of their sufficiency.
About the author
Tim Peterson, Third Door Media's Social Media Reporter, has been covering the digital marketing industry since 2011. He has been reporting for Advertising Age, Adweek and Direct Marketing News. Angeleno, born and raised, graduated from the University of New York, currently lives in Los Angeles.
He broke stories on Snapchat's advertising plans, Jason Kilar's attempt at founding CEO of Hulu, to turn to YouTube and assembling the ad-tech battery of Amazon; analyzed YouTube's programming strategy, Facebook's advertising ambitions and increased blocking of ads; and recorded the largest annual event of the VidCon digital video, the BuzzFeed brand video production process and the Snapchat Discover ads charge six months after its launch. He has also developed tools to monitor the early adoption of live applications by brands, compare search patterns from Yahoo and Google, and review the NFL's YouTube and Facebook video strategies.