German Court announces for social media influencers to make sure that for every product promotion they get paid for must be clearly marked as sponsored post

The increase in the usage of internet over the last few years has led it to become one of the most important inventions of the 12st century. The internet ever since it started gaining popularity has brought about hundreds of newer industries that now work towards making human life easier and the world a lot better.

These industries not only ease out things for its users, but also open possibilities for more daughter industries to emerge out of them thus allowing people earn a handsome income through the internet. One example of this is the influencer marketing agency which allows different influencers with a good following on social platforms to earn by endorsing and promoting products of different companies.

The influencer marketing industry have grown alongside the number of users on the internet. As internet usage increased the number of social media influencers and their fans both increased. Nowadays there are thousands of influencers out there that have made a career for themselves and are earning good money through business or product endorsements. Business now are far more likely to invest money into influencer marketing than they ever were, because it offers great amount of both publicity and sales.

The most primary reason behind influencer marketing being so effective is the influencer and user relationship. An influencer when promoting a product to his audience doesn’t seem like a finely dressed salesman trying to sell you something but its rather a person you look up to suggesting you a product moreover the viewer doesn’t feel like he is being sold a product thus making influencer marketing far more effective than others.

A lot of influencers on Instagram to further improve the originality of their paid posts by not marking them under the paid content category since it would further increase the sale conversion percentage. This technique to not mark paid post was however recently ruled out against by the German court.

The German court said that any influencer that receives a sum of money for endorsing or promoting a product must mention the post as the paid promotion and not mark it like a normal post. For influencers that promote a product without any financial benefit from its company is free to not mark the post under the paid content tag.

This ruling came forward, while the German court is dealing with three influencer marketing cases. The court in the case of female influencer marketer that did not marked a post she received payment of said that she should have been clear while making a paid post. However, the same court in the case of an non payed post without the paid tag said that the advertiser was not obliged to do so.

While different courts actively work towards ending this problem. Instagram itself has also been actively working on ending it. The photo sharing platform just last year signed a deal with Competition & Markets Authority to fight against hidden ads on Instagram.


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