A great benefit of social media is the authenticity. As a user, you’re sharing your live and your opinions in an open and uninfluenced way. As a brand, you’re engaged with your target audience in a unique way.
What’s more, with many people cutting the cord on their TVs in favor of streaming services like Netflix, they are able to avoid the bombardment of TV advertising. Couple that with some ad blockers on the Internet they are much tougher for brands to reach them.
Despite these hardships that marketers are facing, they are not stopping altogether. The continued use of social media also brings the rise of advertisements on sites such as Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.
Many brand influencers with large followings on these social media platforms have been placed under the advertising microscope over the last two years or so in regards to questioning whether or not their product placement tweets and Instagram posts are ethical or not.
Stars with hundreds of thousands of followers, or even millions, like the Kardashian Klan, can get paid as much as $75,000 for a single Instagram post – and the number is arguably larger and larger as the family continues to grow their fame. It’s an important point to recognize that there is a fine line promoting an item solely because you truly enjoy the product vs. getting paid to promote an opinion that may not be genuine.
According to this New York Times article, the Federal Trade Commission has continued to find itself struggling how exactly to define these sorts of brand endorsements should be represented by the endorser to the rest of the public.
An interesting point that is made in the same article refers to social media influencers who tend to get less engagement with their audience if #ad is used in the caption. But how exactly are we supposed to be honest with our following if we are leaving out important pieces of information in our captions?
While it is clear that this sort of advertising is going to continue to be popular, it’s important to consider how these influencers are choosing to interact with their following – and whether or not the idea of honesty is important to our culture. If these sponsored posts continue bring a large revenue in for their users, the least they can do is draw a fine line between what is right and wrong in regards to sponsored social media posts.
Categorised in: Influencer Marketing, Influencers, Instagram, Social Media