Spon Con goes official

Scroll through your Instagram feed and it’s inevitable that you’ll come across “Spon Con” — sponsored content advertising everything from business courses to make-up kits. It’s a lucrative source of income for Instagram influencers, who may earn fees ranging from a few hundred dollars to a rumored $500,000 per post for the Kardashians. Until recently they did so in a largely unregulated market, where paid content could be posted without any kind of fine print. All that is set to change, however, in a crackdown by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the UK Advertising Standards Agency (ASA).

The change comes after a number of high-profile cases where bloggers and influencers have found themselves on the wrong side of advertising regulations. In April 2017, the FTC sent over 90 letters to influencers and brands notifying them of changes to their Endorsement Guides, and in September 2017, 21 of them received official warnings of failure to comply.

But the FTC is going bigger as well, with lawsuits targeting brands and influencers who engage in dishonest advertising. In a recent case, two Youtube personalities — Trevor “TmarTn” Martin and Thomas “Syndicate” Cassell — settled a suit alleging that they advertised an online gambling service without disclosing that they were its joint owners. Martin was originally charged in 2016 under the RICO act which governs racketeering and corruption, but that case was thrown out. The new lawsuit redefines the legal landscape because it brings social media influencers under the same advertising standards governing print and television media.

The FTC says the issue isn’t with sponsored content as a whole, but with misleading ads. US marketing company Mediakix reviewed the 50 most-followed celebrity accounts on Instagram and found that only 7% of posts promoting a brand complied with FTC guidelines. Some influencers use hashtags like #sp, #spon, #partner and #partnership, or they write “thanks [brand]” to identify an ad, but this is now deemed insufficient. Paid posts must be labelled #ad or otherwise clearly identify the relationship between sponsor and influencer.

In the UK, the ASA has required Instagram influencers to use the hashtags #ad or #spon to identify paid content since 2014, but as of this year the agency is enforcing other advertising guidelines as well. In September, Sophie Kasaei — a reality TV personality with over 1 million Instagram followers — was required to remove a post advertising Flat Tummy Tea because it contained unregistered health-related or nutritional claims.

Social media companies are responding in different ways. Instagram will require paid content to authorized accounts using the hashtag “Paid partnership with,” changing the way brands and influencers use Instagram to advertise products. Facebook has also made changes, adding a “paid” label to identify branded content in March this year. But influencers shouldn’t panic: all this does is recognize the reality that Instagram and Facebook are as much a part of our media landscape as newspapers and TV, if not more so. And there’s still plenty of Spon Con to go around!