June 29, 2018

Despite the ease with which bloggers and vloggers may appear to be able to monetise and profit through affiliate marketing from social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, it is far from a straight forward process, with an increasingly high standard to be met.

Over the last few years the range of ‘influencers’ has grown through paid partnerships with brands to promote goods and services, enabling brands to reach new audiences in an arguably more intimate environment than that offered by traditional advertising methods. Smartphones allow audiences to be reached practically anytime and anywhere on-the-go, allowing outbound marketing to increase in effectiveness. As a result, the reach ands cope of advertising methods is now constantly evolving and developing to discover new methods of engagement. During the last few weeks, Instagram has launched its own online ‘tv channel’ allowing videos to be uploaded up to an hour in duration accessible through the app, in a bid to increase sponsorship revenues (simultaneously announcing that it now has 1 billion users making it the third largest social network after Facebook and YouTube) and we can expect to see both influencers and brands hurrying to figure out how to make the most of this new development, particularly once the advertising options are fully available.

Unsurprisingly the Committees of Advertising Practice (CAP) has had to work hard to try and keep up with these new channels of marketing that are regularly emerging, and to try and regulate the relatively young concept of social media particularly as it increasingly becomes an engrained part of modern day life. One of the biggest problems faced by CAP has been how to ensure influencers (especially those who may have started vlogs and blogs originally as a hobby not expecting it to grow into a business) fully comply with advertising rules to disclose commercial relationships and avoid misleading consumers. CAP (along with the advertising standards agency (ASA)) has published guidance to help influencers understand how rules apply to their posts, and taken specific action to crack down on undisclosed affiliate marketing – #Ad is now commonplace and influencers, brands and consumers are starting to expect (if not welcome) it.

However, the new problem for CAP and ASA when dealing with affiliate marketing seems not so much to be undisclosed posts, but the practice of some seeking to portray a larger number of followers and higher levels of engagement than they might really have. As the affiliate marketing sector becomes increasingly competitive, influencers find themselves being measured certain key metrics: (i) the number of followers that an influencer has; and (ii) the level of engagement between those followers and the influencer. The result of this is that in order to get those lucrative partnerships with large brands, some influencers are looking to find new ways to score highly on these metrics by buying fake users and interactions: they are purchasing bots.

The problem? Fake accounts and simulated interactions created by the use of bots have the same effect as undisclosed commercial posts, risking misleading both brands who unknowingly may employ the services of an influencer using such techniques, and subsequently the consumer being targeted by such marketing and potentially misled by fake interactions. It is also not always straightforward to identify where it occurs.

Already reacting to this new risk, the world’s second largest advertiser, Unilever, has publicly made commitments to boost consumer trust in digital media by vowing not to work with influencers who buy followers; not to buy followers for the company’s brands; and to prioritise working with partners who increase transparency. Unilever CEO, Keith Weed said “At Unilever, we believe influencers are an important way to reach consumers and grow our brands. Their power comes from a deep, authentic and direct connection with people, but certain practices like buying followers can easily undermine these relationships.”

Whilst Unilever seems to be standing behind using influencers as a marketing tool, subject to such influencers meeting their standards, there has been speculation that other marketers are not planning to see influencers at all over the next 12 months. UK-based digital content marketing agency, Zazzle Media thinks there are two reasons for why this might be: (i) the difficulty of measuring how effective influencers may be when it comes to affecting sales; and (ii) a growing concern about bots.

So do the risks associated with affiliate marketing mean that the age of influencers, and indeed their influence, is over? Probably not, but it’s unlikely that scrutiny of the role they play in advertising will decrease. Instead, it is more important than ever that influencers are as transparent as possible about their relationships with both brands and followers, and following existing CAP guidance is the bare minimum that should be done. Both influencers and brands need to be proactive in ensuring that all relationships are fully transparent both between brands and influencers, and influencers and followers. Only then can confidence in influencers by marketers and consumers be renewed and the use of influencers as an effective marketing tool be properly leveraged.

Current CAP guidance for influencers can be accessed here.