The
millions of people who follow Kim Kardashian West and her sisters on
social media have become accustomed to seeing them praise everything
from fat-burning tea to gummy vitamins for healthier hair.
“Ever
since I started taking two @sugarbearhair a day, my hair has been
fuller and stronger than ever!! Even with all the heat and bleaching I
do to it!” Khloé Kardashian posted on Instagram this month.
But
in the last week, close watchers of the sisters’ accounts may have
noticed a small addition to those laudatory messages about the latest
miracle product: “#ad.”
For
marketers contending with consumers who use ad blockers online and have
cut the cord to their TVs in favor of streaming services, social media
has become a way to reach an elusive audience. Brands such as Jack in
the Box and Red Bull have proved willing to pay thousands of dollars per
social media mention to people like the Kardashians and other so-called
influencers who command big, loyal followings on services like Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube.
These
mentions, however, are often presented as testimonials rather than
advertisements, a practice that at least one consumer advocacy group has
claimed is deceptive. And the Federal Trade Commission has found itself
struggling to articulate exactly how these sorts of paid brand
endorsements should be handled to ensure that they are identified as
ads.
In the case of Ms. West and her sisters, Khloé and Kourtney Kardashian and Kylie and Kendall Jenner, TruthinAdvertising.org, a nonprofit that fights deceptive advertising, asserted that dozens of Instagram posts from the sisters violated guidelines from the F.T.C. that say it should be
“clear and conspicuous” to consumers if a person endorsing a product
“has been paid or given something of value.” However, while the agency
suggests putting “#ad” or “#sponsored” at the start of those kinds of
social media posts, or providing verbal disclosures in videos, there are
no hard and fast rules.
“We’re
not prescriptive about that,” said Mary K. Engle, the F.T.C.’s
associate director for advertising practices. “But it has to be
unambiguous.”
For
example, simply saying “thank you” to a brand or adding “#sp” or
“#spon” probably isn’t clear enough, while saying a brand is a “partner”
probably is, she said.
The
gray area was on display last week when Kylie Jenner changed a caption
on an Instagram picture of a lavish mansion in Turks and Caicos from
“Thanks for the birthday home, @airbnb” to “Thanks for the gift of a
lovely birthday home, @airbnb.” After a lawyer for the sisters received
an Aug. 17 letter from TruthinAdvertising.org, they also edited the
captions on at least a dozen other Instagram photos and deleted others.
Michael Kump, a lawyer for the sisters, confirmed on Wednesday that he was talking with TruthinAdvertising.org.
Audiences
“have a very visceral reaction to ‘#ad’ or ‘#spon’ or whatever it is,
where they don’t want to know people are getting paid for stuff even if
they are,” said Jaclyn Johnson, president of creative services at Small
Girls PR, where she connects brands like L’Oréal Paris and Urban Decay
cosmetics to influencers who have large social media followings. “A few
bloggers we work with say, ‘I want you to know, my engagement on posts
that are tagged “#ad” or “#spon” get lower engagement than if that wasn’t there.’”
Brands
are “toeing this line of how to make it come across as authentic but
also in line with the legalese of social media endorsements,” Ms.
Johnson added.
Disclosure, which the F.T.C. has been wrestling with for years,
has become more important as the money offered to influencers has
jumped and the number of sponsored posts on services like Instagram and
YouTube has surged.
Captiv8,
a company that connects brands to influencers, says someone with three
million to seven million followers can charge, on average, $187,500 for a
post on YouTube, $75,000 for a post on Instagram or Snapchat and
$30,000 for a post on Twitter.
For influencers with 50,000 to 500,000 followers, the average is $2,500
for YouTube, $1,000 for Instagram or Snapchat and $400 for Twitter.
The
company has counted more than 200,000 Instagram posts a month since
January tagged with “#ad,” “#sp” or “#sponsored” — and that does not
include those that were not properly marked. Any one brand could be
working with thousands of influencers, said Ms. Engle of the F.T.C., and
most are not reality television stars.
“Most of them are just more or less regular people,” she said.
Shaun
McBride, a 29-year-old who is known as Shonduras on social media, has
worked with companies like Google and Red Bull on campaigns on Snapchat,
where he said he had about 700,000 followers. His posts feature him
doing activities like skateboarding and launching homemade rockets, as
well as photos of his infant daughter and cereal.
For
top Snapchat users, brands will start rates “at around $10,000” for a
story, he said, referring to a collection of images and videos that
disappear after 24 hours. He said he did at least five of those a month.
“All
brands have always been worried about the F.T.C. guidelines, but I
definitely think they’re focusing on it more,” Mr. McBride said.
“Recently, it’s like, ‘Can you have ‘#sponsored’ on the first snap and
the last snap?’ Or ‘Can you put ‘#ad’ on every single snap in the
corner?’”
That
makes Mr. McBride even more inclined to make paid posts “very, very
obvious.” That could, for instance, mean thanking Red Bull for a free
trip to Hawaii. Otherwise, posts with “#ad” or “#sponsored” can give his
followers an “uncomfortable feeling,” he said.
Disclosures
can also be complicated as brands increasingly give creative leeway to
social media stars. Jack in the Box, for example, told investors and
analysts in May about its work with the YouTube star Miranda Sings, who
created a passionate serenade for one of its hamburgers called “Sexy
Buttery Love Song.” It surpassed a million views, and she later
performed it in concert, executives told the investors and analysts.
Her
YouTube post description includes a line that says, “This video is
sponsored by Jack in the Box,” and that same line appears in the corner
of her video after the two-minute mark.
In July, Warner Bros. settled charges
with the F.T.C. over a marketing campaign it ran with YouTube video
game influencers. Part of the problem was that most of the disclosures
were visible only if users clicked the “Show More” button under the
videos.
“It
would definitely be awesome to see specific examples on every single
platform so you don’t have issues like the Warner Bros. one,” said
Krishna Subramanian, a founder of Captiv8. “If there were very clear
definitions of what’s right and what’s wrong, then we as an industry
could embrace it and help move things forward.”