Augusto Beato Warns Against Deteriorating Influencer Marketing Practices

Augusto Beato, the owner of online marketing firm Portland SEO, is calling for stricter standards in regulating the influencer marketing industry.

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Beato agrees with ISBA, an advertising trade association, over concerns that Google, Youtube, and Facebook have shortcomings in self-regulation, including failure to address brand safety concerns.

There were numerous complaints regarding brand-safe influencer marketing last year due to a lack of a set of standards and practices.

This caused the Federal Trade Commission, the government agency charged with consumer protection against unfair or deceptive business practices, to send more than 90 letters to celebrities, influencers, and brands for violating guidelines around sponsored content.

The notice called out specific posts, showing that the commission is indeed looking at paid promotional activity on social media.

Moreover, the letter outlined what constituted proper disclosure, including using “unambiguous language,” ensuring that disclosures are in proximity to the promotional content and that the hashtags #ad and #sponsored are not otherwise buried in other content.

The FTC had filed a complaint against large companies like Lord & Taylor, Machinima, and Warner Bros.

The complaint against Lord & Taylor was for deceiving consumers by paying for native advertisements without disclosing that the posts were paid promotions for the company’s 2015 Design Lab clothing collection. The one against Machinima, Inc. was paying “influencers” to post YouTube videos endorsing Microsoft’s Xbox One system and several games. It also charged Warner Bros. for paying online “influencers,” thousands of dollars to post positive gameplay videos on YouTube and social media for the video game Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor.

The influencer marketing industry is projected to grow for years to come. The market is estimated to be worth $2 billion in 2017 and set to reach $10 billion by 2020.

Research by Activate by Bloglovin revealed that 67 percent of marketers think influencer marketing campaigns helped them reach a more targeted audience, further cementing its place as a major part of marketing campaigns.