New rules on ad transparency are welcome but woolly
Years after concerns were raised about the blurring lines between advertising and content, the AANA has finally released best practice guidelines. But Simon Canning asks are they clear enough and will the emerging world of influencers even care?
The Australian Association of National Advertisers has finally set rules distinguishing advertising, paid plugs and product placement from other content – but what has emerged is a two-tiered system that will crack down on the rise of influencers but leave the traditional mediums of TV print and radio relatively untouched.
While the new guidelines will be welcomed as a step in the right direction, the AANA has introduced a woolly system widely open to interpretation, creating a potential recipe for confusion amongst advertisers and confusion amongst consumers.
For instance, the guidelines state that despite their introduction: “There is no absolute requirement that advertising or marketing communication must have a label”.
In attempting to address growing community concerns over the rise of stealth marketing, what the AANA has unveiled is a two-tiered system that is quite prescriptive about how bloggers, influencers and other users of emerging channels should identify advertising, and a much looser set of guidelines for TV, print and radio.
Hi Simon,
Thanks for including our tweet in your article but thought it best to disclose Man of Many’s policies in terms of paid advertising.
As a men’s lifestyle and “gear” blog we often write about brands or products as editorial, but we always ensure to mark any paid advertising or editorial clearly as “Sponsored”.
All paid articles are included in our Sponsored Category here: https://manofmany.com/sponsored which is marked at the top of each post.
We also will make references at the beginning or end of articles as being sponsored, supported or written in partnership with brands where there is payment made for editorial content. Please see an example here: https://manofmany.com/tech/stay-connected-moving-house-optus-home-wireless-broadband
Also, if we attend a trip for free, we’ll always disclose we were guests of the brand supporting said trip. Example here: https://manofmany.com/featured/city-guide-48-hours-san-francisco
Similarly, all paid social posts are marked as #ad, #sp or #sponsored.
Hope that this clarifies where we stand on the matter but let me know if you have any questions.
Cheers,
Scott
Hi Scott,
Thanks for the disclosure on how you deal with paid advertising at Man of Many. I have updated the picture caption to reflect this.
Cheers
Simon – Mumbrella
Completely agree that much of this is just too vague, one thing I wondered is how the AANA defines an ‘influencer’? At what point does a blogger or Instagrammer or personality become an ‘influencer’ and thus fall under these ‘guidelines’? Is there some magic formula based on number of followers, authorised account or something? Without the AANA setting out to define an ‘influencer’ this is all a nonsense.