Unfortunately, the is another space where ads are going to appear: in content... I am not talking about being blended into the content itself. Think paid placements in movies. podcast/youtube sponsorships etc.
> Think paid placements in movies. podcast/youtube sponsorships etc.
Well, product placement in movies is well known. Nearly everyone should know that companies pay millions of dollars to e.g. have James Bond drive their car.
What is way more evil is that what is called "influencer marketing", which you are addressing in your last part. It's especially evil because the target group for "influencers" is usually little kids.
But, once again, regulation comes to the rescue - at least in Germany, it's outright illegal. To quote §5a, sect. 6 UWG (law against unfair business practice):
(6) Unlauter handelt auch, wer den kommerziellen Zweck
einer geschäftlichen Handlung nicht kenntlich macht,
sofern sich dieser nicht unmittelbar aus den Umständen
ergibt, und das Nichtkenntlichmachen geeignet ist, den
Verbraucher zu einer geschäftlichen Entscheidung zu
veranlassen, die er andernfalls nicht getroffen hätte.
Translated (roughly, IANAL):
He acts unfair, who hides the commercial purpose of a
business transaction as long as this is not obvious
from the circumstances, and the hiding is able to
trick the consumer into a business transaction he
would not have done otherwise.
The illegal act hereby is, e.g. as a youtube influencer, hiding that you were paid by an advertiser/vendor to promote a certain item in a "review", because an unsuspecting consumer may not know that your "review" is bought.
This is the reason why "sponsored content" is clearly marked as such in German newspapers. Youtubers, on the other hand, have mostly ignored the law (and I'm happy for the day once someone uses the law to shut down the more obnoxious of the bunch like BibisBeautyPalace).
I'm curious how effective this law is. What is the threshold for "not hiding commercial purpose"? It doesn't seem like a very high one from that translation (though that could just be a language thing.)
Especially when you consider targeting kids, is the result of this law actually effective in making it clear to them that something is an advertisement?
Quite effectively in the "classic media space", it kept "Schleichwerbung" (paid, but unmarked as such, content, and the mentioned evil forms of product placement) at bay in the major media (newspapers, TV, radio and their respective online sites). There have been some scandals when someone did try to fool the system, but you always get these. Mostly these cases additionally involved corruption.
Regarding the "new form of media" aka clickbait youtube junk, weird blogs etc., however, it has not held up, for a couple of reasons:
- these participants often don't have imprints so it makes filing a lawsuit pretty difficult
- filing a lawsuit according to UWG is allowed only for competing companies (and they have to be competing with the advertiser, in the same areas of business!) and consumer protection agencies. No one likes an internet shitstorm for "going with the lawhammer after 16 year old youtube kids".
- there are just too many small-scale offenders, it's not worth the effort to go after them
It should be well understood by now that when you hear or read anything good about a brand or product online, 99% of the time it is a paid advertisement. Paid content is the norm. You are right though, it sucks when kids are the target because they can’t understand.
the US has had "truth in advertising" always since before the Internet, but here they always fall down because cases go to court and the judge rules that "people should know that this was a lie, so it's not deceptive in an illegal way"
Ads are already heavily present in those areas already. Many media outlets have "sponsored content" already. Movies have been doing both blatant and subtle placements for a long time too.
Console games have had embedded ads and vicious product placement, and some games are entirely based around brands (see most sport and racing games for the last 20 years)
How is that unfortunate? One of my favorite Youtube channels recently picked up a meal-prep-delivery-thing sponsorship, and they work it into the content well - it's obvious that they're jamming it into the program, but they manage to remain funny while doing it. Much better than rolling my eyes for 15 seconds during an unskippable pre-roll.
Because being obvious and funny about it is so rare that it's practically unique. What most advertisers want and pay for is "native advertising," i.e. ads masquerading as normal content. When native advertising is done "properly" you have no way of knowing if your favorite YouTuber actually likes the product or is just being paid to shill it. That's unfortunate as hell.
Of course you know. The answer is always "They are being paid to shill it." unless they have invested in cultivating a reputation of independents, like Consumer Reports.
The youtubers I respect (best content), have the format:
