“My audience is usually pretty receptive to anything I talk about brandwise because they trust that I’m not just selling them something I don’t care about,” he said.
One way of disclosing: tagging a brand and thanking them. “NEW VIDEO! SEX TOY UNBOXING thanks to @adamandeve!" read a recent tweet by Foti. The tweet doesn't hint at a brand deal, but the video, which has 25,000 views, displays "sponsored" on the screen within the first 30 seconds.
Nick Cicero, the CEO of influencer marketing agency Delmondo, said the FTC has already changed some practices in the industry by bringing recent lawsuits. “For a lot of years it was really really loose, and you could get away with a lot more,” he said. Now he’s telling all of his clients to use the hashtag #ad.
The FTC has been getting the word out with online webinars and guides, speeches and engaging trade associations. “We’re not calling up each individual ad agency,” Ostheimer said. It will also continue to go after the advertisers with legal action. While it hasn’t charged an influencer for deceptive advertising, it hasn’t ruled that out.
“We hope by bringing these cases that we not only stop the marketer and influencer who didn’t have adequate disclosures previously, but also get the message out that other companies should have clear and conspicuous disclosures,” he said.
In many cases, influencers are just following orders. When asked about her contracts with Intel, Justine Ezarik, otherwise known as iJustine, said, "Whatever the brand and legal tell us to do, we do to comply.'' In most cases these days she'll use #ad, #sp or say that she's "working with" or "partnering with" a brand. She'll write about a sponsorship in the description of YouTube videos if she doesn't have time to address it on camera. Khaled is paid to rep Ciroc, and his representatives couldn't be reached for comment. Van Brocklin didn't respond to a request for comment.
"It definitely is getting confusing," Ezarik wrote in an e-mail. "The hardest part is when you only have 140 characters or a few seconds of a snapchat, how do you make the most of it?''