Influencers, here are the goals and pitfalls for the Authority in its hunt for hidden advertising
With the new Agcom guidelines, the war on the Wild West of influencer marketers has been declared. But is everything really ready? Gray areas and unresolved issues in expert opinions
It was not the Ferragni case that gave Agcom the idea of drawing up guidelines for digital creators , but it will certainly have made the Authority push the accelerator.
However, the rules for influencers who promise to immediately do justice on misleading advertising, lack of transparency and protection of minors present some gray areas and problematic aspects that are unresolved or not yet known.
THE ROLES OF AGCOM AND ANTITRUST (ACCORDING TO AGCOM)
According to the president of the Communications Regulatory Authority (Agcom), Giacomo Lasorella (in the photo), the difference between the roles that the institution led by him and the Antitrust, i.e. the Authority, will play in infringement cases of digital influencers and creators competition and market guarantor (Agcm), is very clear.
In an interview on Repubblica he was in fact asked who would be responsible if a Ferragni case occurred again tomorrow. “I believe that the different authorities should not compete with each other. Their duty is to collaborate. Which, moreover, they already do now and every day, Lasorella replied, adding that "the law attributes very clear competences to each authority".
“When it spots an unfair commercial practice, the Antitrust will take action. As he did in the charity pandoro case. Unfair commercial practice is his direct responsibility”, states the president of Agcom. While if the influencer puts on makeup with lipstick, enhancing its qualities and throwing the brand out there, Repubblica hypothesizes, "it will be up to us to intervene: it is up to Agcom to counteract surreptitious, hidden, indirect forms of promotion", concludes Lasorella.
THE PRECEDENTS OF ANTITRUST
So, if Agcom deals with hidden advertising and the Antitrust with unfair commercial practices, why do two jurists on Sole24Ore cite precedents of hidden advertising that the Antitrust has dealt with in the past?
In fact, Ernesto Apa and Oreste Pollicino write: “Since 2018, the Competition and Market Authority has initiated several proceedings for hidden advertising against not only personalities who enjoy a large following on social media, but also micro-influencers with less than 1,000 followers”.
One of the latest cases is the one involving the influencer Asia Valente (2.1 million followers) last November , who ended up together with Meta, Mark Zuckerberg's company which owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, in the crosshairs of the Agcm itself on charges of covert advertising of restaurants, spas, hotels and other tourist facilities.
In fact, as another article in Il Sole observes, "advertising is also a topic that intersects with the Antitrust playing field" and, therefore, where the role of one begins and that of the other ends does not seem very definite.
THE TECHNICAL TABLE
The Agcom guidelines then indicate the launch of a technical table to give immediate effect to the provision, in which – we read in the note – "subjects who usually do not fall within the legislative and regulatory perimeter of the Authority will also participate, such as those who populate the world of influencer marketing, therefore not only influencers, but also subjects who operate as intermediaries between them and companies".
This, according to Agcom, "will allow the requests of these subjects to be acknowledged and their action directed, making use of good practices in the matter, towards compliance with the rules". As well as dealing with micro-influencers and those who don't reach a million followers.
HUNTING (ONLY) FOR BIG FISH
Furthermore, to implement this action plan, there will be a need for staff to take care of it and also for this reason the threshold of one million followers has been set to narrow down the field of influencers, who in Italy alone are estimated to be 350 thousand . The list of interested parties will be published on the Agcom website.
As Lasorella clarified to Repubblica : “We need to constantly monitor influencers. We cannot just dictate behaviors, it is our duty to really enforce them. It is therefore unthinkable that the Authority is following tens of thousands of people. It's right to focus our attention on the bigger fish."
“The one million ceiling – he continues – is what we adopt in this first phase. This is an experimental threshold. We are ready to change it at any time because the Guidelines are not a static, firm, blind act. They will be updated. Finally, I expect an influencer, even if smaller, to have the good sense to follow the virtuous path that we will indicate with ever greater clarity", also through the aforementioned Technical Table.
Furthermore, foreign influencers visible in Italy are excluded from the guidelines.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/influencer-ecco-fini-e-inghippi-per-lauthority-a-caccia-di-pubblicita-occulte/ on Fri, 12 Jan 2024 06:51:18 +0000.