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Advertising United Kingdom Your Rights Online

New Rules Say UK Video Bloggers Must Be Clearer About Paid Endorsements 36

AmiMoJo writes: New guidelines for video bloggers who enter marketing relationships with brands have been published. Earlier this year the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that paid endorsements for Oreo biscuits on YouTube were not marked clearly enough. The new rules outline several scenarios where content must be clearly marked as an advertisement. One note from the linked article: However, the guidelines noted that when free items are sent to vloggers without any editorial or content control over videos exerted by the brand in question, there is no need for them to follow the Cap code.
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New Rules Say UK Video Bloggers Must Be Clearer About Paid Endorsements

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  • where activision sends them all the free skylanders and my kids drive me crazy why they can't so many?
  • by Anonymous Coward

    The "video game reviewer" segment is wholly bought and paid for unless proven otherwise.

    • That is the proper way to deal with it. If you assume the worst you will never be disappointed, and rarely surprised.

      • Sometimes you can deal with it even better. Fortunately in the US there was a grassroots customer revolt against the corruption so strong that the FTC stepped in [reddit.com] in direct response to make it clear that, yes, disclosure of financial relationships is absolutely required.

        And just this weekend the Society of Professional Journalists also publically stated [youtube.com] that reviewers with relevant personal relationships must disclose them (or preferably just recuse themselves from those jobs).

        Funny how none of that h
    • it's not the reviewers, it's hyping the games for months before release to get people to pre-order at retail or download a copy so they can play the very second it goes live. and then let the idiots beta test the software while you fix it.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        There are only so many AAA games/movies/albums/TV shows released every year. Most of them come out around the same time of year too, when people are in the mood to go and see them and in time for the DVD to hit religious holidays. So the rest of the time the magazines and web sites are forced to preview coming attractions, hyping them up to generate interest in reading about them. That makes people pre-order them, and the launch into an inevitable debacle, and the reviewers don't want to turn around and say

  • Note how they said the company could not run the ads again in their current form. If this was a one-off it'd be ok, but the ASA lets companies break the rules regularly without sanction. The most obvious example of this is telecoms companies, they omit costs or call products unlimited when obviously they aren't. They drag their feet and tell them to take down the ads, but the ad campaign is usually already over. Rinse, repeat.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      The ASA is a self-regulatory advisory board formed by advertisers, it doesn't have any authority to impose sanctions even if it wanted to.

  • Now if only Slashdot video advertisements had such honesty.

  • Careful with calling oreos "biscuits" around Americans, lest they become tempted to start dipping them in gravy or [tumblr.com]eating them with bacon [cloudfront.net] ;)

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by mjwx ( 966435 )

      Convene a meeting of the YouTube Vlogger Ethics Committee at once!

      I will immediately dispatch my YouTube Public Relations Executive, Mr Fluffy to attend your meeting.

  • Period. Mostly just people lying for money.
  • It is disappointing that free items sent to the vlogger by the manufacturer are excluded from this requirement.

    While the reviewer is free in these situations to slag off items sent to him gratis, there is still a greater likelihood he will overlook issues and give the item a better review rather than risk losing the opportunity to get more free items. In many ways, the reviewer is still in the employ of the manufacturer, except instead of being paid in cash he is being paid in merchandise. There is an unspo

  • by Blue Stone ( 582566 ) on Thursday August 20, 2015 @01:15PM (#50356207) Homepage Journal

    If you ignore the ASA or tell them to fuck off, they will do bad things, like ... um ... post on their website that you have told them to fuck off.

    They might also take out an advertisement on Google so someone sees a message when they do a search for your blog/business/youtube channel indicating that you've told them to fuck off.

    I think people should be clear when they show sponsored products, that's about basic integrity and ethics, but the ASA can make bad decisions. They aren't a government body. You can tell them to fuck off if you want to. The worst thing they'll do in many cases is tell people that you've told them to fuck off.

  • I wish politicians had greater disclosure of their paid endorsements.

"The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a neccessity." - Oscar Wilde

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