Vloggers, listen up: Things are about to change
We all have our favorite Vloggers (hello, Zoella!). It’s those people on YouTube who film videos about their lives, showing us the things they bought while shopping or creating make-up tutorials for our next night out. They’re great, but what we may not realize that while we love their videos as a bit of light entertainment, it’s actually their job. And like any job, there are rules.
Specifically, for UK vloggers, some new advertising guidelines have been released that dictate how they can talk about sponsored products, or products they’re being paid to review, in their videos. “It’s simply not fair if we’re being advertised to and are not made aware of that fact,” said director of the Committee of Advertising Practice, Shahriar Coupa, in a statement to press.
The guidelines themselves are pretty simple:
These new rules have been established in the UK not just to make things clearer for viewers, but for the creators as well. Any lapse in identifying sponsored content was most likely because vloggers didn’t understand the rules, not because they didn’t want to follow them. So what does count as sponsored content?
Pretty much anything they didn’t go into a store or online to buy on their own counts as sponsored, and should be marked—usually this means in the description boxes of their videos, or putting “SPONSORED” or “AD” in the titles.
Consider this the “ingredients” list on the back of your chocolate bar, or the calories next to your Starbucks drink. It doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy what’s in front of you, it just means you’re getting all the information you need. Win, win!
(Image via YouTube)
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A blind makeup vlogger teaches YouTube what beauty’s all about
