Sponsored posts on social media platforms are really influential because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up allowing social media platforms to get another source of revenue. Whilst at the same time enabling brands and content creators to connect to the people that might be interested in whatever it is that they might be offering.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that a sponsored post can end up being seen as manipulative if it is not marked as such. If a post hides the fact that it is sponsored, users might assume that it has some kind of organic reach or value which would be rather disingenuous with all things having been considered and taken into account.
This is why Instagram is facing such a huge problem. A recent study has indicated that 76% of the sponsored posts that you might end up seeing on Instagram actively try to hide the fact that they are sponsored. Using #ad seems to be the most common way to clearly mark your sponsored posts with 12.8 million instances of this being seen, with #sponsored coming in second at around 3.3 million posts.
This indicates that there are likely tens of millions of sponsored posts that did not reveal this detail to users. This is an attempt to manipulate users that is unfortunately completely in line with the kind of landscape that people have ended up seeing on the platform in a really big way. Sponsored posts are completely fine as they can help a lot of people in lots of ways, but they need to be clearly marked so that users can tell for certain whether or not the content that they are seeing is genuine or if it has been paid for.
Read next: The Inside Scoop on Instagram’s New Affiliate Marketing Test
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that a sponsored post can end up being seen as manipulative if it is not marked as such. If a post hides the fact that it is sponsored, users might assume that it has some kind of organic reach or value which would be rather disingenuous with all things having been considered and taken into account.
This is why Instagram is facing such a huge problem. A recent study has indicated that 76% of the sponsored posts that you might end up seeing on Instagram actively try to hide the fact that they are sponsored. Using #ad seems to be the most common way to clearly mark your sponsored posts with 12.8 million instances of this being seen, with #sponsored coming in second at around 3.3 million posts.
This indicates that there are likely tens of millions of sponsored posts that did not reveal this detail to users. This is an attempt to manipulate users that is unfortunately completely in line with the kind of landscape that people have ended up seeing on the platform in a really big way. Sponsored posts are completely fine as they can help a lot of people in lots of ways, but they need to be clearly marked so that users can tell for certain whether or not the content that they are seeing is genuine or if it has been paid for.
Read next: The Inside Scoop on Instagram’s New Affiliate Marketing Test
