Instagram has announced that it will soon roll out a way for influencers to mark their posts as sponsored if a brand has paid for promotion. When a user flags their post or Story as sponsored, then a label will be placed at the top, saying “Paid partnership with [the brand's name]”. As well as the obvious ethical reasons why paid-for posts should be marked as such, US Federal Trade Commission's guidelines state that influencers and brands can be punished if they fail to mark such posts as sponsored. Instagram hopes that these ethical and legal reasons will encourage influencers to use the new feature. To sweeten the deal, it has also announced that influencers and brands who mark posts and Stories as sponsored will be able to view improved metrics as to their performance. The feature will initially be rolled out to “a limited set of partners” over the coming weeks, before then potentially being rolled out further.
