TikTok is Full of Shady Secret Advertisements

upstart writes:

Influencers are supposed to disclose their ads, but nothing happens when they don't:

In spring 2020, several large, family-friendly TikTok accounts posted videos where they pulled pranks on their friends and family members. They all used toys from Basic Fun!'s Joker Prank Shop line, and all of the videos prominently featured them buying the merchandise at their local Walmart.

The posts sure seemed like ads, but few of them indicated that their creators were paid to promote the toys to an especially vulnerable audience: kids. Many of the creators themselves were kids.

But they were ads, according to Influencer Marketing Factory, an agency that took credit for the campaign on its website and its own TikTok account. [...]

Very few parties seem interested in knowing or following the rules. So much so that a marketing agency seems perfectly comfortable displaying what appear to be violations of them that it helped to create. [...]

This problem isn't unique to TikTok. Instagram has been dealing with it for years, giving brands plenty of time to figure out influencer advertising strategies before TikTok came along. By the time the platform was just a year old, it was already awash in sponsored content - some labeled, some not.

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