Social Media Influencers and Their Impact on Native Advertising

Logan Leduc

ll504616@ohio.edu

Social media has become a part of our daily lives. For many, it's an even bigger part of their respective lives. Today, people can make a living by simply being active on their social media platform by posting videos, photos, podcasts, and many times, sponsored brand deals and native advertising. 

The advertisements can be hard to spot while others are very much open to the idea that they are promoting a company or product for money. On platforms like Instagram, a "celebrity" can post an advertisement promoting their sponsor. There are restrictions included such as a label, an icon that allows followers to ask what the product is, and the ability to interact with the ad by commenting on it.

YouTuber, MrBeast is actually using his sponsorship money for good. The 21-year-old YouTuber is well-known for giving out absurd amounts of money in each one of his videos and has obtained over 40 million subscribers on the platform. He sets aside roughly 30 seconds in his videos to promote his sponsors and then uses that money and his YouTube money to give out tens of thousands and even millions of dollars to people in need or willing to participate in a video.

Picture source: https://www.wuv.de/tech/instagram_kennzeichnet_native_advertising_inhalte

 

In an article with The Verge MrBeast explains, "A combination of my sponsorship cash and my own personal earnings keeps my channel going." These sponsors are advertised and the videos are still tagged with an "includes paid promotion" icon. This is the good side of native advertising, but for many people native advertising can be harmful or simply frustrating to many. 

Some native ads are much harder to identify or are even misleading. With society being on their phones more often than ever, we are bound to run into a few ads along the way. When I scroll through Instagram, I run into a lot of native advertising. The reason for this is exactly that, we are technology-driven people with easy access to those ads.

The Los Angeles Times posted an article and prefaced the idea that everyone has the right to know what is native advertising but that is more difficult online. "They do. And with print publications, that was seldom an issue. On the internet, it's a whole new ballgame." They aren't wrong when they say this. A simple accidental click on a post can take you to an ad. You're not shuffling through a newspaper on your own doing anymore.

It has never bothered me. if I see a post that is sponsored, I scroll right past it as I see no value. I see an ad at the end of an article, I close the article because I am done reading. However, for others, the simple influence of the people they follow promoting a product can make them buy into something they, at heart, don't want. This is the prime issue with this form of advertisement.