When it was announced in March that the Advertising Association had agreed to the extension of the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) code’s remit to non-paid for digital media, it was perhaps hard to envisage exactly how it will affect marketers. The proposed regulations will mean that any digital marketing communications outside the paid-for arena, such as brand’s activity on its own website, a social media site or blog, will fall within the scope of the code.
The remit extension has been broadly welcomed – understandable when nearly two thirds of complaints about online marketing activity do not currently fall under the advertising code.
Currently the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)’s remit covers paid-for digital marketing such as banners, pop-ups, paid search, and virals, and the remit extension hopes to plug the regulatory gap. Last year it is estimated that over 2500 complaints were made about non-paid for digital marketing activity, none of which could be investigated.
This is not the first attempt at self-regulation for social media marketing activity. Last October Alterian, (in collaboration with Epsilon and Target Base), launched the Social Media Marketing Council to ensure the responsible use of social media. The council said it would draw the line of what is acceptable for organisations to do when gathering information from, or marketing via, social channels, however activity has stalled.
There also remains a lot about the proposed changes that are unknown. How marketing activity will be policed, and how the distinction between editorial and commercial activity will be delineated is a grey area. One of big reasons it has taken so long to get these recommendations in place has been down to working out the distinction between editorial and marketing content, admits Rae Burdon, COO of the Advertising Association.
Burdon says that customers do not distinguish between marketing activity that is paid for and that which is not. In principle the line is drawn when you start to feel like you are being sold something. However he is keen to add that the code wants to protect freedom of commercial speech.
The new rules will mean B2B marketers will have to pay extra attention to their activity on sites such as Facebook or Twitter. While it’s a feather in a company’s cap to have a tweet retweeted, if that message is deemed to fall foul of the recommendations then the marketer might be held responsible.
Stephen Groom, head of marketing and privacy law at law firm Osborne Clarke, explains, There could be a situation where a misleading product review or comment appears on Twitter and it’s not clear who it’s from and whether the company is aware of it. According to Burdon, the ASA has to establish the extent a marketer has endorsed, solicited or adopted a piece of user-generated content.
The status of user generated content is still a murky area, admits Nick Stringer, director of regulatory affairs at the Internet Advertising Bureau. If it looks and feels like an ad it should be treated like an ad, he says. No one says it will be an easy distinction to make.
It has been widely acknowledged that smaller businesses will be the ones most affected by the code’s extension. The AA says it will meet with the National Federation of Small Businesses to make sure those small businesses, many of whom are not members of the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers, are given a voice. Many small companies rely heavily on their websites for their revenues and marketing so we have paid them a lot of attention, says Burdon.
The reaction to the changes has been almost universally positive amongst marketers. Anything which seeks to protect Internet users should be applauded, and companies which fail to abide by the rules should be reprimanded, and if necessary, penalised by the industry, says Andrew Burgess, managing director of digital and direct marketing agency EquiMedia.
However Burgess questions the need for the extension of the CAP code in a B2B environment, But do businesses really require, or even deserve, the same degree of protection as consumers? I would argue not. Policing the endlessly evolving and increasing Internet content could become a time-consuming and expensive endeavour, he adds.
The change in regulation is also likely to mark the next stage in the evolution of social media.The new regulations should be seen in a positive light, as building confidence in the online remit but also addressing any current concerns around deceptive online marketing activity, says Charley Hayes, social media strategist at Onlinefire.
The IAB’s Stringer says that proving to policy makers that the marketing industry can self-regulate is paramount, especially in the digital media space where more formal regulation legislation could restrict innovation. The detail is where the industry now needs to focus its attention, he concludes. We have the momentum but, for social media, we need to agree what we consider is ‘in’ and what should be ‘out’.
