09/10/2021

Influencer advertising without labeling?

It's a familiar image on Instagram: Influencers show themselves perfectly styled in their pictures and let their followers know via so-called tap tags which brands and products they wear and use. By tapping on the photo, the brand is displayed and the user can click on the tag to go to the respective Instagram profile of the brand. Until today, it was debatable whether this was surreptitious advertising and such posts had to be explicitly labeled as advertising. The German Federal Supreme Court (BGH) has now ruled in a groundbreaking decision that the labelling of posts as advertising is only obligatory if influencers have also received a financial compensation in return.