Media influencers may have to reveal sponsored posts as paid

Social media influencers may soon have to mandatorily disclose their sponsored posts as paid content if there is a material connection between them and a brand, according to the standards for social media influencers being drafted by the government.

In case of a failure to do so, the influencers will be held accountable and they may have to pay a penalty, said a senior official, who did not wish to be identified.

There will be no threshold on the number of followers that an influencer has in order to fall under the purview of these standards, the official said. "The only criteria will be whether the post is paid for or not," said the official.

The guidelines, drafted by the department of consumer affairs, will be put in the public domain in the next couple of weeks.

Influencer marketing is a popular type of social media marketing, where brands engage content creators or social media influencers with a large follower base to endorse their products or services on social media platforms in exchange for money, gifts or services.

According to GroupM INCA's India Influencer Marketing Report, this market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 25% till 2025 to reach a size of ₹2,200 crore.

In 2021, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) issued guidelines for influencer marketing which said influencers must label branded posts if there's a material connection between them and the advertisers, failing which both parties shall be held accountable. The government's standards will be legally enforceable and will have a larger impact, said experts from the influencer marketing agencies.

"The government's guidelines will be taken more seriously than the ASCI's, as they will have a legal standing," said Deepak Sakhuja, founder, Ripplelinks, an influencer marketing agency which has clients such as Colgate, Xiaomi, Marico and Kotak Mahindra Bank.