Advertisers and bloggers speak out about the risks of the new mechanism for attracting audiences to Telegram

Advertising market participants and blogging agencies fear that the new mechanism for attracting audiences to Telegram – premium subscription giveaways – will lead to more scammers. In addition, sweepstakes are subject to the advertising law and therefore must be labeled, lawyers say. They also note the risk of the draw being recognized as an illegal lottery, in which case its organizers would face fines and bans.

Kommersant interviewed participants in the advertising and blogger markets about the prospects for using sweepstakes on Telegram, a new messenger mechanism for attracting audiences. Channels became able to conduct sweepstakes on November 6, while the messenger’s blog stated that before the mechanism appeared, “there was no way to quickly organize a sweepstakes with guaranteed fair results.”

Winners receive gift codes that activate a free Telegram Premium subscription. Giveaway organizers can add their own prizes to your subscription. For each subscription drawn, the organizing channel receives four votes: they increase the level of the channel, which allows it to publish more stories per day. The ability to publish stories on behalf of the channel appeared in Telegram on September 22.

All competitions held by advertisers must be accompanied by legal bindings and rules, says Yulia Dolgova, head of the influence marketing agency LabelUp. At the same time, there are currently no ready-made solutions or templates for such mechanics in the messenger, she notes. The organizer of the draw could also be a fraudulent blog or channel, believes Kommersant’s interlocutor in one of the agencies.

Thus, in most drawings, the organizer of the competition, the initial period and the procedure for receiving prizes are not specified, notes Anna Sabrukova, leading legal adviser at the EDB law firm: “This legal uncertainty allows you to simply deceive users who subscribed to the channel in the hope of receiving a prize.” At the same time, even a conscientious organizer of the draw can be held accountable for violating the requirements for labeling online advertising, adds Ms. Sabrukova. In her opinion, such competitions can be interpreted as advertising for the channel, but the posts often lack information about the advertiser and token.

According to the law on advertising, sweepstakes in which the consumer must purchase some service with the possibility of receiving a prize qualify as incentive events, clarifies Yaroslav Shitsle, head of the It&Ip disputes department at the law firm Rustam Kurmaev and Partners. In addition, he notes, from Art. 57 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation it follows that the competition itself should bring public benefit as a result: “This could be the support of public organizations, groups of individuals or the promotion of something with a social orientation, but there are no strict frameworks here.” Otherwise, the promotion will be recognized as a lottery, which could lead to blocking of the resource or a fine of up to 350 thousand rubles, says the lawyer. The maximum fine for false advertising, he clarifies, will be up to 500 thousand rubles.

The effectiveness of the new tool on the market is also viewed with skepticism. For the media market, nothing fundamentally will change with the advent of a new mechanism, says Mark Khludnev, founder of the Digital Church advertising agency. “Bloggers and Telegram channels in general organize sweepstakes for their subscribers, but the level of trust in them is quite low,” he explains. Users of Premium accounts do not see advertising, so if the function significantly increases the share of premium clients on an ongoing basis, then advertising coverage within Telegram Ads will greatly decrease, warns Anastasia Fomina, director of digital technologies at Havas Media (ADV group). NMi Group believes that competitions, on the contrary, act as additional advertising equipment.

Yulia Yurasova