Do not be native – Newspaper Kommersant No. 208 (7409) of 11/10/2022

Profile associations and Roskomnadzor explained how the new law on labeling Internet advertising should work in the blogger segment. The latter are required to mark as advertising all integrations for which the contract has not expired, even if they were released before the law came into force on September 1. Some market participants fear that labeling will reduce the “nativity” of legal advertising and, as a result, the volume of the gray market will increase. Also, the expert specifies, the terms of coordination of advertising will increase.

“Kommersant” studied the clarifications on the labeling of online advertising, which were prepared by the Association for the Development of Interactive Advertising (ARIR) and Roskomnadzor, as well as material for bloggers from experts from the working group of specialized associations (ARIR, the Association of Bloggers and Agencies, the Association of Communication Agencies of Russia, the Russian Association of Marketing services).

We are talking about the implementation of the norms of the law on a unified accounting system for all online advertising in Russia, which came into force on September 1. According to it, market participants must transfer to the system information about the advertiser, distributor and operator of advertising, information about the volume, cost, target audience and the advertisement itself. Data collection is carried out through intermediaries – advertising data operators (ORD) (Development Lab, Sberbank, Yandex Advertising Data Operator, VK Advertising Technologies, Ozon Ord, and others).

If a blogger places ads on his channel, he will always be considered an advertising distributor, according to the explanation of the associations, that is, he is obliged to submit a certain list of data to the RDA. You can interact with the operator personally or through an advertising agency. Any creative must be registered through the ORD. There, a token is assigned to an advertisement, and only after that it can be published. For each format, the marking will be different, but it is known that the token must be placed in the text of the post or under it so that the number can be copied, the associations clarify.

According to the clarifications of Roskomnadzor and ARIR, it is necessary to mark all advertisements: both those placed before September 1 (if the term of the contractual placement has not yet expired), and those that are currently being launched. Integrations published before September 1 with expired contractual placement do not need to be registered and marked.

For visual materials or clips of the “Stories” format, which contain advertisements and native advertising, their own rules. At the beginning of the video, it is recommended to place a “text identifier” over the image, which will indicate that there is an ad in the content. So, a special video format in a circle in Telegram also falls under the bill. The identifier is placed in the message following the “circle” or the answer to it in order to maintain coherence, explains Roskomnadzor.

Some experts interviewed by Kommersant fear that blogger labeling will significantly reduce the nativeness of legal advertising and increase the share of the gray market. “Of course, the customer always wants his integration to look as native as possible and without the “advertising” mark,” confirms Alla Aksenova, CEO of PR development. Many bloggers “may start running ad campaigns in black,” adds Mark Khludnev, founder of Digital Church advertising agency.

The labeling law has already had a negative impact on the segment, says Sergei Stukalov, digital director of Mikhailov & Partners: “Against the background of uncertainty with regulatory documents, we see a decrease in advertising activity among companies that are afraid to make a mistake.”

On the other hand, the majority of the audience already recognizes ad integrations in the blogger’s feed so well, Anna Kozyreva, head of social media marketing at OMD OM Group, believes: subscribers will decide whether to watch ads based on their quality, creative approach or their personal interest in this product category.

Most likely, in the long term, amendments to the law on advertising will not seriously affect the interest of advertisers in the blogging segment, hopes Ekaterina Bibik, head of the Russian division of the Admitad affiliate network: “But the transition period can significantly increase the time for preparing advertising materials, which will negatively affect the volume of the blogging segment in the advertising market.

Valeria Lebedeva