The price tag was put on a die – Newspaper Kommersant No. 54 (7499) dated 03/30/2023

Every fifth professional blogger, after the ad labeling requirements came into force, increased the prices for integration by 10-30%, market participants told Kommersant. The reasons for the rise in prices could be the need to label advertising, which requires influencers to register a legal entity and formalize advertising campaigns, the trend for bloggers to legalize income, which began after high-profile criminal cases, and the fact that Russian advertisers can no longer directly advertise in banned foreign social networks.

About 20% of bloggers providing advertising integration services raised their prices after the ad labeling law came into force, Anton Petukhov, chairman of the Influencer Marketing Committee of the Association for the Development of Interactive Advertising (ARIR), told Kommersant. The trend is confirmed by marketing and blogging agencies polled by Kommersant. Thus, according to Kokoc Group, the price of integration for bloggers has increased by 10–20% since the beginning of the year. Epicstars is talking about 10-30% growth, Idols Agency is talking about 15-20%.

The increase in prices is due to the fact that bloggers who comply with the labeling law have to do extra work, said Kokoc Group CEO Alexander Shokurov. The new rules are effective from September 1, 2022. They stipulate not only the indication of information about the advertiser in all materials, but also the sending of data about the campaign, its results, contracts and acts to the Unified Register of Internet Advertising (ERIR) of Roskomnadzor. It is necessary to transfer data to ERIR, from where they are available, including the Federal Tax Service and the FAS, through advertising data operators (ORD), including subsidiaries of Yandex, VK, MTS, VimpelCom.

Now, liability is provided only for the absence of the “advertising” mark on the advertisement (under Part 1 of Article 14.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses). For data transfer to ERIR, Roskomnadzor announced a “test period” until March 1. But, market participants say, there were no fines in March either. Roskomnadzor believes that the full introduction of labeling “will accelerate the formation of a transparent advertising distribution market.” The FAS did not answer “Kommersant”.

Daria Kutyreva, director of digital special projects at Media Instinct Group, estimates the possible impact of labeling costs at no more than 3-5% of the cost of services, especially for large bloggers. Perfluence COO Yevgenia Kazakova doubts that labeling has directly affected the price increase to date – ORDs do not yet charge for data processing and storage. However, in the future this will lead to a new increase in prices, she believes: “Judging by the information that has been leaked, we are talking about 20-25%.” Epicstars CEO Denis Volkov believes that prices will continue to increase after the actual start of issuing fines: “Then the bloggers themselves and the agencies will take on labor costs and labeling costs, increasing the staff of lawyers and attracting specialists in working with the ORD.” Prices could also rise for those who do not want to advertise through the labeling system, “then fines will be built into it,” he added.

Alla Aksenova, CEO of PR-development, believes that “increased costs associated with the payment of taxes and the trend towards legalization of income” also affected prices. She linked this trend to recent tax evasion criminal cases against popular bloggers (see Kommersant on March 7). The same marking required large brands to conclude an agreement with individual entrepreneurs or self-employed, adds Anna Fedyunina, CEO of Idols Agency: “Before, bloggers could agree to pay for placement in black, by transfer to a card.”

Another factor in the rise in prices was the inability to place ads directly on Meta social networks (the activities of the company for the operation of Facebook and Instagram in Russia have been declared extremist and banned), Alexander Shokurov believes: “Bloggers remained the only available tool for paid social (advertising on social networks.— “b”)”.

Yuri Litvinenko