26,000 Cases of Undisclosed SNS Advertising Detected... Instagram Accounts for Half, the Most

Fair Trade Commission Completes Voluntary Correction of 29,792 Cases from Last Year's Unfair Advertising Monitoring

It was revealed that nearly 26,000 cases of covert advertising, where sponsorships received on social networking services (SNS) were hidden and posted as review-type advertisements, were detected last year.

The Korea Fair Trade Commission announced on the 14th that from March to December of last year, it monitored covert advertising on major SNS platforms such as Instagram (including Reels), Naver Blog, and YouTube (including Shorts), and detected a total of 25,966 posts suspected of violating the law, with 29,792 cases voluntarily corrected.

The number of violating posts was highest on Instagram with 13,767 cases, followed by Naver Blog with 11,711 cases, YouTube with 343 cases, and others (Naver Cafe, Naver Post, etc.) with 145 cases.

The types of violations included inappropriate placement of economic interest disclosures and improper expression methods. On Instagram and YouTube, inappropriate placement was more common, while on Naver Blog, improper expression methods were more frequently observed.

In cases of inappropriate placement, economic interests were not displayed on the first screen where consumers can easily find them, but rather in locations visible only after clicking ‘See More,’ or in the description section or comments. For improper expression methods, many cases involved displaying economic interests in small text or blurry images that consumers could not easily recognize.

The product and service categories of posts suspected of legal violations were predominantly in the fields of clothing, textiles, and personal items (casual wear), other services (food services), health and hygiene products (cosmetics), and food and beverages (health functional foods).

The Fair Trade Commission stated, "We will continue to strengthen monitoring in areas where covert advertising frequently occurs, such as clothing, textiles, and personal items (casual wear), and other services (food services), and plan to increase the monitoring proportion of short-form posts, which are relatively easy to produce and have high dissemination power."

Additionally, to help consumers easily recognize that content is an ‘advertisement,’ the Commission plans to revise related guidelines on the placement of economic interest disclosures after gathering opinions from stakeholders, and to promote a culture of voluntary legal compliance by collaborating with related associations and industries to conduct a 'Clean Content Campaign' (tentative name).

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.