Instagram Launches “Paid Partnership” Tag In Singapore

As part of a global initiative to boost transparency in the influencer world, Instagram has launched its “paid partnership” tag in Singapore. This comes after the United States’ Federal Trade Commission started placing pressure on paid celebrity posts that omitted information on any monetary involvement by brands that may have sponsored the post. The Instagram “paid partnership” tag introduces a sub-header on which full disclosure on any paid content will be displayed.

With the new “paid partnership” tag, users can now tag the business that they are working with and it is intended to clearly proclaim that that specific post is sponsored. The development of the tag is in response to complaints by the FTA that hashtags featuring the business name and simply thanking the brand in the post is insufficient to indicate post sponsorship.

In Singapore, influencers observe the Advertising Standards Authority of Singapore’s guidelines, many of which are new ones that have been introduced after a scandal broke last year alleging that influencers had been paid to write negatively about Singtel’s competitors. The guidelines state that “disclosures of any commercial relationships and disclaimers should be made prominent, easy to understand and appropriate for the form that the communication takes”.

As the guidelines by the Advertising Standards Authority of Singapore are neither binding nor mandatory, there are only a handful of influencers, to date, who have started utilizing Instagram’s “paid partnership” tags. Some of the influencers who have taken the first steps with the tag are Naomi Neo and Mongchin Yeoh, while brand such as Taobao and Calvin Klein are among the several brands who have signed up as well.