90 Percent of Affiliate Ads on YouTube and Pinterest Aren't Disclosed, Says Study

A new research paper [PDF] from Princeton University has found that 90 percent of affiliate posts on YouTube and Pinterest aren't disclosed to users. From a report: Affiliate links are customized URLs that content publishers can include in their posts. They're essentially ads, and publishers receive money from companies when users click on them. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires that content makers identify when they're being paid to post something, but despite that, influencers continue to skirt around disclosures. The FTC has previously sent out letters to influencers reminding them of the requirement to communicate paid relationships with brands to their followers. The paper from Princeton analyzed over 500,000 YouTube videos and 2.1 million unique pins on Pinterest. Of those, 0.67 percent, or 3,472 videos on YouTube, and 0.85 percent, or 18,237 pins, contained affiliate links.

What is this "pinterest" you speak of?

[ArmoredDragon]

Never heard of it before.

Re:

[PopeRatzo]

What is this "pinterest" you speak of?

It's Facebook for the faceless.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Never imagined what a mess advertising would becom

[olsmeister]

When I was younger I never would have imagined what a clusterfuck advertising would become. Between privacy concerns and lying and malware distribution and just plain making it frustrating to do even the simplest little thing online, I feel like we're losing (maybe have already lost) everything that was good about the internet. I can't help thinking that the most straightforward fix would be if nobody ever clicked on any ad, EVER. And never bought anything from an ad they see online. I know I do not.

Re:Never imagined what a mess advertising would be

[Chris Katko]

Really?

Before or after:

  - Punch the monkey and win the prize! Flash ads WITH SOUND.
  - Pop ups with stroke lights and dicks
  - Pop UNDERS
  - Closing a pop up opens ANOTHER pop up.

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[pr0fessor]

When I was young ads were on billboards, TV, and in newspapers or magazines. There was no internet like we know it today and cell phone looked like this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

 

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Before or after:

- Punch the monkey and win the prize! Flash ads WITH SOUND.
- Pop ups with stroke lights and dicks
- Pop UNDERS
- Closing a pop up opens ANOTHER pop up.

Yeah, no kidding ... internet ads have been shady for as long as you've been able to explain to your mother WTF the internet is. Those of us who have been around long enough to remember every example you gave know too well that it's been a shithole since the first companies started put

Re:

[jellomizer]

I would say before, you young whipper-snapper.

Back before those days. Advertisement on the information super highway was considered a godsend where we were allowed to access services that were once either had to pay to access, or was too small to be fully useful. Because the cost of operating a full website was too expensive for most hobbyist.

A single 468x60 pixel banner per page load, for an advertisement roughly related to the content of the site, that took 10 seconds to load off of a modem. was well wor

Re:

[decipher_saint]

Back then the advertising was obvious and obnoxious but it was on a website with content.

Now the site you use is a sophisticated, often gamified means of collecting your most intimate details so they can sell that information to advertisers (or other agents interested in demographic information...) Ad networks pay for a slot on every site you visit so they can gather even more creepy information about you while also shoving their highly targeted ads in yo face.

Monkey Punching I could ignore, having to recip

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re: Affiliate Links

[nitehawk214]

It encourages reviewers to give good reviews of bad products. If they say "this sucks, don't buy it" few people will follow the link and make the reviewer cash.

Re:

[kalieaire]

The other thing too is that they're not getting paid until someone clicks on that amazon link and subsequently buys something. A lot of the times that's not happening. Unless these three researchers from Princeton were somehow able to get accurate sales data from these "affiliates", they're probably painting a pretty poor picture.

It's like searching through a c:\windows directory c:\user directories and finding that there are a million subfolders and 0 Byte files and saying that there is 90% mor

Re:

[tlhIngan]

Honestly, who cares and why is this a big deal? If a site helped me find something I was looking for, why shouldn't they get a little kickback from the seller.

Nothing wrong with it, just something that should be disclosed, that's all.

If you see a video of someone shilling a new product, you sort of want to know if they're being paid for it (either directly or indirectly via say, those links). Mostly because what they say can be influenced by whether or not they're being paid to say it.

It isn't unusual for c

Re:

[bluefoxlucid]

These regulations are important. ProPublica recently did an article about political ads on Facebook (they gave me some praise, although I generally dislike ProPublica's reporting). FEC has been on and off about only requiring a link to a landing page with a disclaimer or requiring disclosure in the ad; all Facebook ads link back to a page which has a disclaimer.

I essentially get a pass almost all the time: the FEC has a safe-harbor for TV ads (which I would use as a primary legal argument) if your fac

Not accounting for fake it til you make it.

[kalieaire]

I'm going to say there are a lot, but the 90% rating in Princeton's study is probably much higher than reality. I know a bunch of people who are struggling with their own funds from their primary mode of income (myself included) in attempting to seem legitimate. Trying different ways to drum up popularity in our own brand/identity, to seem legitimate, and to some day reap the benefits.

In my opinion, there are more people trying to fake it til they make it, since that's what a lot of leaders in t

Do it via irs

[Ryanrule]

Tax the companies for these ads.

What would help

[Solandri]

What would help is if the automatic URL link insertion button in the editing tools on many forums were programmed to strip out unnecessary referral and tracking fluff appended to the end of the URL for common websites. e.g.

https://www.amazon.com/Echo-2nd-Generation-Charcoal-Fabric/dp/B0794D1TS6/ref=br_msw_pdt-4?_encoding=UTF8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=&pf_rd_r=KP91MBWCJ8QM0FPCBYBK&pf_rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=abda0da5-c6a7-4039-a2ae-76a66e9c69ce&pf_rd_i=desktop