(image: Pixabay)
SEOUL, Aug. 23 (Korea Bizwire) — It has been two years since a scandal erupted involving celebrities and influencers engaged in advertisements that feigned not to be ads, but these “hidden ads” are still deceiving consumers on social media, the South Korea’s antitrust regulator said Monday.
The Fair Trade Commission reported that the Korea Internet Advertising Foundation found 3,662 deceiving advertisements between April and June, instructing the companies and individuals behind them to either voluntarily revise them or remove them from social media.
The foundation leads a project outsourced by the antitrust watchdog that looks for inappropriate advertisements on social media, issues orders for them to be corrected and ensures that actions have been taken.
Most of the inappropriate ads came from Naver blogs (1,584 cases), followed by YouTube (1,092 cases), Instagram (911 cases) and Facebook (75 cases).
Most of the ads were put up not by celebrities or full-time influencers, but by office workers and students.
These “backdoor” advertisements are also found among the 15 to 60-second short-form videos popular among people in their 20s and 30s.
The foundation found 288 ads suspected of backdoor advertising on YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels in the second quarter of this year.
“Short-form content is easy to make, quickly consumed and spreads rapidly, requiring countermeasures,” the foundation said.
Ashley Song (ashley@koreabizwire.com)
