X Bans Hashtags In Ads: What’s Next For Influencer Disclosures? – Advertising, Marketing & Branding
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Yesterday, Elon Musk announced that X (formerly known as Twitter) will no longer permit hashtags to be used in advertising that appears on the platform.
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Media, Telecoms, IT, Entertainment
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Yesterday, Elon Musk announced that X (formerly known as Twitter)
will no longer permit hashtags to be used in advertising that
appears on the platform. The change was announced by Musk on X. He
posted, “Starting tomorrow, the esthetic nightmare that is
hashtags will be banned from ads on X.”
For years now, hashtags have played an important role on X,
allowing for tweets to be categorized around relevant keywords.
But, that’s not the only role that hashtags play. In order
to comply with the FTC’s Guides for the Use of Endorsements and
Testimonials in Advertising (and other relevant laws governing
truth in advertising), Advertisers and their influencers commonly
use hashtags to disclose when posts are sponsored by a brand. For
example, in the FTC’s FAQs on how to comply with the Endorsement
Guides, the FTC provides detailed guidance about the types of
hashtags – such as #ad — that can be effective disclosures
in social media.
In its FAQs, the FTC notes, however, that there’s
“nothing special about hashtags from a disclosure
perspective” and that communicating that there is a
relationship between a brand and an influencer can be accomplished
in other ways as well. The FTC wrote, “‘#ad,’
‘Ad:’, and ‘ad’ at the beginning of a post are
probably all equal.”
While this new policy may not impact the use of hashtags in
organic posts on X by influencers, if a sponsored post qualifies as
an advertisement, then brands and their influencers will need to
come up with alternative ways to disclose their relationship. For
brands and influencers that have well-established policies –
or contracts – that require the use of specific hashtags when
posting on X, now is certainly the time to update them.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general
guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought
about your specific circumstances.
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