EA reveals new “influencer” transparency rules for sponsored content

Youtube and social media are still littered with sponsored content that’s not labeled as such but EA has now revealed rules that will have to be adhered to.

The post appeared on the German site and it covers all content that’s being created and posted on sites such as Instagram, Livestreams on Twitch,  and ‘Let’s play’s’ on Youtube. The statement and requirements are as follows:

Influencer marketing has become an integral part of communications campaigns in recent years, especially in gaming and, of course, for EA as well. These include Let’s Plays on YouTube, Livestreams on Twitch.tv, or stories on Instagram.

The same rules apply here as elsewhere in advertising: gamers and viewers must be able to see whether they are independent and editorial content, supported placements of messages or advertising. A large proportion of the influencers and networks already work very professionally with their own identifications and thus creates transparency for the user. However, this is not yet the case, and there are sometimes different interpretations.

Electronic Arts is now launching its own labeling system for campaigns and content creation in the social media. Any YouTuber, Streamer or otherwise active Influencer, who enters into a collaboration with Electronic Arts in their content creation and does not yet use their own labeling system, is now requested to use our Hashtags and Watermarks. To this end, we will now use two transparent markings:

#supportedbyEA – This includes all content for which EA has supported the creation or realization, for example by invitations to EA events and events and, if applicable, the transfer of travel expenses. However, for all content marked with #supportedbyEA, the viewer can be assured that EA has not made any editorial influence on the design of the content or made any specifications for the implementation. The content is independent, but the creation was supported by EA.

#advertisement – Contrary to contributions supported by EA, the #advertisement featured content is content that EA has been able to influence, or content created by EA itself.

For text and image content such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, you will always find these hashtags directly in the respective post. In the case of video and stream contributions, the marking is either indicated as a watermark at the beginning of the video, or the cooperation with EA from the influencer itself is explicitly mentioned verbally at the beginning of the video.

Why do we want to insist on this transparency? All the activities of EA are under the motto “Players First”, which means that we take the concerns and concerns of players and fans seriously at all times and react to them. We want to create transparency with the markings and contribute to the fact that supported content and advertising are immediately identifiable as such.

It’s interesting to see they have created two categories here to either  indicate when EA has paid for the editorial content or provided funds to help the content be created.

This is a positive move by EA and should help in the fight to stop the  shilling we see on social and video platforms. Hopefully, these new rules will apply to all regions and not just Germany.

Thanks w3bha on GAF for the heads-up.