AUTOCONTROL meeting with influencer agencies to promote the “Code of Conduct on the use of Influencers in Advertising”
AUTOCONTROL and the Spanish Association of Advertisers have organised a meeting with the leading influencer agencies in Spain to explain the details of the “Code of Conduct on the use of Influencers in Advertising”, with the intention of extending its application.
The meeting was attended by representatives from the following agencies: Go Talents, Human to Human, Keeper Experience, Marco, Okiko Talens, Samyroad, Socialpubli, Soy Olivia, Territory Group, Thinketers, Youplanet and the influencer “El profesor de Tik-Tok”. At the meeting, the agencies expressed their support for the Code and its dissemination; they also expressed their willingness to adhere to it. This is a further step towards contributing to better development of advertising activity in digital media, encouraging self-regulation and good practices, so advertising complies with current regulations. In this process, the Advertising Jury is in charge of resolving any complaints that may be filed for non-compliance with the ethical rules contained in the Code.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB Spain) also attended the meeting, where it explained the usefulness of this Code and its action plan to disseminate it.
Approval of the General Law on Audiovisual Communication
On 22 June, the Senate passed the Draft General Law on Audiovisual Communication (LGCA), which had been sent to it by the Congress of Deputies. The new LGCA recognizes and strongly encourages self-regulation and advertising co-regulation, as well as codes of conduct, establishing that they must be promoted by the competent audiovisual authority.
The approved text expressly includes good faith of the advertiser among the circumstances to be considered when determining penalties. It will occur when the commercial communication has a positive copy advice report issued by a self-regulation system with which the competent audiovisual authority has a collaboration agreement.
On the other hand, the new regulation introduces important new features in the field of commercial communications. These include the extension of its scope, to audiovisual communications carried out by video-sharing platform service providers, which are established in Spain, and not only to television and radio audiovisual communications, as in the case of the repealed LGCA. In this way, the commercial communications of video-sharing platform service providers are now also subject to obligations and prohibitions.
The new Law also includes in its scope of application and specifically regulates the obligations of what it calls “users of special relevance who use video sharing platform services” (vloggers, influencers, …). These operators must comply with a series of requirements to be considered audiovisual communication service providers and, if they do so, they are subject to certain basic obligations.
