The FTC charged Warner Bros. of deceiving consumers during the marketing period of “Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor”, a video game launched in September 2014.
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After the game was released in late 2014, Warner Bros got the “influencers” to develop sponsored gameplay videos and post them on YouTube as well as promoting the videos on Twitter and Facebook, generating millions of views.
As a result, the FTC has ruled that Warner Bros. must clearly indicate when videos are paid promotions, and hire influencers only after fully educating them regarding sponsorship disclosures in the future.
The settlement could be finalized next month.
The FTC accused Warner Bros, the company behind the game, of “deceptive practice” in failing to ensure that consumers knew the videos were part of an advertising campaign.
The FTC revised its advertisement endorsement guidelines in October 2009 to include advertising through social media and word-of-mouth campaigns, such as influencer marketing.
The FTC concluded that this was decieving viewers and that “Companies like Warner Brothers need to be straight with consumers in their online ad campaigns”.
They’re also not allowed to pretend that such videos are the work of independent producers when they are sponsored. Token statements hidden away in the “Show More” section of a video’s description, were not enough and often didn’t even appear. The Verge, Arstechnica, Engaget and others claimed in their headlines that Pewdiepie took money from Warner Bros for positive game reviews.
“A lot of YouTubers were involved with this sponsorship but because I’m the biggest YouTuber, my name is the only one that pops up”, Kjellberg noted.
Kjellberg’s video alone was viewed more than 3.7 million times.
The company required the influencers to promote the game in a positive way and not to disclose any bugs or glitches they found.
Instead, Warner Bros. took the tried and true route of shrinking the text of the disclosures and camouflaging them with other boilerplate statements, making it hard, if not impossible, for consumers to actually read them.
He does concede, however, that: “Yes, I could have disclosed it better”.
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“Today, I make a verbal mention before the video begins, and the top line of the description mentions it as well”. “All of these news articles are using me as a clickbait” he says, “putting my name to shame, when I didn’t even do anything wrong”.
