Is it illegal or not to regram?

Copyright is always an issue than one posting on social media should be careful of and pay attention at. Due to the fact that Instagram doesn’t include the ability to regram directly within the app, many people have feared that this practice of sharing other people’s content is actually a violation of the Instagram terms of service (TOS).

Moreover, there was a statement published some time ago that was saying that in the Instagram’s terms of service sharing content other than your own was a violation of the platform’s terms. Therefore, regramming was a violation.

But, according to socialmediaexaminer.com, Instagram has updated their TOS to state that you’re responsible for any content you post on Instagram. Sections 7 and 8 speak directly to the types of content you’re responsible for. And one can read the most current version of Instagram’s terms here.

So what are the steps that somebody must take in order to make sure they are not breaking any laws or rules?

1. Get permission from the owner to share his / her content. You can do that either by commenting on their post letting them know that you want to share their photo or video with your audience. Then you can ask if you can have their permission to repost it. You can also send the user a Direct Message asking the same thing. Once they give you response in writing, giving you permission to repost the picture, then you’d be allowed to repost the picture. If they don’t respond, don’t use it. Asking is not enough. You need actual consent.

Still according to socialmediaexaminer.com, there are two types of consent: implied and explicit. Implied consent is when users post content with the expectation that it may be regrammed (when the company or the brand has a running campaign with a certain hashtag that wishes it will bring along the wished target and, at the same time, is looking to engage them and make them share the info and get other people involved as well). Explicit consent is when the original content creator gives you direct permission to repost their content on your Instagram account.

2.  Get attribution to the original user. Don’t forget to credit the person or the brand you are getting your information from.

3. Use the Repost for the Instagram app. Available for both iphone and android devices, repost for Instagram makes it easy to #Repost your favorite photos and  videos on Instagram while giving credit to the original Instagramer. The benefit of using this app is that it will add a watermark to the image with the original post creator’s Instagram username. This makes it clear that the content is regrammed and provides attribution to the original creator.

4. There are now also a variety of platforms and services designed for brands to ask users if they can use their content. According to Debbie Miller, on her article on agorapulse.com, one example is a Content Rights Solution designed by TINT who creates a variety of social display tools. “The solution allows you to discover content relating to your brand, request the proper permissions from the author of the image via social media, and track which images to which you have rights,” explained Miller.

More on how to protect yourself legally you can read here.

Mobile advertising to pass the $100 billion mark for the first time

Digital media has now surpassed linear television to become the No.1 category in advertising revenues. Within digital, the majority of advertising sales (54%) is now generated by impressions and clicks on mobile devices. The data are gathered from Magna Advertising’s Spring Forecast, June 2017. Globally, media owners advertising revenues are projected to grow by +3.7% in 2017, to $504 billion. This is a noticeable drop compared to 2016 which displayed a record +5.9% growth rate. Global advertising growth is expected to re-accelerate to +4.5% in 2018, with the return of even-year events (Football World Cup in Russia, Mid-Term U.S. elections, Winter Olympics in South Korea).

Online advertising sales will grow by 14% this year while offline ad sales (television, print, radio, out-of-home) will decrease by -2% (last year was flat), but it will pass the $200 billion mark ($204 billion) to become the #1 category globally, with 40% of total ad sales vs 36% for television. Within digital, the majority of advertising sales (54%) is now generated by impressions and clicks on mobile devices.

The star of these years, the mobile advertising will be passing the $100 billion mark for the first time this year ($110bn), while the video and social formats will continue to drive digital advertising growth (+30% or more) with paid search growing double digits again (+13%) to remain the number one format (almost half of digital ad sales). The two digital-native advertising formats or environments (search and social) now represent a combined 70% of total digital ad spend and will capture 85% of the net growth this year. For the second year in a row, social video formats (counted as “social” by MAGNA) will represent a major driver to digital spend, attracting major consumer brands in the social environment where, until recently, there was not significant spend in this category.

While this is slower than last year’s 51.6% mobile growth rate, it represents $27 billion of incremental mobile advertising spend, which is in line with last year’s $28 billion of incremental mobile spend. Mobile isn’t losing any momentum; growth rates are only declining because of the increasing base of mobile advertising spend. This strong growth contrasts with desktop growth, which is expected to shrink by -2.2% this year. This is the second consecutive year of negative desktop advertising growth, and it is expected to continue to decline for the foreseeable future. Within digital, search advertising is by far the largest portion of spend; search is expected to grow by 13% this year to reach $99 billion, or just under half of total digital advertising budgets. This growth represents 30% mobile search growth, and desktop search shrinking by -3%. Mobile search advertising has passed the halfway point to become the majority of search advertising spend, with 55% total share expected this year. Furthermore, the incremental $11 billion of search advertising spend represents over 40% of total incremental digital dollars. Search has been especially strong because of both continued new product innovations such as search re-marketing and customer match lists, along with the growth of non-core search such as Alibaba product listings. Furthermore, search advertising continues to be strong because of its position in the advertising funnel and the ease with which search activity can be connected to customer behavior and sales. Looking forward, search advertising will remain robust, growing around 10% annually to reach $140 billion by 2021. At that point, it will be larger than newspaper, magazines, radio, and OOH combined.

Equally important within digital advertising is social media, which is expected to grow by +32% this year to reach $42 billion, slightly ahead of prior expectations for +29% growth. Social advertising is the fastest growing portion of digital spend, and like search, this is because of mobile platforms. 85% of total social advertising dollars are coming from mobile devices, the highest share of any digital sub-format. Furthermore, social’s 31.6% growth rate represents $10 billion of incremental spend. This is nearly as much as can be found in search advertising despite social being less than half the total size. Growth comes both 10/17 from increased social usage and penetration, as well as new product innovations, including social video, and increasingly dense ad loads on social media. Looking forward, mobile advertising will continue to be dominant in social: by 2021 it will represent 93% of total social media sales. Impressively, search and social combine to represent more than the total of incremental dollars across all media formats (offline media and shrinking digital formats like banner display are net losers; search and social are the growth engine for global ad spend). Video advertising is growing nearly as quickly as social media; growth this year is expected to be 30%, which will bring total video advertising spend to $23 billion. While desktop video is still showing growth at +14% (unlike most other desktop formats), the engine for online video ad spend growth is mobile (+56% growth expected to bring mobile share of video spend to +45% this year). Mobile video will match desktop next year as the mobile video experience, wireless broadband penetration, and mobile video content continues to improve. By 2021, online video advertising will have passed the $50 billion mark globally, and digital video will represent more than 20% of total video viewing (TV and online video). Banner display and other digital advertising formats (email advertising, online classifieds etc.) are stagnating, with both expected to shrink by around -3% this year. Not only have brands found better outcomes using other digital formats such as search, social, and video, but display inventory is also on the decline. Standard banner online real estate is being replaced by video and other rich media formats.

“The record level of growth in 2016 globally, outperforming economic growth, was caused by marketers willing to embrace the new opportunities offered by digital media (search, social, video, programmatic) on a larger scale, while anxious to preserve their share of voice on traditional linear television, despite rising CPMs costs. In 2017, both digital and offline growth will slow down. Online advertising sales will nevertheless continue to grow by double-digits in most markets (globally +13%), but television ad sales will decline (-1%) due to softer price increases, ratings erosion and the lack of global sports events,” declared Vincent Létang, EVP, Global Market Intelligence at MAGNA and author of the report.

In the UK, online advertising sales will grow by an average 10% through the region, to $42 billion. Digital advertising now represents almost 42% of total advertising in Western Europe, slightly above the global average (40%). The fastest-growing formats will be social media (+37%) and video (+19%) while paid search spending will grow by 10%. Ad revenues from static banners will decrease by 5%. In terms of platform, mobile will capture all the growth (+36% to $19 billion). Mobile ad sales will represent 43% of internet ad sales by the end of 2017, which is slightly below the global average or APAC average.

Big influencers attract thousands of dollars for just a post on social media

Only 3% of the marketers said they planned to cut back on influencer marketing in the coming year, versus about 75% who anticipated spending even more on it, says emarketer.com. Moreover, according to the website, companies are paying the most for celebrity posts, especially on certain platforms. On average, posts by celebrities with at least 1 million followers (considered as influencers) cost nearly £65,000 each ($87,731), with Facebook posts demanding a leading rate of approximately £75,000 ($101,228).

Influencer marketing costs are going up in the UK, according to research by  Rakuten Marketing and  Morar Consulting, but prices per post vary considerably depending on reach and platform. This month, polling of UK marketers working directly on influencer programs from sectors including fashion, beauty and travel, approximately two-thirds of respondents had seen the prices influencers charge for posts go up in the past 12 months. In some industries, the costs were even higher, with some premium fashion brands, for example, paying celebrity influencers more than £160,000 ($215,954) per post.

“UK marketers are willing to pay celebrity influencers on Facebook up to £75,000 for a single post mentioning the brand they want to promote, a new survey has revealed. They are also prepared to pay celebrity influencers £67,000 for each YouTube video that mentions their brand, while key influencers on Snapchat can expect to be paid as much as £53,000 per Snap,” writes www.warc.com.

Spending was much more modest for so-called micro-influencers—those with 10,000 or fewer followers, due to the fact that only a fifth (20%) of marketers claim they are able to demonstrate the impact of influencers through indirectly influenced sales. Prices averaged at close to £1,350 ($1,822) per post, with YouTube and Facebook commanding the highest prices—more than £1,500 ($2,025)—and Snapchat the lowest at just over £1,000 ($1,350).

“Decision makers questioned from across a variety of sectors including fashion, FMCG, beauty and travel admitted that they would shell out as much as £53,000 per  Snapchat post, which despite coming in at significantly less than the value they placed on other platforms, is notable given that Snapchat’s ephemeral nature means videos and pictures disappear within 24 hours of being posted,” said Rebecca Stewart for thedrum.com.

Overall, respondents said they would devote an average of 24% of their marketing budgets to influencer marketing in the next 12 months. That figure’s higher than the share of budgets that the largest percentage of marketers in the UK and US said they devoted to influencer marketing in a March 2017 study by  Econsultancy. In that study, between half and six in 10 luxury and non luxury brand marketers said they invested less than 10% of their overall marketing budgets to influencer marketing. But the second largest shares of respondents were similar in their spending allotment to those in the Rakuten and Morar study.

Affiliate marketing firm Rakuten Marketing spoke to 200 UK marketers working on  influencer programmes and found that post-for-post they were prepared to pay 12% more for Facebook endorsements than they were for YouTube. The research also found that despite the value brands clearly place on high-profile influencer slots, the majority of those asked (86%) admit they aren’t entirely sure how influencer fees are calculated. Which is pretty odd, especially after the last years of change in the media buying market, the restriction of budgets and the overall risen caution.

Why are the influencers so important for marketers when it comes to social media? According to The Economist, social media offer brands their best opportunity to reach cord-cutting millennials: Snapchat, for instance, reaches 40% of all American 18- to 34-year-olds every day.

“Moreover, these platforms can make consumers feel they have gained unprecedented access to the lives of the rich and famous. That lets sponsors interact with their target audiences in ways that traditional advertising cannot match. In turn, demand from marketers for these channels has made social media lucrative territory for people with large online followings,” wrote the famous business magazine.

On the other hand, while 59 per cent of marketers state the influencers they work with will take guidance from them around best practice, 56 per cent of premium fashion marketers admit to a situation in which influencers hold all of the power. For example, only 20 per cent of marketers state influencers are prepared to follow their lead when it comes to guidance around billing.

Less than a third (29 per cent) believe that the influencers they work with are entirely concerned whether their content drives sales for the brand. Interestingly, when asked what would encourage marketers to invest more in an influencer programme, greater transparency and better reporting of influencer contribution to sales now rank as the highest factor (50 per cent).

James Collins, Rakuten Marketing’s SVP/managing director, global attribution, comments, “Influencer marketing can be hugely effective but marketers are commissioning expensive posts without understanding the real impact on the purchase journey. It’s essential that marketers question influencer fees and use attribution tools to measure the effect of this activity in order to create strong, value-driven relationships between brands and influencers.”