인플루언서의 뒷광고에 대한 처벌 및 제재 가능성

Recently, among YouTubers, the issue of sponsorship disguised as a review has become a big controversy. They promoted it as if they had bought it with their own money and shared the review honestly. However, in fact, it was sponsored by tens of millions of won and promoted it in return. With this incident as the starting point, a problem was raised about the undisclosed advertisements of popular YouTubers, and many popular YouTubers made apology, deleted their accounts, or quit their activities. Like these popular YouTubers, a person who has the power to influence other people's purchasing decisions through authority, knowledge, status, or relationship is called an influencer. Even if they are not public figures, they build relationships with followers who follow them by sharing their daily lives online, so they become more empathetic than celebrities and celebrities, and their endorsements seem more authentic than traditional celebrity endorsements. In this respect, influencer marketing based on the intimacy between influencers and subscribers has become a very effective marketing technique. The problem is that they recommend and endorse products pretending to be advertisements and not advertisements. Whether the influencer's recommendation or guarantee is a commercial advertisement or a genuine testimonial is an important matter in making a purchase decision for consumers. So undisclosed advertising that conceal or reduce such facts to display and advertise are deceptive advertisements and must be regulated. However, under the current law, influencers' undisclosed advertising cannot be punished for fraud. And unlike the United States, which regulates the subject of regulation as a person and stipulates that the endorsers may be liable for deceptive advertisements, according to the current Act on Fair labeling and advertising, sanctions and penalties are limited to businesses or business groups, so there is no legal basis for sanctioning individuals other than advertisers. Influencers with great repercussions appear throughout society, and advertisements using them are increasing, and at the same time, deceptive advertisements such as unclosed advertising are also prevalent. It is clear that if you do not hold strict responsibility for such illegal activities, you will not only harm honest companies who want to compete fairly, but also the good consumers who trust them and buy them. As influencers have great influence, they also need a strict sense of responsibility. So appropriate sanctions should be imposed on the act of Undisclosed Advertising.