And what if you get paid to report on a certain product? These various cases have so far only been answered inadequately, at least if you don't feel like reading up on legal jargon. Or if you simply don't understand it, which I can understand well. The Federal Cabinet has now approved a draft law to strengthen consumer protection in competition and commercial law. It finally clearly regulates when a posting must be marked as advertising and when it must not. This finally provides legal certainty and clear guidelines.
The key message for influencers is: “Only if there is something in return 352 landcode do posts have to be marked as advertising.” The media authorities have published a PDF guide that provides very good recommendations for different situations in normal German. This organization is the umbrella brand of the 14 state media authorities in Germany. The publisher of this guide is therefore very competent. Labeling as advertising is not always necessary A total of 9 examples are listed in the document from die-medienanstalten.de and explained in an easy-to-understand manner. What is relatively clear is the statement that when presenting a product that you have bought yourself, advertising labeling is generally not necessary (which is supported by the new draft law), as this is not covert advertising.
This also fits with common sense. However, it is important that you decide for yourself which products you buy. So it has to be your own decision, your own money, and the statement about the product has to reflect your own opinion. A product that has been provided to you free of charge does not necessarily have to be labelled as advertising. If the presentation of the product is objective, advantages and disadvantages are mentioned and no instructions have been given by the manufacturer, then it is not advertising. Many people have been very unsure about this recently. But that is basically logical, because otherwise all the video game magazines would have to label all their reviews as advertising.