Are Your Fave Instagram Stars Trying to Trick You?

Kylie Jenner is one of the most popular celebrities in the world. She’s part of the famous Kardashian family. She has her own makeup brand. And she has more than 100 million Instagram followers. When she posts to her feed, people pay attention.

Last year she posted a photo of herself in a pair of jeans with the caption “Obsessed with my new @fashionnova jeans.” It might have seemed that she was just sharing what she loves with her fans. (And her fans responded: The post got more than 2 million likes.) But Jenner wasn’t just posting about her favorite jeans. She was being paid to advertise them.

Fans love to follow their favorite stars on Instagram, Twitter, and other social media outlets. They like to know who singer Selena Gomez hangs out with and where basketball star Steph Curry eats dinner. And sometimes, celebrities do share personal moments. But other times, stars are getting paid to post about clothing, makeup, or other products.

These kinds of ads are called product
placements, because a company pays to “place” its product in a post. On Instagram, product placements are often called sponsored posts. A big star can rake in $100,000 for just one.

Sponsored posts are supposed to be labeled #ad or #sponsored, but people don’t always label their posts clearly. Jenner did use #ad at the top of her post, but celebrities may bury the hashtag at the end of a plethora of other hashtags. Or, they may use ambiguous ones. For example, #sp means “sponsored,” but it could just as easily mean “Spanish” or “special.” (Research shows that product placements work best if they don’t seem like ads—which is why stars sometimes disguise their posts in these ways.)

Product placements are nothing new. Companies have been paying to showcase their products on radio, on TV, and in movies for decades. In the 1940s and ’50s, companies paid for TV shows so they could put brand names in the show titles. There was, for instance, the Kraft Television Theatre and The Colgate Comedy Hour. In the late 1950s, the Studebaker car company paid for a show called Mister Ed. The star was a talking horse, but cars often appeared on-screen as well—and of course, those cars were Studebakers.

In 1982, the movie E.T. proved that this kind of subtle advertising could be powerful. E.T. is about a friendly alien; in one scene, a boy uses Reese’s Pieces to lure the alien to his house. After the movie came out, Reese’s Pieces sales skyrocketed.  

Of course, TV and radio commercials were also a big part of advertising in the past. Today, traditional commercials aren’t as effective as they once were, because viewers can record shows and fast-forward through commercials, or they can pay for services that don’t have ads at all—like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Spotify Premium.

Social media stars have the power to reach consumers who tune commercials out. Celebrities like rapper DJ Khaled or YouTube gamer PewDiePie have millions of followers—and those followers tend to trust celebrity posts more than TV or radio ads.

It may be getting harder to sneak ads onto social media though. Last year, the government sent warnings to 21 social media stars. The message? Make sure your followers know which posts are ads. But enforcing the rules can be difficult, and many sponsored posts still aren’t labeled properly.

What can you do? Be smart when you check your social media feeds. Look for products mentioned by name. Then check for hashtags like #ad, #sp, #sponsored, or #brandpartner. Finally, ask yourself: Does this star really love those headphones? Or does he love the check he got from Beats last month?