The Only Way Is Essex star Billie Shepherd is the latest celebrity to be added by watchdogs to a blacklist of "influencers" who repeatedly ignore advertising regulations. The mum-of-two, who has 2.5 million Instagram followers, has been sanctioned for "routinely failing to clearly disclose" when she is advertising on her social media channel.
Billie, 32, will now be subject to a period of enhanced monitoring "spot checks" by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). She was warned that if there is no improvement in her willingness or ability to comply with the rules she could face further sanctions.
A number of other celebrities have been added to the ASA's list of shame over the last six months. These include reality TV star Jake Quickenden, model Charlotte Dawson, Geordie Shore's Charlotte Crosby, Love Island's Tyne-Lexy Clarson and Celebrity Big Brother winner Scott Timlin.
An ASA spokesman said: "We’ve added the influencer Billie Shepherd to our dedicated website page for non-compliant social media influencers. She has been added for routinely failing to clearly disclose when she is advertising to consumers on her social media channels, in breach of our rules.
"Billie will now be subject to a period of enhanced monitoring spot checks. If we don’t see an improvement in her willingness or ability to comply with the rules we will consider further sanctions.
"These may include launching our on-platform targeted ads sanction (OPTA) - taking out our own ads against Billie on Instagram and alerting consumers to her failure to follow the rules. We have already imposed this sanction on a small handful of non-compliant influencers. It has proven successful.
"We’ve commenced this sanction against seven influencers, six of whom have subsequently come into line. We’re closely monitoring the remaining one."
He added: "As highlighted in our annual report, we have announced a dynamic new project that harnesses artificial intelligence to capture and analyse all Instagram stories produced by ‘high-risk’ influencers who are on our radar for being unwilling or unable to clearly and consistently label when their content is an ad.
"We are ratcheting up the pressure on non-compliant influencers and are currently considering lining up the worst offenders for referral to statutory authorities for consideration of legal sanctions as well as working directly with the host platform to pull the plug on problem accounts."
Influencers on the blacklist were contacted by the ASA. They were asked to provide an assurance that they would include clear and upfront ad labels in their ads, but either failed to do so or subsequently reneged on it.
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