The Hungarian Competition Authority (GVH) in one of its cases established that a vast part of the consumers follows public figures and private individuals on social media and their commercial activity becomes more and more popular among advertisers. However, among posts of different style, form and topic, sponsored content is usually not marked as such.
The statement from GVH gives a clear guidance: any online opinion leader, whether blogger, vlogger or youtuber, shall mark in a simple, clear, plain and remarkable way in his/her posts on social media if the post (or a part of it) contains not independent and neutral opinion or recommendation but paid advertisement or the post is otherwise sponsored (e.g. based on framework agreement, donation, dividends, provision or other income).
The Competition Authority makes clear that the opinion cannot be independent and the content cannot be neutral if the opinion leader has economic interest in its publication. GVH also pointed out that not only the author of the post but also the advertiser or even the PR/marketing agency assisting in creating the advertisement shall be liable for marking such paid contents.