TikTok owner ByteDance takes steps to ensure certain Douyin influencers are responsible for third-party commercials
- Channels covering political and finance issues, as well as legal and healthcare advice can no longer authorise third-party advertisers to upload commercial content
- Douyin is aggressively exploring ways to monetise its popularity, and advertising remains one of the key ways to turn eyeballs into revenues
Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, has taken steps to ensure that influencers who cover serious topics are directly responsible for commercial content on their channels, a move could put a dent in their revenues.
According to a recent Douyin notice to influencers, short-video channels covering political and social news, finance and economic issues, as well as legal and healthcare advice will no longer be permitted to authorise third-party advertisers to upload commercial content on their behalf.
It marks a change from the existing policy where influencers can authorise an external party to update their channel with commercial material. The new rule is effective from Wednesday, according to the notice.
Under the new policy, influencers will have to upload any commercial content by themselves, thus bearing responsibility for such content on their channel. The Douyin notice said the move aims to “optimise creators’ experience”.
The Douyin platform, which uses the same algorithm as TikTok to recommend short videos according to each user’s preferences and viewing record, has blurred the traditional lines between entertainment, news, opinion and commercial content, resulting in confusions for users.
