On Pantip’s message boards, some posts are often marked as “SR” or “CR”. Some may already know what these abbreviations mean but for those who don’t know, SR (Sponsored Review) is when the original poster may have received the product or service for free but is not paid by the company to review their product, whereas CR (Consumer Review) is when the original poster has paid for the product or service with no commission from the company.

However, as the popularity of these reviews increase, users are starting to hide whether their reviews are SR or CR or even worse, getting hired by the company to write a review. This resulted in a negative impact on both the community and the brands, causing people to distrust review sources on Pantip.

To combat this growing problem, Pantip decided to release a new platform called “Pantip Influencer” which is a mix between the already existing Pantip Branded Content and Pantip’s Advertorial board in order to improve on the transparency between companies, reviewers and the consumers.

The procedures of how Pantip Influencer works is:
1. The brand contacts Pantip’s marketing team which will help find a suitable user to review the product.
2. The user chooses what type of review they would like to carry out (Review, Advertorial, Tie-in)
3. Content is posted on Pantip’s board which is integrated into other content
4. The review is pushed to the target audience.

With the growing rise of social media influencers, many companies are turning towards creating a platform for these influencers, bloggers and net idols to promote products and services.

Facebook has reportedly started developing an influencer marketing system as well through pushing video content on their platform to compete with the ever-growing amount of new social media stars emerging from Youtube.

LINE has also started developing in a new platform in the form of LINE Idol which allows users to open Official Accounts if they fit in the criteria of: artists, net idols, bloggers, publishers or even brands to allow ease of communication between the creators and their fans on a platform with over 42 million users.

LINE has over 43 million users in Thailand alone, making it one of the countries with the largest LINE user base. This allows them to cover a large array of demographics and take advantage of this to develop their own internet idol platform.

Which is why LINE has decided to open LINE Idol, a service currently only available in Thailand. This reflects how LINE has given importance to these online influencers and recognises how the industry is growing every day and is investing in the market to provide a source of income for influencers as well as develop their idols to compete with other platforms.

All these developments in the online influencer industry has opened a way to allow more businesses to come to the platform for promotion as well as create a source of income for the creatives on the platform. This has also set a standard for reviewers to stop users from writing falsified reviews.

Source : techcrunch.com , marketingoops.com , thumbsup.in.th