Yesterday the Government approved the royal decree that establishes the definitive regulation that influencers must follow, after the draft of said regulation was made public in January. In this way, from today onwards, influencers or “users of special relevance (UER)” will be considered those who have a turnover of 300,000 euros, those who have more than one million followers on a single platform or two million in their overall activity, and who have Posted or shared 24 or more videos per year.
In this sense, the royal decree establishes stricter criteria than the draft, since it considered an EBU to be one that had two million followers on at least one platform and an annual turnover of 500,000 euros.
According to laps4 data, in Spain there are 1,100 influencers with more than one million. The figure is much lower in the case of those that exceed 2 million. Instagram profiles such as Ibai Llanos (10.4 million), María Pombo (3.1), Dulceida (3.4), or Laura Escanes (1.9) would fall into this category.
All influencers who meet the criteria established in the royal decree that the Council of Ministers approved yesterday must register within two months in the State Registry of Audiovisual Providers as “users of special relevance.”
From that moment on, they will be obliged to comply with regulations regarding the protection of minors and advertising in the audiovisual field, such as identifying advertising spaces, not advertising tobacco, medicines or alcohol, or advertising advertisements that generate a psychological or physical harm to minors. In addition, they must label the content from the point of view of the age at which it is directed, and be governed by a code of conduct that they will have to agree with the regulators in this area. Violators will have to face fines from 10,000 euros and up to 1.5 million euros depending on the severity of the violation and the level of billing.
This regulation attempts to provide greater protection to consumers, especially minors, and more legal security to these users, who have achieved a notable economic volume on the video sharing platforms through which they disseminate their content.
Commercial television stations had asked the Government to limit the income thresholds and audience levels to consider someone like UER: those who had at least 100,000 followers and had a turnover of 100,000 euros. That was one of the allegations made at the time by the Union of Open Commercial Televisions (Uteca) to the draft royal decree and also by the Association of Communication Users (AUC).
