YouTuber Colleen Ballinger is someone many brands might not want acting as a spokesperson for their products.
Last year, former fans accused Ballinger, who is most known for the character she plays online named Miranda Sings, of “grooming” and interacting with her minor fans in inappropriate ways.
After taking five months off, she is back posting on social media.
Though Ballinger lost some sponsorship deals and ended her podcast with cohost Trisha Paytas at the peak of the controversy, she’s been able to make money since resuming posting on YouTube and TikTok.
In particular, Ballinger has remained part of YouTube’s partner program, which allows her to make money off the ads in her videos and use YouTube’s product tagging and affiliate marketing tools. Generally, YouTube only removes creators from its partner program for harassment, hate speech, and breaking other community guidelines. Ballinger hasn’t crossed those lines.
But that doesn’t mean brands are thrilled to have their products associated with Ballinger, and it’s caused a headache for at least one company.
Last month, Ballinger promoted the cookie dough brand Sweet Loren’s in a vlog and used YouTube’s affiliate program — which allows creators to earn a commission on sales — to link to the product.
To the casual observer, it could look like Sweet Loren’s had hired Ballinger to promote its product. Former Ballinger fans even took to TikTok to discuss their outrage for what seemed like a sponsored post and tagged Sweet Loren’s, wondering why the brand seemed to be affiliated with Ballinger.
“I will not buy their product again,” one TikTok commenter declared.
The catch? Sweet Loren’s hadn’t actually hired Ballinger. She was linking to its product through an affiliate program.
“We were just as concerned by the affiliate link and inclusion of our products in Colleen’s YouTube video as our fans,” a representative for Sweet Loren’s told Business Insider. “Sweet Loren’s is not in any way affiliated with or working with Colleen previously, now, or in the future. We did not gift her any products or pay her to mention our brand in her video. We also did not pay any commission for sales through the attached affiliate link.”
Affiliate marketing and sponsorships can look strikingly similar to viewers, though the involvement of the brand is very different. An affiliate link is a custom link generated by an affiliate marketing platform that lets the influencer earn a small commission from every product or service sold using the link. In this case, the link, which can be found in the video’s description, directed to the product sold on Walmart. (Walmart did not respond to BI’s request for comment.) This differs from a sponsorship, where the brand pays the influencer to promote its product.
Brands can opt out of certain affiliate programs — like Walmart’s, in this case — but they’d have to stop working with all the influencers in the program since there generally isn’t a way to blacklist one particular creator. Sweet Loren’s could presumably appeal to Walmart or YouTube to remove Ballinger from their affiliate program. But usually, inclusion in an affiliate program isn’t going to get as much scrutiny as a brand deal, where the brand specifically decides to work with the creator. There’s a high bar for YouTube or Walmart to kick an influencer out of their affiliate programs.
The broader issues surrounding affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing has helped many influencers build lucrative businesses by letting them decide what they’ll promote in exchange for a commission. Unlike other advertising avenues, affiliate marketing puts the creator in charge but leaves the brand with little to no control over the content or who’s promoting the product.
This can get tricky, especially when a problematic influencer earns money by promoting the brand — without the brand knowing.
When an influencer promotes a product or service through a sponsored post, the brand chooses them and either works with the influencer directly to create the content and negotiate the deal or hires an agency to do so.
But when an influencer organically promotes a product or service and links to an affiliate link, the brand typically has no involvement, as most brands work with a third-party affiliate network.
“Creators can generate links through affiliate programs and online retailers to get kickback payments from associated sales without the brand being notified or requiring approval,” the representative for Sweet Loren’s said. “We appreciate our fans for flagging this inclusion to us and wanted to publicly announce on our TikTok channel that we do not support any person or entity that harms or promotes the harm of children and clarify that we are not and will not be working with or paying Colleen now or ever.”
Affiliate links can pose a problem for brands that want to remain in control of who is associating with the company in exchange for payment. It can become challenging for brands when, like with Ballinger and Sweet Loren’s, it appears as though a brand is paying a creator to promote them when it’s not.
It speaks to a broader theme among brands trying to navigate social media.
“One of the broader issues that brands face is having little control over who talks about your brand or what they say,” said Conor Begley, chief strategy officer of CreatorIQ. “This has increased the importance of having teams — mostly internal — dedicated to managing the creator relationships in the same way you had PR teams to better manage the press relationships — for both good and bad press. They can help shape the narrative and tell the story of the brand in a way that feels more human.”
Read the full article here