FTC Blogger Regulations: 3 Smart Opinions
crbrowning | Oct 20, 2009 | Comments 3
At the Inbound Marketing Summit, I was able to get some time from Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer, Aaron Strout of Powered, Inc, and Michael Schneider of Allen & Gerritsen. Some very good and interesting opinions in the video below:
For your information I am providing a few resources below. First, here is the most often quoted portion of the regulations that bloggers are concerned with:
The Federal Trade Commission is taking a tougher line on bloggers who accept cash or gifts to tout a company’s products or services. Under revised rules announced Monday, the FTC will require bloggers and celebrities to clearly state when they receive cash or “payment in kind” for endorsing a company’s products or services.The changes, adopted on a 4-0 vote, are the first revisions to federal guidelines on endorsements and testimonial advertising since 1980 and the first to target bloggers.
Connections between advertisers and endorsers must be disclosed once the revised guidelines take effect on Dec. 1. The FTC said the stricter disclosure requirement will apply to comments on talk shows, blog posts and on social media as well as in traditional advertisements.
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Advertisers and endorsers who fail to disclose material connections, or who make false, misleading or unsubstantiated claims may be subject to fines of $11,000 per violation. The FTC didn’t set a specific dollar threshold; instead, it called for disclosure whenever a reward is large enough that it might affect the credibility of the endorsement itself.
Link to FTC press release and full FTC regulations
Smart posts on the topic worth reading:
- OverLawyered: Breadth of FTC Blogger Regs
- Snowflakes in Hell: New FTC Rules have Serious Impact on Bloggers
- FastCompany: FTC Sticks as Blogger Backlash Builds
- BuzzMachine: FTC Regulates Our Speech
For more information/help – please feel free to contact me or any of the great people mentioned here!
/colin
Colin:
Jason makes a good point that I might have added in a comment to your poll question: It’s just as important–perhaps more so–that brands and marketers/PR pros understand the new FTC regulations. It is the marketers who *must* inform bloggers of the disclosure rules, must check that all mentions of the product/service are factual/not exaggerated and who must create training programs for these teams around these new regulations. For many marketers, that’s a big shift in the way they operate.
Bryan | @BryanPerson
Nice work, Colin. I think this is long overdue, and as Jason pointed out it immediately affects companies in marketing, PR, etc. When people (who may be bloggers) have a material interest in promoting any product of service, it turns it into advertising, simply put. But I think this issue really is the tip of a much bigger iceberg when it comes to so called “bloggers” doing posts, adding links, etc, that ultimately they are being compensated for, as this is a huge industry. And it is one of the “black arts” used as a primary ingredient in backlinking, which in turn is closely tied with SEO practices, which has now crept in to content marketing. So, the seemingly simple activities of bloggers who get compensated for shilling products goes much, much deeper. And we as marketers have a responsibility to call these practices out.
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