Truth In Advertising May Come To Bloggers; Consumers Win
November 25, 2008
Proposed new rules by the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) will extend, in their current form, the truth-in-advertising regulations to bloggers, street teams, discussion boards, and other online. Mainstream marketers, according to the BNet article, are not too happy about this.
I’m extremely pleased about this particular piece.
And I am an online marketer.
Why? Because I think consumers deserve that protection. Disclosure should be REQUIRED. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve overheard or talked to those who love skirting the rules of disclosure online; it’s scarily common.
In my opinion, if a company sends you a sample of something, as a blogger you should clearly disclose you got it from them, including payment if applicable. I also am not a fan of pay-per-post whatsoever and consider it disingenuous to pay someone to mention their product without disclosure.
This happens a lot in the technology business. One of the reasons I listen to Leo Laporte and Andy Ihnatko for gadget information is that they do not do paid “stand ups.” These are segments created by the gadget companies with a news “reporter” that talk about their gadgets; they then edit them and send them to news organizations looking to fill space on their news program for free and they air them as regular news pieces with little, no, or unclear disclosure.
I’ll step off my soapbox. What are your thoughts?
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Thanks for the note — very few people have noticed this potential federal regulation of the blogosphere.