FTC Expected To Crack Down On Bloggers' Sponsored Posts

[babylonsister]

Blogola: The FTC Takes On Paid Posts
The Federal Trade Commission wants bloggers to disclose when they've been wooed with cash or freebies from companies they cover

By Douglas MacMillan


Readers of Adventures in Babywearing, a blog for parents, got an up-close look at the Ergo, a $135 embroidered baby carrier in a shade called "organic blue" in a May 14 post on the site. Blog operator Stephanie Precourt was impressed. "The Ergo truly is now my first choice for long-term wear as well as nursing and doing chores around the house," she wrote.

Money can't buy that kind of advertising for Maui (Hawaii)-based ERGObaby. Or can it? As Precourt wrote in her blog, the company sent the carrier free, along with a matching pouch and backpack. Precourt says it's legitimate to blog about a product she's been given by its manufacturer. "I try to keep my blog filled with personal stories and real-life content so that when I do happen to write about something that I've been given, it's credible," she says in an e-mail.

But such back-scratching endorsements could become tougher under a coming set of Federal Trade Commission guidelines designed to clarify how companies can court bloggers to write about their products. This summer, the government agency is expected to issue new advertising guidelines that will require bloggers to disclose when they're writing about a sponsor's product and voicing opinions that aren't their own. The new FTC guidelines say that blog authors should disclose when they're being compensated by an advertiser to discuss a product.

Google Downgrades Paid Blog Entries

It's the first revision of the FTC's guidelines for editorials and testimonials in ads since 1980, and regulators say it's needed in an era when consumers increasingly turn to blogs and other amateur Web sites for information about the goods and services they buy. The rules seek to clear up some of the tangled connections on Web sites that make it hard for readers to tell who's getting incentives from whom. "The presumption is that we can apply traditional advertising principles like transparency and accountability to social media the same way as it would apply to traditional media," says Rich Cleland, staff attorney for the commission.

Maybe. But the FTC is trying to legislate ethics in the wild and wooly blogosphere at a time when marketers and amateur writers are forming new kinds of partnerships that fall outside the traditional boundaries between vendors and consumers, say critics of the plan. And the Commission's rules may be less effective at squelching behind-the-scenes arrangements between advertisers and bloggers than policies at Google (GOOG), which has been penalizing paid blog entries by demoting them in its search results. The FTC's policy change mostly concerns the activities of independent blogs vs. posts written by journalists who work for news organizations.

more...

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2009/tc20090518_532031.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_news+%2B+analysis

[DJ13]

1. Great, so when do they go after Fox for being sponsored by the GOP?