On Saturday my Google Alerts notified me of an article at lexology.com which talked about a merchant agreeing to settle with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), having “signed a consent agreement and agreed to pay $250,000 for deceptively representing that endorsements … that were posted on blogs or other websites created by Legacy’s affiliates.” Sad [...]
Continue reading about Merchant to Pay FTC $250,000 Over Missing Affiliate Disclosures
There has been much talk and worry about the ‘Do Not Track’ legislation proposed by Federal Trade Commission in early December 2010, and now that Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox both have plugins/features to block certain types of third party cookies (and we also know that Internet Explorer 9 is gonna have it too) the [...]
Continue reading about Will FTC’s ‘Do Not Track’ Proposal Affect Affiliate Marketing?
In July 2009 leading advertising industry organizations introduced a cross-industry Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising [PDF here]. The essence of the Program was to bring about “consumer-friendly standards to online behavioral advertising across the Internet” — ones that would correspond with the “Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising” [PDF here] proposed by the Federal [...]
Continue reading about Online Behavioral Advertising: How to Stay Consumer-Friendly
Yesterday I received an “Advertising Alert” from Gary Kibel, a lawyer at Davis & Gilbert LLP (D&G). This alert brought to my attention a recent action taken by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against a public relations agency involving claims of misleading online endorsements. It is the first case of FTC bringing an action against [...]
Continue reading about FTC Brings First Action Against Misleading Online Endorsements
Earlier this week I have found out that the Federal Trade Commission has recently created a section within their website, devoting it fully to frequently asked questions on the revised Endorsement Guides (about which I blogged extensively as soon as they got announced). This is a great addition to the FTC’s video responses released back [...]
Continue reading about FTC Publishes Answers to FAQs on Endorsement Guides
The new Federal Trade Commission disclosure Guides are coming into force tomorrow (December 1, 2009). I have just finished listening to a webinar where Jim Edwards is interviewing Mr. Richard Cleland of the FTC, and it does shed some light on both the FTC’s overall stand on the issue, and the peculiarities many affiliate marketers [...]
Continue reading about FTC on Guidelines, Affiliate Disclosures, Compliance
An excellent question was posed by Eric Alexander earlier this morning: Does it [the passing of the new Federal Trade Commission's disclosure rules for "endorsements and testimonials"] only affect product or service endorsements or even all affiliate links, banners, etc that a website may publish? I’ve just given the Guides a second (or really third [...]
Continue reading about Will All Affiliates Be Affected by New FTC’s Rules?
On October 27, 2009 LinkShare launched a Twitter tool for affiliates to use. Almost simultaneously with the LinkShare’s announcement, Amazitter (an iPhone app for tweeting Amazon affiliate links) came out. The wave continued, and yesterday Amazon has changed its policy from no affiliate links on Twitter to let’s “Share on Twitter” and provided a tool [...]
Continue reading about Advice for Advertisers with Affiliates on Twitter
I have just found out that the Federal Trade Commission has published video responses to the following 6 questions: What’s new about the Endorsement Guides? Why did the FTC update the Endorsement Guides? What do the Endorsement Guides mean for bloggers? How do bloggers follow the Endorsement Guides? Is the FTC planning to sue bloggers? [...]
Continue reading about FTC’s Video Response to Questions on Endorsement Guides
Earlier today Janet Meiners Thaeler (aka NewspaperGirl) tweeted: CMP.ly is said to have been born “in response to a continued push for transparency and honesty in blogging and within social media and digital communications”. This solution seeks to address the problem of “no established structure or format for disclosures to follow”, and provide “a series [...]
Continue reading about CMP.ly Introduces a Disclosure Policy Solution
Recent Comments