The recent FTC Blogging ruling will not halt paid blog posts. In fact, it won’t even make them better. Nonetheless, bloggers now need to disclose paid reviews on blogs.
Currently, a small group of companies that pay you to blog offer compensation in exchange for a review. I know because I write for a few of them and they pay me . In addition, many companies pay bloggers directly for similar services. The companies themselves can hide their compensation quite easily. The middleman companies are a different story. Tax forms and paychecks make their activity a lot more transparent. So based on that alone, we see this law will only affect the small time players. High ranked bloggers getting paid directly “under the table” will not have to disclose a thing as reviews will appear as their opinion. So how much better off are we as a result of this law?
NOTE: The FTC blogging issue is with regards to reviews of products or services. Text links on their own that are not part of a review are still ok to remain undisclosed.
According to this new law, If you review a product and get some bucks for it, then you MUST disclose it as such. Most middle man companies already require this. The new thing is that you MUST disclose it in the post whether the middleman requires it or not.
I think the FTC law has a lot of loopholes. Furthermore it fails to fix false advertising on the web. While we all want to destroy the blog posts that say stuff like “I lost 100 lbs in a day!” We can never really know if an author has been compensated for their online writing. For example, If my friend pays me $15 to review his new motorcycle company, how will anyone ever know he is my friend? Now, multiply that times the millions out there doing paid reviews undisclosed and you have the situation. My advice to bloggers is:
Keep reviewing whatever products you think will be relevant to your blog and be honest. Just make sure you let your readers know if you got paid for it.
If you follow that advice, you will be in compliance more or less with the new law.
Related Links:
The FTC document itself (Thanks Sylvie!): www.scribd.com/doc/20689476/FCC-Advertisement-Changes-Effetive-Dec-2009
http://www.pcworld.com/article/173169/ftcs_new_rules_for_bloggers_a_quick_guide.html
http://www.dragonblogger.com/bloggers-must-disclose-paid-reviews/
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6 Comments
Very true, and SocialSpark is one of the best programs as they always have in post disclosures, but this does make a sitewide disclosure pretty much worthless now, since you have to have one in post for each sponsored review.
Note, you have to spell out if it was a “free gift” compensation or monetary compensation, I think it says you have to mention which type of sponsorship. Maybe I misread that though.
This could also make International Bloggers favored by companies that want non-disclosure since they aren’t bound by FTC regulations.
Twitter: rileycentral
Thanks for the comment. I never thought of that last point you make. I suppose the process will be: 1) Investigate a suspected undisclosed paid review 2) Subpoena the IP 3) Verify that the IP is in the jurisdiction of the United States.
Kind of like illegal downloads, these investigators have their work cut out for them. One thing is for sure, I won’t become their poster boy! I am all about disclosure of any paid reviews I do.
I used to think it was kind of dumb for there to be penalizing for writing paid reviews. But now that I’m trying to rank and compete in search engines it makes me mad. I don’t have $300 in my budget to buy reviews, and so it’s an unfair advantage for those who do… I think that is why Google penalizes for it – they want you to pay for sponsored ad spots at the top of results, not buy your way to rank #1.
Twitter: rileycentral
Well said. I used to try and argue with Google but I’ve found I can make more money through Adsense than whining about PageRank. Of course PageRank never hurts!
Thanks for breaking down the information, i.e. 81-page government report, into a short and sweet blog post – it’s always easier to read that way :)
Twitter: rileycentral
You know it’s funny because I hadn’t read the document in full. If anyone is interested in poring through it, it is here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/20689476/FCC-Advertisement-Changes-Effetive-Dec-2009
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[...] Damien Riley kindly agreed to cover this latest update from the FTC on the FMB blog. Key fact: always disclose paid for reviews [...]