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FTC Crackdown on Blog Endorsements and ReviewsThe FTC took a stunning step by proposing rules that constitute a crackdown on blog endorsements and reviews. The goal is transparency, but many wonder about the cost.You see an advertisement for some product and wonder whether it is worth anything. You pop online to look for reviews of the product. You read a few different ones and all seem to praise the product in question. What the heck, you plop down the old credit card and buy two of them. They arrive in the mail after 4 to 6 weeks and…are terrible. You wonder why they were getting good reviews when the product clearly is best used as a basketball that you try to bank into the trash can. The answer, my friend, is blowing in the…affiliate network or giveaway. Blogs make money in many ways. Frankly, most of them need to maximize the number of revenue avenues just to squeak by. One way is to join the affiliate program for a product and then do a positive review of it. A link to the product is included in the review and the blogger gets a commission every time someone clicks the link and makes a purchase. A secondary approach is a marketing campaign by the product company in which they give the blogger the product free and, perhaps, other products as well. One can see this blatantly done on YouTube where posters with lots of subscribers do product reviews. The makeup videos are hilarious as the reviewers don’t make any money, but just happen to have enough makeup in the background to keep all the women in New York City set up for a decade or so. So, why does the FTC care? Well, the agency is trying to create transparency. It wants people to know if the reviewer is getting anything, be it a commission or product, out of the deal since this would certainly raise credibility issues. The problem, of course, is the FTC has made a complete boondoggle of the situation by passing guidelines that are laughably vague compared to the real world situation faced by bloggers. For instance, as of this writing, the guidelines do not clearly state whether the blogger must put a statement of relationship on each post or just a general one on the site. Then we get to the heart of the matter. How will the FTC enforce this sweeping new red tape regulation? There are thousands upon thousands of bloggers on the web. The FTC has neither the budget nor manpower to watch them all or even probably a thousand blogs. Still, one must worry about a Murphy Law situation, to wit, you might be the one blogger picked out and punished. With the standard $11,000 penalty attached to each transgression, that would be a fatal situation for most bloggers. If you are a blogger concerned about complying with the new FTC regulations, contact me to get a review of your blog and the relevant language you need to meet the current regulations. ******************* Nothing in this article is intended to create an attorney-client relationship. Please contact me if you have any questions. << Back to Internet Law Articles |
