The Federal Trade Commission is planning to crack down on bloggers who review or promote products while earning freebies or payments, the Associated Press reported Sunday.
This would, for the first time, bring bloggers under FTC guidelines that ban deceptive or unfair business practices.
"New guidelines, expected to be approved late this summer with possible modifications, would clarify that the agency can go after bloggers--as well as the companies that compensate them--for any false claims or failure to disclose conflicts of interest," the article explained.
The rules could be quite strict, even extending to the practice of affiliate links--for example, a music blogger who links to a song on Amazon MP3 or iTunes that earns an affiliate commission in the process.
The practice of free products for bloggers, most of whom are not bound by ethical guidelines that journalists have historically followed, has been making headlines for some time now. Microsoft, for example, created a wave of bad press a few years ago when it gave free Acer laptops preloaded with Windows Vista to several dozen bloggers.
Some companies have sprung up around the whole notion of blogger compensation and giveaways. The AP article mentions some of the marketing companies that have made a business out of offering bloggers incentives--free trips, products, gift certificates, or outright payments--for coverage. One of them, Izea, has been generating controversy in the tech press since it started PayPerPost.
Izea says that it requires bloggers to disclose what they've gotten paid for or what they've received for free. But with the proposed FTC guidelines, if a blogger fails to disclose a freebie or payment, both Izea and the blogger could be held responsible. The FTC could also take issue with the fact that for at least one promotion, Izea has said it avoided including bloggers who would be likely to give the company negative press.
Izea CEO Ted Murphy wrote in a blog post Monday that the company supports stricter FTC regulations for bloggers.
"The companies that should be worried about these changes are those that have no standards and no way to enforce disclosure," Murphy wrote. "We have invested millions of dollars creating systems that allow us to automate transactions and verify standardized disclosure."
But some bloggers, the AP article mentioned, are concerned that the FTC's efforts could go too far, possibly generating probes into posts that were written without any compensation, and possibly leading bloggers to post with more restraint. And some believe it would be better if bloggers created their own standards based on niche and industry.
Then there's this: does the FTC realize just how many small-time bloggers are out there? Championing business ethics is a worthy goal, but, um, good luck getting much done when there are hundreds of thousands of blogs out there and new ones popping up more or less daily. Ever heard of the expression "herding cats?"
This post was updated at 11:37 a.m. PT with comment from Izea.
Social media and Web-surfing habits have made it possible for advertisers to target their campaigns at the narrowest of niche audiences. But what happens when targeting goes beyond relevance and into insensitivity? That's something that a big digital-ad trade group has addressed in a new set of guidelines that effectively ban behavioral targeting pertaining to certain medical and psychological conditions.
The Network Advertising Initiative (NAI), which encompasses ad networks like AOL's Advertising.com and Tacoda, Yahoo's BlueLithium, and Google's DoubleClick, published the draft of its "Self-Regulatory Code of Conduct for Online Behavioral Advertising" guidelines on Thursday. The document was passed in response to principles proposed by the Federal Trade Commission last year.
Under the new guidelines, advertising companies are instructed not to track--and subsequently not display relevant targeted ads across the Web--behavioral practices that would indicate a history of cancer, AIDS, sexually related conditions (erectile dysfunction, or sexually transmitted diseases), abortions, or psychiatric conditions. They're also instructed not to track sexual orientation or criminal victim status.
Targeting ads to children under the age of 13 was also outlawed in the new guidelines.
Additionally, the NAI, which allows individuals to manually opt out of members' ad networks, identified a list of topics deemed potentially sensitive that would require "independent business judgment" on the part of the ad network in question. These include "age, addictions...alienage or nationality, criminal history, death, disability, ethnic affiliation, marital status, philosophical beliefs, political affiliation or opinions, pregnancy, race identification, religious affiliation...(and) trade union membership."
It could get a little rigid: this seems to restrict, for example, an advertising company using behavioral targeting to promote LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender)-focused dating sites or events. There's a fine line between good taste and poor taste, as behavior advertising inherently relies on knowing some degree of personal information about Web users. And, in an interview with The New York Times, NAI executive director J. Trevor Hughes acknowledged it. "It may be a sensitive category to target someone based on their ethnicity," he told the Times, but then admitted that it's a tough call. "The Hispanic market in the United States is very large...I don't think anyone would think it is unreasonable to direct ads to Hispanics in the Spanish language."
The guidelines come at a time when targeted ad technology is still in an experimental phase, as digital-ad companies and social networks attempt to replicate the success that Google has had with its AdSense program. Facebook and MySpace.com, for example, have instituted new advertising programs that take advantage of user profile data.
The trade group has instituted a 45-day period for public feedback on the new guidelines, and will finalize them after June 12.
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