FTC Rules Requires Bloggers to Make Certain Disclosures

Linked here is the FTC announcment of rules that affect testimonial advertisements, bloggers, celebrity endorsements that was released on October 2009.

For the full completed revised guide, read this PDF.

It says ...

"advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect."^[1]

In the past, advertisers would cherry-pick some extraordinary results to advertise and slap on the disclaimer "results not typical". This is no longer good enough. They must disclose the typical results of the products.

The annoucement also says ...

"long standing principle that “material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed"^[1]

In this example, you, the blogger, is the endorser. So if you received a free product from someone and you write review of that product in your post, then you must disclose in the post what you had received from the advertiser.

You could have received a free product, a service, a payment, or anything of that nature. Then it would need to be disclosed.

This would also mean that so call "pay-per-post" must disclose that they receive payment for making the post.

Section 255.5 in the full guide talks about "disclosure of material connections".

In particular it says ...

"When there exists a connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product that might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement (i.e., the connection is not reasonably expected by the audience), such connection must be fully disclosed."^[2]

In that section, several examples are provided. Example 7 is relevant to those blogger who does any form of product reviews.   It gives the example that a video game blogger receives a free game system from manufacture or advertiser.  If game blogger then writes a review of that system, then according to the guide "the blogger should clearly and conspicuously disclose that he received the gaming system free of charge"^[2]

 Mashable.com says FTC can fine bloggers up to $11,000 for not proper disclosure.^[ref]

Article is written as opinion on September 2010. Contents may become out-dated or may contain errors.  Author is not a legal professional and is not liable or responsible for content.  Please consult legal profession as needed.  Author may receive revenues from the display ads or links contained within article.

[1] FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials.

[2] Full revised FTC Endorsement Guides