The FTC’s Revised Endorsement Guides are for advertising in general, and were recently updated to include blogs and other social media. They are guidelines, ones people should follow to avoid breaking the law, as opposed to the extensive statutory and case law itself. IANAL, though, so check this for yourself.
The FAQ is here:
And the Guidelines are here:
Some people may be under the misapprehension that if the affiliate link is to a product they actually like, then they don’t need to consider the affiliate link a paid endorsement. However, giving an honest endorsement and getting paid for it is still a paid endorsement.
[quote=“FTC Guidelines”]
§ 255.5 Disclosure of material connections.
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…
Example 7: A college student who has earned a reputation as a video game expert maintains a personal weblog or “blog” where he posts entries about his gaming experiences. Readers of his blog frequently seek his opinions about video game hardware and software. As it has done in the past, the manufacturer of a newly released video game system sends the student a free copy of the system and asks him to write about it on his blog. He tests the new gaming system and writes a favorable review. Because his review is disseminated via a form of consumer-generated media in which his relationship to the advertiser is not inherently obvious, readers are unlikely to know that he has received the video game system free of charge in exchange for his review of the product, and given the value of the video game system, this fact likely would materially affect the credibility they attach to his endorsement. Accordingly, the blogger should clearly and conspicuously disclose that he received the gaming system free of charge. [/quote]
[quote="FTC FAQ]
Isn’t it common knowledge that some bloggers are paid to tout products or that if you click a link on my site to buy a product, I’ll get a commission for that sale?
First, many bloggers who mention products don’t receive anything for
their reviews and don’t get a commission if readers click on a link to
buy a product. Second, the financial arrangements between some bloggers and advertisers may be apparent to industry insiders, but not to everyone else who reads a blog. Under the law, an act or practice is deceptive if it misleads “a significant minority” of consumers. So even if some readers are aware of these deals, many readers aren’t. That’s why disclosure is important…
Do the Guides hold online reviewers to a higher standard than reviewers for paper-and-ink publications?
No. The Guides apply across the board. The issue is – and always has been – whether the audience understands the reviewer’s relationship to the company whose products are being reviewed. If the audience gets the relationship, a disclosure isn’t needed. For a review in a newspaper, on TV, or on a website with similar content, it’s usually clear to the audience that the reviewer didn’t buy the product being reviewed. It’s the reviewer’s job to write his or her opinion and no one thinks they bought the product – for example, a book or movie ticket – themselves. But on a personal blog, a social networking page, or in similar media, the reader may not expect the reviewer to have a relationship with the company whose products are mentioned. Disclosure of that relationship helps readers decide how much weight to give the review. [/quote]
I should add that I was mislead. Even though I’ve commented on an other thread where a product link was revealed (by commenters, jokingly, and not by the post author) to be an affiliate link, it still did not occur to me that the link in the OP was anything other than Mark stumbling across a good deal on a product he liked. Nor did I ever notice the “disclaimer” at the bottom of the page template, even after years of reading BB.
Having read BB for years, and reading media criticism and such on the site, I’ve thought of BB as “the good guys” when it comes to things like transparency, so, frankly, I’ve been a bit blindsided by the un-marked affiliate links. I don’t think affiliate links are unreasonably, but I do think that not marking them conspicuously (In The Post Itself) is.
