{"id":219,"date":"2016-03-02T14:37:23","date_gmt":"2016-03-02T14:37:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zamzowlaw.com\/articles\/?p=219"},"modified":"2016-03-02T14:37:23","modified_gmt":"2016-03-02T14:37:23","slug":"ftc-deceptive-advertisements-and-native-advertisements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zamzowfabian.com\/articles\/ftc-deceptive-advertisements-and-native-advertisements\/","title":{"rendered":"FTC: Deceptive Advertisements and Native Advertisements"},"content":{"rendered":"

The FTC has issued enforcement policies regarding the new wave of advertising to his America. And whether you are aware of it or not, you have been subjected to deceptive advertising and native advertisement in an increasing frequency since 2010 (although it began\u00a0decades ago). The FTC believes that “advertising and promotional messages that are not identifiable as advertising to consumers are deceptive if they misleading consumers into believing they are independent, impartial, or not from the sponsoring advertiser itself<\/em>.” (FTC statement entitled: “Enforcement Policy Statement on Deceptively Formatted Advertisements<\/strong>“)<\/p>\n

What are these deceptively formatted advertisements?<\/strong>
\nThese are the messages integrated into written (social media, blogs, mortgage relief solicitations from governmental-sounding companies),\u00a0video,\u00a0and audio\u00a0broadcasts that is\u00a0presented as non-commercial content. The FTC considers the ‘net impression’ of the advertisement in determining whether it misleads the consumer (including its format).<\/p>\n

For example:<\/strong>\u00a0You have encountered\u00a0a product review or two on your favorite fashion or technology blog. Sometimes they are difficult to distinguish (format, native<\/strong>) from the rest of the blog, since they are written like the other articles within the blog. The authors have been paid and\/or given the product free. This\u00a0example can stretch to audio broadcasts and video broadcasts as well, how often have you listened to a radio program that discusses the release of a tv show or movie (interviews with the lead actress or actor), or watched your favorite morning\u00a0news show and the hosts are reviewing the latest fashion or gadget? They appear as ‘news stories’ but they are not.<\/p>\n

The issues:<\/strong>\u00a0For the same reason, but probably for significantly lower stakes, that people feel\u00a0skeptical when large campaign contributions are made to a political candidate\u00a0(usually ones you disagree with) in a race to an electable position; the FTC feels these ‘advertorials<\/em>‘<\/strong> are biased and are likely to mislead consumers. After all,\u00a0a blog author is incentivized to write neutral or positive reviews so manufacturers continue to send money and products.<\/p>\n

Deception is deception<\/strong>: Although this advertorial strategy isn’t now, Consumers have increasing power to block, skip, or avoid advertisements; thus, advertisers are turning more frequently to this method of slipping in undetected. However, irrespective of the reasoning or justification, to the FTC, deception is deception.<\/p>\n

The new policy release by the FTC doesn’t particularly change anything. Rather, it is released as a reminder to advertisers and a ‘heads-up’ to new media publishers (blog authors) that the FTC has taken notice and believes that some activities are deceptive. This is usually a sign that\u00a0the FTC\u00a0is preparing to target the practice in several ‘easy-to-win’ cases to make an example, set a precedent and create a deterrence in the future.<\/p>\n

If you are an advertiser or more particularly blogger or social media specialist, take notice of this new advisory writing of the FTC. Contact your attorney to discuss how you may remedy or avoid a potential violation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The FTC has issued enforcement policies regarding the new wave of advertising to his America. And whether you are aware of it or not, you have been subjected to deceptive advertising and native advertisement in an increasing frequency since 2010 (although it began\u00a0decades ago). The FTC believes that “advertising and promotional messages that are not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-larticles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zamzowfabian.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zamzowfabian.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zamzowfabian.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zamzowfabian.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zamzowfabian.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zamzowfabian.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zamzowfabian.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zamzowfabian.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zamzowfabian.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}