I was at a CEO summit the other day where the discussion was, “What happens when the 800 pound Gorilla lands on your doorstep.”  The question was in the context of a potential acquiror or strategic investor.

I think we all know what to do when you want to say no.  Witness Groupon turning down a $6 billion acquisition offer.  You just say no, thanks, and hope you’re right.

But what about when you want to say yes?  How can you survive the 800 pound gorilla process to get to yes?  Here was some advice offered by other CEOs, plus an additional treat describing EXPO’s experience with an 800 pound gorilla that went south a few years ago.

1. SIZE OF CONTRIBUTION:  Generally, you aren’t of much interest to a conglomerate unless you are above $10 mil, on your way to $25 mil.  At that point, no matter who the conglomerate is, they can imagine you having an impact on their business someday (mostly through sales integration with some other piece of their company).  Another way to make it happen is to be a straight technology platform play, where it’s better to buy than build for them.
   EXPO’s example:  In our case, we were under these amounts, but tripling revenue each year.  Being small probably made the deal much easier to kill.
2. ACQUIROR OWNS THE NUMBERS:  Someone on their side HAS to own your numbers.  Deals in conglomerates get vetoed by the CFO all the time…not because the CFO doesn’t believe in the business or the numbers.  They will kill it because no one will step up to OWN the numbers.  Believing in the numbers and owning them are two separate things.  Believing means that the revenue growth makes sense to you.  Owning means that you take responsibility, understand exactly where the revenue will come from, put your rep on the line that you/the team will make it happen.  That requires a deep understanding of what you do, how you do it, and who your customers are.  Depending on how closely your internal champion already knows and understands your business, that’s a lot to ask.
   EXPO’s example:  In retrospect, we had many operational champions who believed, but none who would own.  I think the barrier to owning was that they did not truly understand our business.  If you’re selling banner ads all day and shooting for 5% topline growth, I can imagine it’s very difficult to stand behind a evangelistic new media product that is planning to triple growth.  (Which, btw, we did).
3. NO MARKET FLUCTUATION ON THEIR SIDE:  Assuming the 800 pounder is a public company, one of the variables to check would be the gorilla’s own market stability.  Any external market fluctuations in their industry, or hiccup in their own story for the Street can lead to unpredictable, last minute decision making.  While the stars don’t have to align for the transaction to move to close, especially if you have a numbers ‘owner’ above, the stars definitely can’t be out of whack.  In an unstable environment, new announcements like investments and acquisitions, even smart ones, become market moving variables they will not want to introduce.
   EXPO’s example:  2 weeks after our deal went south, the other side announced lower revenues for the quarter, year to date, and the rest of the year.

I want to attribute many of these thoughts to a particular CEO, Adam Slutsky, who is CEO of Mimeo, a hyper-fast growing online, on demand document printing solution.   He was also co-founded Moviefone, which was acquired by AOL and then stayed at AOL awhile.  So, he was able to provide a lot of experience from all three of those vantage points.

Next post:  what can you do to test the waters of the deal strength?

We published our first newsletter a little while ago.  It was meant to be much more about what we’re learning than to sell our services.  Of note in it are:
o One of the first disclosures we are live on diapers.com
o Making available our research on why people write on brand websites

Let me know what you think, and definitely sign up for the mailing list!

My cofounder and generally extraordinary financing-whisperer, Bill Hildebolt wrote an email to a colleague who was asking about current multiples of tech/new growth companies.  As an update to my blogpost about multiples earlier in the year, the market is definitely more frothy and more yielding in certain spaces.  Bill’s analysis breaks down some key changes in the marketplace and their limitations.

Here is Bill’s email response to a ‘current multiples’ question by a colleague:

• yes, most companies are going to be looking to sell (or finance) based off a multiple of revenues, even, typically, runrate or even forward revenues (so, not last years). So if someone wanted to buy us today and we were willing to sell, we’d say it had to be off our 2011 anticipated revenues
• premium deals are trading at up to 10x. here’s a couple of examples of that:
  • Salesforce just bought Radian6 at that level
  • OpenTable and Logmein – the two big tech IPOs last year – both went out at 10x revenues and have traded up from there
• To get that level of multiple, though, you have to:
  • Be at a certain critical mass of revenues….maybe $20mil
  • Still be growing as fast as ever
  • Have strong market position (and even buzz)
  • Be in a sector where the revenues are perceived as recurring / sustainable, probably with one of two characteristics:
    • like SAAS or cloudbased software
    • network effects like Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• So, VCs will try to do financings in the 3 – 5x revenue multiple range, with the idea that a sale will occur potentially at 5 – 10x revenue. That way, the VC benefits from two things: a) growth of revenues, b) multiple expansion
• Here’s a great example of a range of acquisition outcomes in one story.  Three acquisitions on one day by one company of similar companies with 3 different outcomes:
  • KickApps had $12mil in revenues and got bought for around $45mil….so 4x
  • Kewego had $10 mil in revenue and got bought for around $25mil…so 2.5x
  • Kyte had $4mil in revenues and got bought for around $5mil….so 1x.
• If a business is more of a “services” business….for example, like all of the people building Facebook apps…the multiples are going to be lower – say 2 or 3x – with two big caveats:
  • If they are CRAZY profitable.
  • If the space is on fire (Facebook servicers) and they are perceived as a leader. Like Vitrue, who just raised $17mil. But even others in that space have gotten far less attention because at the end of the days, its just time and materials
• With all of that context, the bottom line is that valuation is driven by two things (as with any company) and if you keep your eyes on these two balls, you definitely won’t sound crazy to the guy on the other side of the table:
  • Actual and potential growth rate. If it’s growing like a weed with a recurring, sustainable & defensible revenue stream (like EXPO!), valuation rises
  • Company context. If the company is running out of money without a plan, or the CEO has quit, there’s a looming competitive threat, or even there’s only one buyer….valuation is going to get hammered.  The difference between a 10x exit and a firesale is often breathtakingly slim. The ability to accurately “sniff” a situation is critical to getting to the ‘best’ answer

If that’s what you get from Bill in an email, imagine how insightful he is in person!

Not as relevant on retail multiples:  November 7?, 2010 diapers.com by Amazon for $540 mil, est 1.5x runrate revenue

*Caveat: I have not been an investment banker in decades, and most of these multiples are ‘informed guesses’ on my part. I invite anyone to write me with better estimates and I’ll update the post.

UPDATE:  Please see my updated post here

Within the past 6 months, some well-run, well-funded NY new tech companies have been wholly acquired by major conglomerates. Cafemom also seems up for grabs, rumored to be sought by Yahoo.  By the time this post is up, I understand Quidsi/diapers will also be gone.

So, why would these companies, with relatively good growth metrics, sell at the bottom of the ‘great recession’? Why not hang on 1-2 years for the inevitable multiple expansion on top of higher revenues? Even 5min, with the healthiest acquisition multiple of the bunch, had people guessing why they would have sold now as opposed to waiting for better multiple post-recession on obviously expanding revenue.

There are multiple considerations that may have made selling today the right decisions for these companies despite strong growth prospects. Many of these we lived ourselves at EXPO at some point. Overall, while it’s generally a buyers market, other factors can make it the right time for founders & investors to look past doubts about selling in a downturn. My co-founder, Bill Hildebolt, and I came up with a list why we think we’re seeing so much sales activity that we personally know all too well.

Unplanned need for cash driven by slower sales
In an economy marked by corporate spending decreases, many newcos are experiencing lower than expected sales. Usually a remedy for this would be lowering costs. However, many new tech companies have high fixed costs – people – which means that cutbacks are not easy to make to maintain support of existing clients (not to mention severance, etc.). For many of these companies, you can’t lower costs by just buying less plastic and then making fewer widgets. With lower than planned revenues, and an inability to lower costs correspondingly, companies find themselves needing to raise money either a) faster than anticipated, or b) more than anticipated. Either way, VCs, insiders, even angels, aren’t attracted to that type of story.

Poor terms when capital is available
Raising capital in most markets isn’t something executives dream about (well, maybe in their nightmares). But in this market, terms could have been so unattractive that an early, but fair exit became a better alternative. While we’ve heard there’s money out there for seed, and for strong B rounds, there doesn’t seem to be a lot for ‘follow-on’ A rounds. Plus, you’d be trying to raise capital on revenues that you feel don’t reflect your true value, on multiples that are currently depressed. Who wants to do that for a year?

Cash wasn’t just king, it was also queen.
Conglomerates started hoarding cash into the downturn. They cut costs quickly and found other ways to raise cash. They’ve continued to hold that cash even as their P&Ls have stabilized. At the same time, interest rates are at historic lows and so there’s no return on that cash. An attractive use for cash in that environment could be to ‘buy growth’.  With their own shares depressed in the market, conglomerates are using 100% cash as the payment consideration — with Quidsi being the latest example with $500 mil rumored to be in cash. All of the ongoing business deals listed above were for reportedly all or almost all cash. Knowing that immediate liquidity was possible, many VCs or angels may have just decided that an all-cash acquisition proposal was too good of an opportunity to help them balance their own portfolios. Cash isn’t appearing every day for them, and many are tapping out of old funds but haven’t raised new ones. They may have put pressure on executives to liquidate because of a premium they may have had for the cash.

What’s the opportunity cost of holding on?
Despite growth, promise, and great product, executives might have just run the numbers and not liked what they saw. With IPO markets far from frothy (albeit also very far from dead), and a potential hard road for revenue growth for a few years, some founders might have just run the numbers and decided cashing out now was in their best interest. It’s been a tough two years for most of us, and it’s easy to decide you’ve ‘topped out’ on your personal risk-reward returns for the next couple years. Most of us entrepreneurs don’t display the reserve of Mark Zuckerberg, who said “I don’t think I’m going to have another idea this good for a long time.” Most of us think we have an idea every minute.

My co-founder and I have gone through almost all of these stages since founding the company. Sometimes in the down market, we’ve run the numbers, not liked what we’ve seen, but either had the foresight or plain luck to not have been forced to make any decisions at that point. Most of that credit goes to my partner, Bill, who planned our financials knowing that “Most companies don’t go out of business because they’re bad businesses. They go out of business because they run out of cash.” As our headlights become longer now as our business model has taken shape, it helps us project that the wait will be well worth it.

Congrats to the execs who have found their right exit now, and here’s to the rest of us who are intending to find it later.

One of the interesting analyses from our comScore study on the persuasiveness of user-gen video was this one by Social Media Influence.

“…here’s a strong retort for those moments when the brand manager asks of the agency: “can you make me a viral?” Instead, it turns out, offering your customers a superior product and a compelling narrative has the potential to be even more persuasive than a handsome man on a horse.”

“Maybe it’s too early to boot the creative team, but the findings of the study do suggest that marketers have been underestimating the persuasive power of user-generated video.”

The conclusion drawn here was that there is more to user-gen video for marketers than skateboarding cats.  Viral videos became a standard agency product because they were something agencies and brands understood:  eyeballs…a lot of them…and quick!  They knew how to price that, they knew how to count that, and they knew how to sell that.  They slammed a new medium into the template of the old.

So what is the template of the new medium?

A surprising study by Next New Networks and Youtube shows that entertainment video created for the online platform actually does better online than video created for other mediums, such as TV shows.  It seems that viewers appreciate and respond to the differences when content is tailored to the platform they’re watching it on.

Applying that to a marketing video…if a TV commercial was made to interrupt an experience on a lean-back platform, why do we think that same video will work on when viewers are searching for content on a lean-in platform?

I believe that consumers online crave a different kind of video than that which is available on and created for television.  They want information & searchability (web 1.0), they want control & engagement (web 2.0), and they want personal connection (web 3.0).  Agencies, brands and publishers should focus on how to merge those strengths of this platform to develop the right video content for this new space and move beyond using the old video content for this new space.

Today we launched the first third-party video product reviews on Amazon‘s product page.  These videos were placed onto the product page of our P&G client, Gain detergent.  As many of you may know, EXPO has a mission of placing our unbiased video reviews wherever consumers are shopping.  I first wrote about our Retail Syndication efforts here.

Since writing even that post, we have made great progress, including placement on drugstore.com through our partners at LiveClicker.

Amazon’s participation in our video distribution network is a big win for many reasons:

1) Amazon does not have an auto-publishing for partner content.  This implementation required resources from Amazon to execute.  Therefore, the type, style and placement of content were all considered prior to publishing.

2) The videos are not shunted to the text review space, but rather were given tremendous exposure within the product description area of the page.  Note that they are not presented as part of a ‘review platform’ but are selected to be highlighted as additional product content.  Video is different.

3) EXPO was able to travel our recommended disclosures with the video.  The viewers are given full information about the POV of the reviewer.

We think the integration of video reviews onto Amazon’s product page is a necessary step to breaking through with other retailers.  Whether it’s the studies showing that video created for the digital medium are more effective, studies showing simply the availability of video is effective in raising conversion, or the studies that show that consumers are seeking video on retail sites, the emergence of Amazon as a user-gen video retailer signals the opening of a new informational source for consumers.

In one of our first major studies, we think comScore hit it out of the ballpark.  Their major conclusions:

• User-gen videos about products can contain elements that make them as or more persuasive than professionally produced TV commercials. That means that consumers, without any direction or experience, can create video content that naturally hits elements that have been found to persuade shoppers to buy products.  These are elements that TV commercials strive to portray, and elements that brands spend millions of dollars to try to convey.

• User-gen videos can contain persuasive elements usually not found in traditional TV commercials. The study was not meant to test for this, but the finding became obvious when we stacked up the strengths of our videos against the strengths of TV commercials (and also against other digital media content).  What we found was that there was a very complementary nature of our strong attributes vs. TV commercials.  One example of this would be our videos hit elements around product convenience and quality…two attributes that are found in less than 10% of TV commercials.

The study was written in a very well-researched article by Christophor Rick at ReelSEO, and also covered by Mediapost, VideoNuze, SocialMediaInfluence, Retailer Daily, Video Commerce Consortium, and Bill Hartzer among others.

Here is the press release, webinar to be given by comScore, and access to some of the videos tested.

EXPO’s community and team put together some highlight videos to help kick off the conference by the Altimeter Group. The topic was Rise of Social Commerce, and is streaming live via uStream. We hope our videos help remind attendees that the “Social” part means people, not technologies. (The 10,000 watt speakers might have blown out some audio in the Four Seasons…sorry about that.) Until Matt Cheuvront gets off his duff and puts this up at the conference site, here are the videos in all their glory:

Overview of Social Commerce

Mobile usage

Desire to share online

There were some questions about how we selected these folks, in order to give context about the demo reflected. Because these videos were meant to complement Altimeter’s framework, our reels were created quickly after the first draft of the research was completed by Lora Cecere. So, we didn’t balance the diversity for them as we usually would for client engagements. We put out a broad request to our members, and these were the folks who responded rapidly. Would love to delve further into what other demos think about social commerce as well…please contact me anytime!

(Thanks to my super sharp team: teresa & jess & matt mcclain.  UPDATE:  Matt C, we love you!)

Google uploaded a video to talk about video sitemaps.  Note that video sitemaps are nothing new, as they’ve had them for years.    As far as we can tell, nothing has changed or been added to them.  In fact, the case study they highlight about Discovery Channel is from 2008.  I’ll let you know if we find anything has changed in the service.  But for now, they have a nifty new video.

Despite hipper marketing, IMHO, Google continues to favor an algorithm that surfaces Youtube pop-culture content over any other regardless of sitemap best practices.  This is a huge problem since not all video searches are to find the funniest, most viral video available for your keywords.  However, as the owners of Youtube and not as video producers themselves, I can imagine why Google would have developed that skewed point of view.

EXPO uploads full transcripts of our video, which we do not do when we upload to Youtube, and yet our Youtube videos will come up higher in visibility almost every time.   Despite using specific keyword searches to try to find our sitemapped content, other less relevant content on Youtube will surface first on Google.  Whether they go by recency, plays or other Youtube-dominant metrics, publishers are much more likely to get surfaced on Google if you upload to Youtube and simply fill out their limited metadata requirements.

This path is being exploited extremely well by Demand Media, where they continue to upload videos to Youtube at a Deepwater-Horizon-in-the-Gulf rate.  With Youtube being the #2 search engine, and Google being #1, their lock on the video search market requires publishers to conform to Google’s version of a successful video…which includes being available on Youtube.

While I don’t dispute that Google’s video search algorithm may be unbiased in terms of their engineers’ ethics, I question whether their algorithm is anything near helpful when it comes to informational video search.  What makes a great entertainment algorithm does not necessarily make a great informational algorithm.  (And don’t get me started about what whether you can make a great entertainment algorithm in the first place.)  If Google is learning to optimize video search based on what’s on Youtube, we’re doomed to never be able to find relevant, helpful, informational video.  If you search for “Cancer” and click on “video” you will get:

I have no idea how “euronews.net” snuck in there, but you’ll notice the videos are dominated by youtube, and also dominated by pop culture, fresh off the press videos.  You’d think “cancer” videos would rank Mayoclinic’s Youtube page highly.  But, alas, I would guess the play count is much higher for “Cancer Prevention Pill.”

It’s not Google’s fault that people love entertainment video and especially love it on Youtube.  But it is Google’s fault for not working to better understand that a good video search result is not always the latest viral video.  The development of a great text search might have been a narrower band because it was almost always an informational search.  But despite Google’s experience with Youtube, the best video is not always an entertainment result.  We need to ensure that the vast needs that can be satisfied with video are captured in an algorithm that doesn’t just feed off a single destination’s experience, but accounts for the true breadth of a video search.

Unconstitutional. It’s such a cool word.  As an American, it evokes the most powerful feeling of wrong.  It doesn’t matter what it is, if it’s unconstitutional, you know it’s wrong.

Guess what the Harvard Law Review called unconstitutional.  The FTC’s Endorsement and Testimonial Guides covering consumer generated media.  The one that told bloggers that you had to disclose certain  things if you wanted to write about it.  The one that made you feel like some kind of slimy lowlife for being influential enough to be asked to test free products.  The one that said newspapers didn’t have to disclose anything at all.

There are many parts of the Guidelines and the FTC’s actions that troubled me.  First off, the thought that any group of people could smartly legislate something so nascent and developing like social media seemed like a non-starter.  The brightest minds in the country don’t know where social media will take us…where is the value that will be pursued? what are the metrics that will be measured?  what is the activity that will be developed?  Sure, if there is obvious social malfeasance going on that is not readily fixing itself, then the government can say they are compelled to take an interest no matter what stage an industry is in.  Especially if you’re just extending rules you have in place for, say, legacy media.  But I really had to ask myself whether the need to identify those bloggers who partied with Ann Taylor required the government to set new rules for emerging media that differ than those for legacy media?  And while I’d love to hear the FTC opinion because I’m sure they’ve studied it carefully, I think issuing Guides as opposed to encouraging discussion was irresponsibly, innovation-chillingly early.

The second point of trouble for me was the apparent limiting of free speech that I thought the guidelines promoted.  Having helped develop one of the only open social platforms for consumer product discussion, I am especially sensitive to anyone telling me what my members can say, how they can say it, and pretty much any interference at all.   Being brave enough to let total strangers benefit from your experiences is just one of the overwhelmingly powerful advances of the new social web.   Therefore, what bothers me is the encroachment on my community’s free speech on a platform specifically built to let them speak in a safe, relevant and helpful environment.  I work on it every day, and have for years.  We are constantly debating what the exact right mix of moderation, disclosure, community mores, and content guidelines is best to make our our library of experiences valuable and helpful to other consumers.  The market, our clients, the community, and the users of our content are still helping us determine what is helpful, what is irrelevant, what is valuable.  If I had known the FTC had all the answers, it would have saved me a lot of entrepreneurial time.

Before stepping in and potentially chilling innovation or free speech, the government should always ensure that 1) there is a compelling state interest and 2) the limitations on speech they put in place are as tightly defined as possible.  I don’t think either has been addressed in these Guides.

At the risk of being Googled by the FTC, and because I’m not a lawyer so I didn’t really have a cogent POV, I didn’t write much about it.  See my very ‘factual’ blog post here.  So, I was happy to read that while the Harvard Law Review wasn’t as morally outraged as I was, they were as legally peeved.  I first found the HLR article through some bloggers, and even loved that the HLR cited a blog in their article.  All this analysis (some more emotional than others) gave me the backbone to write about it now.

The Headline:  Unconstitutional

Within the first paragraph, the HLR stated “the Guides should be ruled as unconstitutional as applied to unpaid bloggers.”

The reaction in the blogosphere to the FTC’s announcement of the rules was unsurprisingly negative.  Bloggers expressed particular concern that the rules were overbroad, exceedingly vague, and expressly did not apply to legacy media.  Bloggers are right to be upset; the Guides violate the First Amendment. The Guides treat blogger endorsements as advertisements and attempt to regulate them as such. Unlike other speech, advertising is considered commercial speech and thus receives reduced First Amendment protection. However, under current Supreme Court doctrine, unpaid blogger endorsements should be classified and be given the same protection as noncommercial speech, just like product reviews found in traditional sources. Courts should therefore apply strict scrutiny to the Guides and hold them unconstitutional as applied to unpaid bloggers. The burden the Guides impose, as well as the unfairness of holding bloggers to a higher standard than legacy media, supports this result. (HLR)

There is a high bar to defining speech as commercial speech

The big revelation in the HLR article that is never addressed in the FTC Guidelines, but I think should be, is why they have determined blogger writings are “commercial speech”, and therefore subject to FTC legislation.  Non-commercial speech, as you can imagine, is well protected by the First Amendment.  So when does speech that you say, write or video cross the chasm from non-commercial to and turn into commercial speech?  There’s actually a test that has been developed through the courts.  It’s called the Bolger test, and it is very tightly defined since the threat to infringing on non-commercial speech is very serious business to the law.  There are three pieces of the Bolger Test, and if all three are positive, then there is ‘strong support’ that the speech is commercial:

1. The speech refers to a specific product
2. The speech is conceded to be some sort of advertising
3. The speaker “has an economic motivation”

The last one…the speaker’s economic motivation needs to be “where the speaker’s main goal is either to sell his own products or to get paid by the product’s manufacturer.” (HLR)  Clear cut cases of commercial speech include where the blogger was employed by the manufacturer to blog about their products in a positive light.  A direct economic relationship seems to be nothing short of: “I pay you directly in exchange for stating these positive things about my product.”  Anything short of that should fail the Bolger test and be seen as noncommercial speech.  Free product that is not directly tied to your  agreement to write a positive review in return is not a black and white case to be legislated.  The HLR states, “Even where a blogger’s positive endorsement might yield a benefit in the form of free products in the future, the blogger’s speech is not fundamentally premised on a direct economic relationship between the company and the promoter.”

Assuming the FTC considered the Bolger test in order to decide it had the right to legislate your language, it seems to be concluding that the economic benefit of receiving free products in many cases is the main reason you wrote favorably about the product. It overrides the possibility (probability?) that sharing your expertise and experience with others was actually the main reason you wrote about the product, and getting the product for free was the way you could accomplish that.  The possibility (probability?) that you thought you had some kind of expertise that would be worth sharing with others regarding the evaluation of the product, as opposed to the need to get someone to send you a freebie.  No, by broadly sweeping free products within their authority, the FTC is stating that the main reason you wrote positively about that product was simply because you wanted to get that free product, or more of it.  It’s a demeaning and dangerous overreaching.

Why should the FTC’s disclosures bother me as a blogger?

Make no mistake that by requiring disclosure, the FTC is saying that your opinion is commercial and you wrote your content in order to receive a freebie.  Your content is seen by the FTC as no less biased than if you were sent a paycheck by a manufacturer and your staff title was “Positive Blog Poster About Our Products”.  By requiring you disclose your bias, the government is saying that your speech is equivalent to an advertisement, and not free speech.  The government believes they need to protect people from your point of view, and seek to diminish the impact of your opinion with a disclosure.

A blogger who does not wish to disclose receipt of free products may seem an unsympathetic case, but there are nonetheless important free speech principles at stake. The Guides require disclosure of the mere fact that the product was provided for free, whether or not an endorsement was written in exchange for free products. This required disclosure directly interferes with the content of the speaker’s expressive message. Disclaimers have an “inherently pejorative connotation” that reduces the effectiveness of the message, even if the speaker is acting in good faith. In addition, restricting a blogger’s receipt of free products makes it more difficult for the blogger to write any product reviews at all. Thus, in the name of protecting consumers, the Guides would deprive consumers of information.  (HLR)

The HLR then even showed a better guideline that the FTC should have employed if it were going to opine about disclosure in order to not be found unconstitutional.  The HLR suggested that FTC should have narrowed its recommendation that any actual quid pro quo between the endorser and the advertiser be disclosed (i.e., “If you do this, I will do this.”), or if there was actual intent to deceive the public.  The HLR is saying, yes, the FTC might have been okay if they ruled that employees of manufacturers with the job “Positive Blog Poster About Our Products” should disclose that.  But by lumping in all recipients of free product and not utilizing the tests for commercial speech clearly defined in court precedence, the FTC’s Guides were overbroadly infringing upon a basic right of free speech.

Favoring one type of media over another:  A warning sign that you’re doing something wrong

The HLR took specific attack on the FTC for segregating speech in legacy media (ie newspapers) as being exempt from the bias that they put onto bloggers.

The FTC asserts that knowing whether a blogger received a product in exchange for consideration “might affect the weight consumers give to his review,” whereas knowing whether a newspaper paid for an item would not. But this distinction is unfounded. The material relationship between an endorser and a manufacturer includes not only the value of the free product, but also any other transactions in which they engage, like the purchase of advertising space in a newspaper. Paid advertising is a far more serious conflict of interest, both because its value is likely to be far more than the value of a free product, and because legacy media, unlike blogs, depend on it for their very survival.  (HLR)

After centuries of scrutiny, imagine how high the bar needs to be for the Government to be able to interfere with the speech contained in the newspaper you read.  The FTC has given our individual speech, now recently given greater exposure through the advancements in the web, less consideration.  The HLR summarizes better than I could:

The Court has already ruled that the government may not legally prescribe editorial standards for newspapers; to do so would violate the First Amendment by interfering with newspapers’ “exercise of editorial control and judgment.” Yet the principle underlying the Guides is that the FTC may distinguish between blogs and newspapers based on its perceptions of “editorial responsibility.” Even if bloggers are, on average, less “editorially responsible” than print media, allowing the government to favor certain media forms would allow it to manipulate the “marketplace of ideas” just as direct interference with editorial content would. Worse, favoritism may encourage favored media to moderate their criticism of the government. As consumer-generated media gain an increasingly important role in our society, they should receive the same robust speech protections enjoyed by legacy media.  (HLR)

Obviously, there is more to come on this subject, and more shoes to drop other than a few blog posts.  I look for challenges to whether or not the Guides were necessary to achieve a compelling state interest, and to watch the FTC try to demonstrate that the legislation is narrowly tailored to achieve the intended result. Short of this, the policy should be radically reigned in.

TL;DR

• FTC overstepped their authority by stepping on the Constitution’s right to free speech
• The FTC needs to narrow WAY BACK to the strict definition of commercial speech: where you agreed to write something specifically positive in return for direct compensation.  Samples for trial is not direct compensation.  It’s…for….trial.
• This post is the essence of TL;DR.  But man, the SEO value!