In my view, the disclosure requirements don’t apply to a typical sponsored ad run by an affiliate because someone looking at the ad is likely to understand it as advertising for which the site is (presumably) being compensated. The disclosure requirements apply to an “endorsement,” which the new rules define as an advertising message that consumers will likely believe reflects the opinions, beliefs, findings or experience of a party OTHER THAN THE SPONSORING ADVERTISER, whether the endorser’s statements are the same as or different from the sponsoring advertiser’s. If a consumer perusing a site is likely to think it is the site owner or blogger speaking, not the seller of the product being written about, then there may be a disclosure obligation if the site owner or blogger is being comped or incentivized somehow for making the posts.

If disclosure is required, it must be “clear and conspicuous.” In FTC parlance, this requires, among other things, putting the disclosure somewhere near the post that constitutes the “endorsement” (i.e., the advertising). I would NOT bury it in the site T&C’s — the FTC has criticized this practice in other contexts involving online advertising. So if there are multiple posts that constitute endorsements, you may need to include a short disclosure at the end of each post (unless you can associate a single disclosure with multiple posts in a way that makes it clear the disclosure relates to all of them).

Having said that, I also don’t think it is necessary to include a paragraph of legalese in each case. You might think about including a simple link entitled “Advertising Disclosure” after each post that causes a pop-up box to come up with a one-sentence disclosure (e.g., “The product reviewed by the author of this post was provided by ____ free of charge.”). The bottom line here is that I don’t think the FTC is going to take a hard line on bloggers, particularly where there is some good-faith attempt to comply (as described above). On the other hand, the product sellers may end up dictating what sort of disclosure they want, since they are also liable if the bloggers don’t make the required disclosure.

Finally, with regard to affiliate marketers who are also bloggers, a big question is what kind of incentive are they getting for writing favorable blog posts? Is it merely the affiliate advertising revenue (i.e., they want to say good things about the product they are being paid to run affiliate ads for) or are they getting something else too? The latter case is easier — I would say include disclosure near the relevant blog posts, as discussed above. In the former case, one could make the argument that the presence of the ad means consumers are likely to suspect that the site owner has a compensated relationship with the product seller and that the blog posts are therefore sponsored advertising. To be safe, I would probably still include some kind of short disclosure about the relationship, but the point is at least arguable. However, I think an ordinary blogger/affiliate running a site out of his house who isn’t realizing a significant amount of revenue and hasn’t previously been warned by the FTC is not facing a huge risk. (That said, the FTC may very well read ReveNews and disagree with me!)

Now for my own disclosure: the foregoing is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice on a specific matter. You should consult with an attorney before taking any definite action on this or any other legal matter. (Sorry, we have to say this!)

Andy

I’ve been studying both PPC and free methods for years, and have read many articles in reference to PPC , yet many fail to explain such as you have in this article the extensive research needed to fully obtain the best ROI on a PPC campaign, in particular as you’ve indicated above when it comes down to the Bid Management.

Thank you for sharing such an insightful, straightforward approach as to how a \REAL\ PPC campaign should be performed for maximizing ones ROI.

2. The real change here is not extending the 30 year old guidelines to online affiliates, but rather removing the safe harbor that disclaimers have typically enjoyed. I wrote about that issue here:
http://www.bizop.ca/blog2/due-diligence/testimonials-and-disclaimers.html