FTC to Regulate Pay-per-post Bloggers

An article over at AdAge.com explains how the Federal Trade Commission has a proposed plan to start regulating viral marketing and blogs. As part of its review of its advertising guidelines, the FTC is proposing that word-of-mouth marketers and bloggers, as well as people on social-media sites such as Facebook, be held liable for any false statements they make about a product they're promoting, along with the product's marketer. This could present a significant issue for marketers, SEOs, and Internet Marketers, including the likes of big names who have historically used bloggers for product reviews and endorsements such as Microsoft, Ford and Pepsi. It's projected $3.7 billion will be spent on word-of-mouth marketing in 2011.

Assistant director of the FTC's advertising-practices division Rich Cleland said, "The commission is attempting to update guidelines that are 30 years old so that they address current marketing techniques," he said, "and in particular to address the issue of whether or not the safe harbor that's currently allowed for 'result not typical'-type disclaimers is still warranted."