If you run a blog that takes in money or products from advertisers, be prepared to fully disclose this information beginning on December 1, 2009. The Federal Trade Commission on Monday, September 5th, stated on December 1st, all bloggers who review products must disclose any connection with advertisers, including in most cases the receipt of free products and if they were paid in any way by advertisers. The purpose of this is to allow readers to know the full relationship between a blogger and the advertiser. This helps to prevent an advertiser to spend money to pay off a blogger to give a positive review of a product. Now, if an advertiser has given a blogger a product, the blogger must make it public the nature of the relationship. For many advertisers and bloggers, this is bad news, as this could halt future products from receiving reviews from bloggers.
Personally this does not concern nor bother me. Honest information is hard to find, so I am glad people will need to specify a relationship with an advertiser. If Nike is paying Bob $500.00 to give a positive review on a new sneaker line, then the world should know Bob was paid for his review. While this makes the review meaningless, that is a good thing, as it was not a real review in the first place. Now, perhaps, we can get honest information on the products being sold. This does have a negative, as I am not sure if this relates to only products being reviewed. If Sony pays me $100.00 to place a banner ad on my site for a month, must I disclose the relationship, and if so, must I inform the public how much I was paid for the ad? If this is the case, then I am against this, as it is no one’s business how much I charge for a banner ad for my site. I do not mind stating the identity of the advertiser, I just do not wish to disclose how much money I am being paid.
There are still questions that need to be answered. For now I see positive and negatives from this. As it stands, what do you think about full disclosure?
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