{"id":1536,"date":"2010-10-06T08:07:17","date_gmt":"2010-10-06T13:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/?p=1536"},"modified":"2010-10-08T08:27:12","modified_gmt":"2010-10-08T13:27:12","slug":"ftc-update-reverb-green-and-behavioral-targeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/2010\/10\/06\/ftc-update-reverb-green-and-behavioral-targeting\/","title":{"rendered":"FTC Update: Reverb, Green and Behavioral Targeting"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"zemanta-img\" style=\"margin: 1em; display: block;\">\n<div>\n<dl class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"width: 310px;\">\n<dt class=\"wp-caption-dt\"><a href=\"http:\/\/commons.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:ApexBuildingHighsmith.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Apex Building, headquarters of the Federal...\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/4\/4a\/ApexBuildingHighsmith.jpg\/300px-ApexBuildingHighsmith.jpg\" alt=\"The Apex Building, headquarters of the Federal...\" width=\"300\" height=\"240\" \/><\/a><\/dt>\n<dd class=\"wp-caption-dd zemanta-img-attribution\" style=\"font-size: 0.8em;\">Image via <a href=\"http:\/\/commons.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:ApexBuildingHighsmith.jpg\">Wikipedia<\/a><\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>I haven\u2019t written about the FTC endorsement guidelines in quite a while but some things have crossed the transom over the past month that I wanted to share with you.<\/p>\n<p>First, the FTC announced the resolution of its first completed investigation in which the social media aspects of the guidelines applied \u2013 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ftc.gov\/opa\/2010\/08\/reverb.shtm\" target=\"_blank\">Reverb<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Short story: Reverb was accused of \u201castroturfing\u201d &#8212; employees of the PR firm left glowing comments on video game message boards as though they were satisfied customers of products. No fines were assessed, but the consent decree imposes some pretty stringent requirements on the firm and its principal. Read the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ftc.gov\/os\/caselist\/0923199\/index.shtm\" target=\"_blank\">consent decree <\/a>for the details.<\/p>\n<p>Two important things about Reverb:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The deceptive advertising laws existed \u2013 and applied to online and social media \u2013 well before the revised guidelines were issued last year. Deceptive advertising is deceptive advertising, full stop. The revised guidelines help us \u2013 advertisers and consumers \u2013 understand how the FTC intends to enforce the law. The guidelines were and are not targeted specifically at blogs.<\/li>\n<li>The FTC focused on the company and its principal, not the individuals hired to leave the comments. It was the agency providing the direction that was held accountable for the deception. This is consistent with the agency\u2019s statements that it intends to focus on advertisers, not on individual bloggers participating in social media campaigns.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In other FTC news: the agency is going to turn its attention to Green claims. Not surprising given the greenwashing of the past few years. According to <a href=\"http:\/\/adage.com\/article?article_id=145504\" target=\"_blank\">Ad Age:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThe guides are expected to tighten standards for packaging claims such as &#8220;recyclable&#8221; or &#8220;biodegradable&#8221;; regulate how marketers use such terms as &#8220;carbon neutral&#8221;; and how quickly and close to the source of carbon output &#8220;carbon offsets&#8221; must be executed, among other things.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Another term expected to come in for scrutiny is \u201csustainability.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This reminds me of the organic\/natural debate. Organic is specific. Products need to comply with very specific requirements to be labeled organic. Natural on the other hand has relatively little meaning, and certainly doesn\u2019t mean something is \u201cgood for you.\u201d There are many things in nature that are most definitely not good for humans to breathe or consume. Carbon monoxide. Tobacco. Poison. \u00a0You get the idea.<\/p>\n<p>And on Monday, I read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adweek.com\/aw\/content_display\/news\/digital\/e3i5a116168a138e4ee5f8c7cce07cc021a\" target=\"_blank\">an item in Ad Week<\/a> about the major US advertising associations collaborating on a mechanism for consumers to opt-out of online ads that use behavioral targeting. A move designed to forestall formal FTC action on the issue.<\/p>\n<p>According to Ad Week<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cAds targeted using past Internet browsing history will carry the small logo. Clicking it will bring notice of the targeting used and direct people to a page with options for blocking behavioral targeting.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Behavioral targeting increases the relevance of the ads to a viewer\u2019s interests, and in that respect, benefits both marketers <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">and<\/span> consumers. On the other hand, there are legitimate privacy concerns. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.\u00a0 What do you think?<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Update 8 October: <\/strong> The FTC <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.greenbiz.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/07will-revised-ftc-green-guides-leave-marketers-singing-blues\" target=\"_blank\"><em>released <\/em><\/a><em>the <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ftc.gov\/os\/fedreg\/2010\/october\/101006greenguidesfrn.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"><em>proposed new green guidelines<\/em><\/a><em> on the 6th. The public comment period ends December 10th. The agency also forestalled the game of \u00a0&#8220;social media telephone&#8221; like the one that\u00a0occurred\u00a0last year about the endorsement guidelines (there was more misinformation and disinformation\u00a0circulating\u00a0at one point than actual information) by releasing<\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ftc.gov\/os\/2010\/10\/101006greenguidesproposal.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"><em> a nice summary PDF of the proposed changes<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"border: medium none; float: right;\" src=\"https:\/\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.zemanta.com\/zemified_e.png?ssl=1\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image via Wikipedia I haven\u2019t written about the FTC endorsement guidelines in quite a while but some things have crossed the transom over the past month that I wanted to share with you. First, the FTC announced the resolution of its first completed investigation in which the social media aspects of the guidelines applied \u2013 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[5,23,42],"tags":[158,128,130,129],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1536"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1539,"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536\/revisions\/1539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}