In the past week, blogs and social networks have been abuzz with the revisions that have been made to its advertising practices rules to include online and blog advertising and product endorsements by celebrities. Basically, this new set of rules applies to everyone and anyone who endorses a product or service in any form or medium.
From 1st December, 2009 onwards, the Federal Trade Commission’s new rules will come into effect and bloggers who have been compensated for a blog post will be fined US$11,000 is there is no disclosure. No, bloggers are not TOLD what or how to write, they are just told to let readers know that they have been paid for the post(s), if that is not obvious enough. Of course, this is what advertisers DO NOT want.
Fair or not is not for me to say but there’s no denying that there’s a lot of gray areas here, just like what happened to some blogger friends who blogged about stuff without compensation but were accused of receiving compensation by PPP and hence received rejections for their posts.
Well, let’s just see how this will be implemented.


