Disclosure on blogs is one hot topic at the moment. The FTC is already looking at regulating blogs and this week the National Advertising Review Council (NARC) has called out two companies for unethical practises.
The group found that Herbal Groups, Inc. and Urban Nutrition had posted reviews for products they owned, yet failed to disclose that fact.
Urban Nutrition has since added disclosure to its web site, stating “Urban Nutrition sponsors this Web site and distributes Miracle Burn, Miracle Burn Cream, and Arctic Essentials. Reviewers compensated by Urban Nutrition.”
Herbal Groups, Inc was found to be pushing one of its products via a free blog, including making unsubstantiated claims about a product’s benefits. It subsequently took down the blog.
An interesting couple of cases, though surely just the tip of the iceberg. I’m all for disclosure, am not against compensation per se, but blogging needs to be as transparent as possible.
What do you think?
Author: Andy Merrett
Andy Merrett is a London-based full-time blogger writing for several Shiny Media technology blogs and various other projects. Find him on Facebook and Twitter.
Hi.
I’m running a couple of blog sites myself. Haven’t spent a lot of time to think about Disclosure agreements. But I use some of the privacy stuff on my page already.
Would be great to know if there is a generic disclosure we could use, or is that something which has to be adjusted for every blog?
Cheers
Dan
I never heard of a blog requiring a disclosure page or post but I was signing up for a ad site to generate income for my blog and in order to put the ads in my sidebar I have to put a link for my disclosure page or post. I could just have the ad in a particular post with no disclosure but that would mean that particular ad would only be seen whenever someone looked at that one particular post. I’d rather the ads on my blog get seen by everyone every day in the sidebar. UGH now I gotta write a disclosure agreement lol.