FTC Updates Disclosure Guidelines for Affiliates and Influencers – Tricia Meyer
By Tricia Meyer
Tricia Meyer | Affiliate Marketing Resources | Affiliate Summit | Affiliate Marketing | Newsletter Signup | Affiliate Marketing Consulting | About | Contact Me
Affiliate Marketer, Blogger, and Consultant
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has finally released updated Endorsement Guides, impacting affiliate marketers, influencers, and more. This long-awaited update includes references to "dog influencers" and clarifies disclosure rules.
Key Takeaways for Affiliate Marketers:
- Clear and Conspicuous Disclosure: Every party involved—bloggers, influencers, affiliates, agencies, advertisers—is liable for ensuring clear and conspicuous disclosures. This means making them unavoidable for the audience.
- "Affiliate Link" is Inadequate: Terms like "affiliate link," "affiliate," "buy now," "commissionable link" are not sufficient. "Paid link" is an acceptable alternative.
- Influencer Liability: Influencers can be held responsible for false representations about their product use.
- Social Media Disclosures: Tags in social media posts with material connections to brands must be disclosed. A simple tag isn’t enough; the disclosure needs to be prominent within the post itself.
- Platform Disclosure Tools: Influencers and endorsers cannot solely rely on built-in platform tools for disclosures. These should be augmented if they don’t meet "unavoidable" and "clear and conspicuous" standards.
- Audience Perspective: The effectiveness of a disclosure is evaluated from the target audience’s perspective, considering factors like age, language, etc.
- Agency Liability: Advertising agencies and similar intermediaries can be held liable for creating or disseminating deceptive endorsements or hiring and directing endorsers who fail to disclose properly. They must have reasonable monitoring programs in place.
- Monitoring Endorsers: The FTC doesn’t specify a standard but suggests considering pre-approval of posts if periodic searches are not feasible.
- Affiliate Review Sites: These sites should avoid accepting payments for rankings, as they can be held accountable for deceptive practices.