FTC: Disclose online stealth ads

You might call it digital word-of-mouth. Probably since the beginning of blogs, advertisers have been creating ad blogs – blogs that look like any other pundit blog or music-fan blog, but that are really more like banners ads or billboards. Now, in a milestone development for Internet marketing, the Federal Trade Commission is going to require that advertisers disclose their relationships with paid bloggers, the Washington Post reports. "In October 2005, Commercial Alert, an advertising and marketing watchdog group in Portland, Ore., petitioned the FTC to consider taking action against word-of-mouth marketers," according to the Post. Among the practices Commercial Alert has spotlighted since then are Procter & Gamble's use of "a volunteer force of 250,000 teenagers to promote the company's products to friends and relatives." Procter & Gamble says the participants in its "Tremor" marketing division are free to be positive or negative when they talk about products and only receive products to sample, no other compensation. The FTC's action appears to address the online version of existing word-of-mouth regulations.