The Federal Trade Commission will host a day-long public workshop to consider the need for new guidance for online advertisers about making disclosures required under FTC law. The guidance will address technological advancements and marketing developments that have emerged since the FTC first issued its online advertising disclosure guidelines known as “Dot Com Disclosures” 12 years ago. … Read more
The FTC has basically destroyed Jesse Willms, the famous Canadian Acai peddler. In a settlement order, that is part of the FTC’s campaign on affiliate and online marketing scams, basically bans Willms from ever operating in a similar manner in the US. His offer, including a penny auction scam, ran on dozens of affiliate CPA … Read more
You think the FTC is bad? Well, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), a UK based regulation division that determines whether advertising is legal, decent, and non-deceptive has decided to take on God. According to a ruling by the ASA, a Christian prayer organization that was handing out advertisement for their prayer group website, was making … Read more
Tanner is one of those guys who was severely spanked by the FTC recently and had to return all his profits to the FTC. If you read his settlement, he’s pretty much broke and had to work out a payment arrangement with them. This is a guy who had flogging down pat and was making … Read more
According to ComScore, Pinterest, the photo social networking site has already hit over 10M unique visitors per month, which puts it as the fastest growing site every to hit this milestone. Another interesting number is that Pinterest has become extremely addictive with the average user spending 98 minutes per month on the site. This means … Read more
It has been approximately two years since the Federal Trade Commission published its “Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials – Changes Affecting Testimonial Advertisements, Bloggers, and Celebrity Endorsements.” As set forth in my recent article entitled “The One FTC Article You Must Read,” the Federal Trade Commission considers everyone in the advertising stream, including non-sellers, liable … Read more
If you are an affiliate or marketer, this is the one FTC article you must read on how FTC Rules are Affecting the Industry. Excerpt: The FTC clearly considers everyone in the stream liable for claims that they knew or should have known to be false and unsubstantiated. This includes networks. The lack of any … Read more
At the request of the Federal Trade Commission, a federal court has halted an online operation that allegedly debited consumers’ bank accounts without their consent when consumers visited the defendants’ websites seeking payday loans. The court also froze the defendants’ assets, pending further court proceedings. According to the Commission’s complaint, the defendants’ websites, such as … Read more
This week ClickBank announced new guidelines that would significantly change the way that many affiliate marketers and “JV Partner” programs would be allowed to be promoted. While the new guidelines did not specifically address JV Programs that targeted affiliates, it had been known that there was a growing amount of consumer complaints and charge backs … Read more
At the request of the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has ordered Swish Marketing, Inc. to pay more than $4.8 million for misleading hundreds of thousands of payday loan applicants into paying for an unrelated debit card. For some time, the Commission has been closely monitoring payday … Read more
Technorati – The Federal Trade Commission has gone to war against all the fake news sites. If you’ve visited almost any real news site recently, you’ve most likely seen these advertisements that advertise a “special report” from some news station you never heard of, has discovered the cure to belly fat or a special new … Read more
On July 7, 2011, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) announced an updated regulatory review schedule of numerous rules and guides in order to keep pace with the current technological landscape and rapidly evolving marketplace, while at the same time promoting greater efficiency and transparency. For the first time, the FTC is seeking public comments on … Read more
Recently PeerFly was awarded the #2 Network in our Annual Survey of Networks. Their CEO Chad French was pretty damn happy about that, considering he only opened the doors in 2008. We decided that it was about time we sat down with him again and see what he is doing with himself, and what we … Read more