“What about when you watch a movie and the dorky kid drinks a bottle of Gatorade and suddenly has Michael Jordan-esque basketball skills? Does the average person know that’s an advertisement?”

The important parallel to draw is that of the age old celebrity endorsement. A public figure becomes a spokesperson because he/she resonates with a target audience. These are people… you know; that eat, live, breath, and hopefully wash themselves everyday like the rest of us. There is no difference between paying Michael Jordan to be the face of Nike, Gatorade, Hanes, etc. or paying Shoemoney to wear your funny t-shirt. Audience targeting is the simple name of the game. Sponsored blogging and tweeting are predecessors of this ‘oldest trick
in the marketing book’. If sponsored content is scrutinized then this slope becomes a very slippery one. (the collective) We marketers can avoid this entirely if we get out of this crazy Internet-snobbery that we are currently experiencing. Marketing is marketing, friends, join the ranks of the masses and I assure you there will be a greater good. If you attack sponsored content than you are denouncing celebrity endorsement via all mediums. In addition, it’s been long realized that on the net if you provide some sort of value, people (outside of those jerks that use ad-blockers) aren’t too adverse to receiving blatant advertising. If you are consistently offering value to your readership, you have earned the right to advertise to them. Nothing in life is free.

I’m really curious to see how the FTC and SEC are going to try to define what is and what is not paid, mostly because the bloggers and companies involved have a hard enough time figuring that out themselves. These groups can try and create rules regarding disclosure, but unless they can figure out what is, is not, and what is only “kind of” paid for, they’re going to run into the same issues Google has.

And I agree with you that integrity is a precious and rare commodity. That’s why in order for these conversations to ever be successful, brands and bloggers need to be true to their audience. Regardless of any disclosure laws that are created.

I did read the longer post on your own site. I think you created a great discussion for everyone.

Daniel: I see your point. To this:

If your tweet about something because you were paid to do so and you fail to disclose that payment, you instantly forfeit any trust you think you may have earned for all your unpaid tweets.

I guess I just don’t see that as dishonest. If it’s an honest recommendation, it’s an honest recommendation. I understand your argument, though. I just don’t agree with it. :)

I do like some advertisements. I will never tire of Billy May’s infomercials. My son used to set up late at night and watch them. On TV is is accepted that paid advertisements support the media. Only on the blogosphere and Twitland do we suddenly lose our minds and think that Information is free.

Yes some organizations will focus only on the dollars that those campaigns will bring in. Let the Buyer beware has been a common phrase for a long time.. for one very simple reason. There will always be conmen and crooks.

Amway makes great products but once your friend joins you go from being a friend to being a prospect. We are in a dynamic situation with the web and how people perceive it. It is changing as we speak. More government regulation is not the answer but people’s education that not everything you read is sincere, real, done for charitable reasons, etc. People are people online and off.

The practice of common sense solves the great majority of these problems.

And Matt- Thanx for the compliment on my name though I didn’t really have much choice in it. :)

Please note that I said “moral” obligation as I don’t believe that legislation by the FTC or anyone else is practical or even desirable.

If your tweet about something because you were paid to do so and you fail to disclose that payment, you instantly forfeit any trust you think you may have earned for all your unpaid tweets. It’s not enough to say “I liked the product so much, I would have tweeted about it anyway.” It’s simply dishonest.

I have no problem with sponsored tweets or blogs. Sponsorship has long been a important source of income for writers. But, if your reputation is important to your business, you had better let your readers know which posts are sponsored and which are not.

Earning trust is not like bank savings. You can’t build up a stack and then smudge the lines a little. If you break the trust, you can go from super-wealthy to morally bankrupt faster than you’d imagine.

Lisa, it’s not the you and me I worry about – and I’m surprised that you wouldn’t think I’d follow you, you’re muddling the points I make with my actual personality! – We appreciate the value of targeted advertising and the net effects of being spammy, so it’s pretty pointless to start with us as an example, as we’re not the problem.

I am thinking more in terms of big celebrities or other big networks of people where the decision to include the product is less about linkedness with the wants of the group, and more with the potential earnings from a conversion. Or where accounts are not managed by people but by agencies looking just to increase revenue. Call it the “untargetted supertwitterers”.

Yes, it’s a very grey area but I do find the statement that “Government will always have problems keeping up with technology until they regulate it to the point that nothing can be advanced.” a good indication of how far we need to go to bring the relevant bodies up to speed on things. I think you do touch on something that we as a group need to get our head around more clearly and that would be an online ethics policy. Can we create one please?

If you get ripped off online, it’s the law that protects you, so you’ll be thankful.

Yawn:

We’re taking Twitterers that have a “trusted” group of friends that perhaps followed them for non commercial purposes and that will now be recipients of commercial messages [which are distinct from the previous tweets], without any degree of disclosure.

Let’s not talk about vague “Twitterers”. Let’s talk about you and me. Let’s say you follow me on Twitter (my guess is that you don’t, but go with it :) ), You follow me because you trust me. If I drop something commercial into my Twitter stream, it’s there because I liked it and I wanted to share it with people who follow me and who may think “like me”. It’s the virtual equivalent of your friend going off about the digital camera she just bought even though you never asked about it. Maybe I’m getting some cash back on that rec and maybe I’m not, but my recommendation (at least those I make perosnally) are genuine. And if I’m NOT someone who makes genuine recommendations and am just trying to make a buck, well then people are going to catch on to that pretty quickly. And they’re going to leave. Along with my credibility.

When you switch on the TV you know when it’s Advertisement time, and equally you know with the sponsorship, but that sponsorship is quite clearly made during airtime.

What about when you watch a movie and the dorky kid drinks a bottle of Gatorade and suddenly has Michael Jordan-esque basketball skills? Does the average person know that’s an advertisement? There’s no mention of it being an ad before or after the movie. No one has to paint a big red bow around it.

I think where online ads via Twitter streams differ from TV or print ads is that they’re so much based on trust, that brands and those who promote them really have to be acting ethically. It’s in my best interest to only tweet or blog about products that I really do like and endorse. Otherwise, I lose any perceived value I had. It’s not about pulling the wool over anyone’s eyes. I’d never advocate consumer deception. I don’t think that’s what this is. And I don’t think any regulations set out by the FTC are going to prevent shady online marketers from being shady.

1) People like ads? Really? Then they the popularity of Tivo and DVRs? People accept ads as a part of life because that is what they have known.

2) Sponsorship is easy to spot because they mention its an ad? Really? In the shows and movies I watch, I have no idea if the Coke can is a sponsorship or the director just really likes it. Sure the spots in between are known to be ads but they don’t start out with “Warning – Ad ahead”.

3) If I start tweeting, linking or sending updates that have nothing to do with the reason they started following me, I lose people. I lose their trust and I lose any chance to influence them again.

4) The people that trust me ask if I have an affiliate link to services they know I use. The cost to them is the same and they know I won’t send them to something that I don’t personally use.

5) If you don’t trust a person enough to not be concerned about a link being a paid link.. don’t take any of their advice.

6) Is it a perfect system? no. Nothing like that exists. But getting more government involved won’t solve anything and will make things much worse.

Build trust, build a relationship, be honest, be reliable and have integrity. Common sense solves a lot of these issues.

We’re taking Twitterers that have a “trusted” group of friends that perhaps followed them for non commercial purposes and that will now be recipients of commercial messages [which are distinct from the previous tweets], without any degree of disclosure. In fact, that’s precisely the thing that is getting people like the FTC and other agencies with a consumer focus quite upset.

When you switch on the TV you know when it’s Advertisement time, and equally you know with the sponsorship, but that sponsorship is quite clearly made during airtime. On the web you have all this grey area which for years has been plundered at the cost of consumer confidence (see where concerns about being ripped off on any recent report on privacy and information disclosure, and you’ll see this as one of the major points of concern).

The thing is that the lack of concern by business, or in this case, the focus of agencies on exploiting this grey area rather than try and find a solution that satisfies everyone, is pretty abysmal. The best bit is everyone knows it’s dodgy but is quite happy to big it up.

Guess what…..People like ads, they see it as entertainment, so it should be possible to make them clickable, it’s just we’ve gone a bit sterile with an overload of software functionality and not the space to think about how to use it.

Can we stop trying to pull the wool over the consumers eyes.

An effective strategy WILL NOT have this as a component, as I’ve already commented on my blog. We need to help correct things.