Magpie and the new FTC Endorsement Guidelines

Posted by Jan on October 22, 2009

You have probably heard about the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) recent release of new guidelines for disclosure of endorsements. In fact, a lot of twitterers and advertisers have approached us asking whether and how this affects their use of Magpie. In this post, I would like to shed some light on what the new guides mean for us.

The good news – for some time Magpie has been working in a manner that encompass these new FTC guidelines. So as a Magpie advertiser or twitterer, you can feel assured that the compulsory measures are already automatically in place.

The requirements

The FTC requires disclosure about “material connections” between endorsed and endorsing parties. What does this mean? If for instance, you have received a free copy of a new book that has recently been published and you write a favorable review on your blog, you need to disclose to your readers that the book has been provided free of charge. The disclosing statement can simply be: “Publishing house XYZ has sent me a free copy of the book so I can write about it.” or “I take part in an advertising program where I am paid $5 for every product review I write.”

Since 1980 this requirement has been in place for traditional media. The guidelines have now been amended to include bloggers and users of social media specifically. Mary Engle, Associate Director from the Bureau of Consumer Protection, explains in this video what’s new about the Endorsement Guides.

How does Magpie’s disclosure work?

Disclosing the material connection in a tweet is a little bit challenging given the fact that we only have 140 characters in each tweet. We’ve come up with a two-fold solution that is reasonable, transparent and fully compliant with the FTC’s guidelines. These solutions are implemented on all Magpie accounts and campaigns without exception.

• Each of our Magpie advertising tweets carries a disclosure. With every advertisement, we reserve 10 out of 140 characters within the tweet for this purpose. Twitterers can choose which form of disclosure they feel most comfortable with, some of the options available to them are “#spon”, “ad:”, and “sponsor:”. Twitterers can also elect whether this disclosure is placed in front or after the advertisement copy.

• Whenever a twitterer reaches their cash out limit, the payment is issued and a single tweet is posted in the timeline of that twitterer. This tweet is designed to disclose participation in the Magpie advertising network. The tweet informs followers that this twitterer has just received payment for tweeting ads through Magpie and that their ads can be distinguished by the above-mentioned disclosing statement.

We believe that these measures assist in providing an ethical and socially respected form of in-stream advertising. At Magpie, we foster responsible tweeting and we regularly revise and adapt our system to provide a safe and reputable service to all parties involved.

If you have questions regarding disclosure or related topics, please don’t hesitate to ask in the comments or contact us directly if you would like to discuss things one on one.

Comments

Tim Mayer said on Friday, October 23, 2009:

I really appreciate you guys heading for the honest way! For me as tweep this gives me a better feeling towards my followers when running ads with you ...

Toby said on Friday, October 23, 2009:

such a transparent concept for word of mouth advertisement could really work on twitter. without disclaimer it's deceiving followers ... good luck!

Lauren E Monsey Nagel said on Friday, October 23, 2009:

I feel as if you guys are very interested in our best interests as a whole and not just about today. That makes so much sense and will make more cents for us too. Thank you!

Lilly said on Saturday, October 24, 2009:

I am very happy to see that magpie sticks to the FTC guidelines. since it is time to finally establish common rules for word of mouth marketing, your advance and your strong market position will be very helpful here. Let's hope that others will follow ...

Weblog Popular 1Malaysia said on Monday, October 26, 2009:

yeah.. I already get the second payment with magpie , really glad that magpie automatically sent the disclosure tweet.

Mr Ong said on Sunday, November 01, 2009:

I am glad to hear it, before I was still unsure of this Magpie. I am increasingly convinced that the more developed Magpie future. Frankly I'm still new here, and I just join a partner Magpie. may become partners of mutual benefit ?

S T said on Tuesday, November 17, 2009:

I'm totally confused. Every time I click on "submit" within Magpie, I end where I started. Don't kid me the keyword I chose has no searchers! Last time I looked on Google there were multiple millions.

Jan Schulz-Hofen said on Wednesday, November 25, 2009:

S T, please contact us by submitting a support ticket here:

http://support.be-a-magpie.com/support/tickets/new

and we'll walk you through the process.

bespoke software said on Monday, January 04, 2010:

Interesting,

Nice vid...

Thanks for bringing this up

Canvas Prints said on Monday, March 01, 2010:

Thanks, this has made me think, good video