FTC Puts Onus On Marketers, Not Bloggers

First of all, bloggers, you're safe from the Federal Trade Commission -- at least for now. Marketers -- you may want to be careful, however. That's the upshot of further clarification provided by Mary Engle, associate director of advertising practices for the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, during a call with reporters Wednesday morning regarding the newly released guidelines governing endorsements and testimonials, which go into effect on Dec. 1. The guidelines call for advertisers and bloggers to disclose payment or receipt of goods or services in exchange for promotion. The onus for this disclosure will be on the marketers -- not on individual bloggers, who would be realistically hard to track, Engle said. "We will be focusing our efforts on advertisers, not on individual bloggers," she said. "We know there are hundreds of thousands of blogs, only a fraction of which are involved in marketing anyway. We're not going to be patrolling the blogosphere."