Hi stackers!
I am wondering what are the criteria of a legal advertorial. I think it would be nice if we can build a list of dos and donts for a legit advertorial!
My questions:
1. Is naming a site as "news report" or "news daily" allowed at the first place?
2. Is fake stories allowed? If not, are those stories of "mom cut 25 years" & "single mom earns $47/hour" that appears on other advertorials real? Or are they simply illegal?
3. Fake testimonials are not allowed obviously. But how about fake comments? I am pretty sure those comments in other advertorials are fake lol
4. So what elements do we have to include to avoid legal problems? I can only think of the label of "advertisement" or "advertorial" on the top and a disclaimer at the bottom atm.
5. Is making up a reporter/writer allowed? Some advertorials include a section that introduces the reporter or the writer.
6. How about "as seen on" + logos of major news sites/ newspaper? Are they allowed?
7. At last, is it only FTC in the USA chasing affiliates? What if we run in other countries?
I am pretty sure I have asked some noobish questions. Hope you guys can help!
From what I know, most countries do not love misleading advertising... given what happened with rebills and how media jumped on fake news sites, that's definitely a point you're leaning more towards illegal than legal...
Read on here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_advertising
Probably the point you ask yourself if it's legal or not, there's a 99% chance it's not a 100% legal...
Lemme tell you from experience that it's not only US, Germany does same. It's easy... as long as it's under the radar nobody cares. Right from the point it's getting lucrative to run / do shady tactics or advertisements with false promises, hundreds if not thousands will jump on it and reach a point where there are too many 'victims' for a government to ignore. 'Download fees' are the perfect example in Germany, everything was stated in the TOC but it was still being rated as fraud to charge your visitors €100 for a download of Mozilla Firefox.
I would stay away from fake news entirely: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2012/01/fakenews.shtm http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2013/02/beony.shtm http://www.ftc.gov/opa/reporter/adve...thclaims.shtml etc... the list goes on and on...
But it does say: "the settlements require the defendants to make it clear when their commercial messages are advertisements rather than objective journalism." So, I suppose you could say: HEY THIS IS AN AD! and might be able to get away with it. But I wouldn't take the risk, the FTC hates news sites.
For other landers, a lot of disclosure depends on what you're selling, but here is a good resource:
http://business.ftc.gov/advertising-...-and-marketing
Most guys just add a generic disclaimer to the bottom of the page, if you use the adult Ad spy above and search some penis enhancement or weight loss/muscle landers, you should be able to find one. If you are making $xx,xxx with something you think is iffy, it might be wise to invest in a lawyer.
Yeah if you want to be safe, get a lawyer. Even though we can all the tell you what we think is and isn't legal we are still making those comments based on assumptions.
I suggest Aaron Kelly if you want someone to vet your landing pages. Testimonials need to be real. Realistically, at the end of the day people are not going to notice you unless you're doing massive volumes anyways (probably not the best legal advice).