Advertising disclosures

According to the Wall Street Journal, Sunday Nov 1, the Detroit Free Press published a series of stories about the Medicare open enrollment period. The timing is right for such coverage, with health bills being debated in congress.

But it wasn’t national climate that inspired the Free Press to publish this series, the WSJ writes, it was their advertiser, health insurer Humana Inc. As circulation figures drop along with ad revenue, news media and...Go to full story

Last month a Wisconsin ABC affiliate, WKOW, sent letters to local doctors offering an advertising opportunity that seemed to imply that doctors would be featured in news reporting by the station in return for buying advertisements there. Ryan J. Foley writes in an October 2nd Chicago Tribune article that the station:

During this summer's recession, while news outlets were struggling to make ends meet, three TV stations in Las Vegas might have actually sold out. A TV news station, KVBC-TV, NBC Channel 3 News in Las Vegas is accusing three competitors of cashing in on an unethical (and illegal) arrangement. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, KVBC-TV "filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission" against KVVU-TV, FOX 5 News Channel 5; KLAS-TV CBS Eyewitness...Go to full story

We don’t always think about advertising in media as a two way street. But it’s not only the responsibility of media to keep their relationship with advertisers ethical.  Advertisers should also be checking themselves (though it is clear they often do not). In a nice example of taking the high road, advertising student and blogger, Carson Pavkov, published a list of ethical guidelines for product placement on his blog. With the advent of digital recorders like...Go to full story

On September 24th, Socialmediagroup.com--an agency helping businesses navigate the socially engaged Web--hosted a web seminar on the ethics of blog-brand relations. In light of new rules from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the agency selected four bloggers/marketers to discuss and debate whether and how companies should compensate blogs for writing about their brands. With the FTC's new rules requiring bloggers to disclose when they are writing about a...Go to full story

The Federal Trade Commission has published the final version of its guide concerning the use of testimonials and endorsements in advertising.

Last updated in 1980, the guide now includes revisions for advertisers promoting atypical consumer results. As Brian Solis writing for TechCrunch/The Washington Post explains, "advertisers were allowed to get away with promoting unusually positive or outlier experiences in a testimonial as long as they included a...Go to full story

Parisian-based developer David Pascual's iGoogle gadget scheme for pirating mainstream newspapers' Web traffic was more extensive than the few he said "slipped' through his legitimate news aggregation plan.

StinkyJournalism's investigation led to Pascual's take down of iGoogle "Add ons" that tricked unwitting iGoogle users into signing-up for what they thought were news headline gadgets but instead directed them to his roster of websites in order to...Go to full story

The faceless man above has been outed by StinkyJournalism. His name is David Pascual, and he is the person behind a ploy to exploit legitimate news content by tricking unwitting iGoogle members to sign up for news headlines directed to his sites instead of the legitimate news agency.

Pascual is the developer whose gadgets--such as Celeb-O-Matic.com--"borrow" legitimate newspaper and network names in order to misdirect traffic from these media...Go to full story

Some fake ads riddling The New York Times are down, again...thanks to the Times' continuing efforts and ethical response to our complaints.

Stinkyjournalism.org was promised last week by a Times' spokeperson that they would “prevent unacceptable products (like Resveratrol)” from appearing in the Times. Yet after a successful takedown of the bad ads from Google "Sponsored links" and Ad Network sections, we again spotted more flim-flam--in a...Go to full story

New York Daily News editors and management should be screaming at Google: "We've been robbed! "

Unscrupulous companies are using iGoogle Gadgets to steer traffic to their deceptive Web sites. Just yesterday while attempting to add The New York Daily News headlines gadget by clicking the "Add Stuff" link in the upper-right corner of the main iGoogle page it rendered a list of four sites masquerading as the legitimate tabloid. Only one out of the...Go to full story