Online advertising: stricter controls for Facebook and co?
The British Advertising Association (AA) has approved a plan to introduce stricter control guidelines for digital advertising practices. According to the plan, existing standards for press, TV, billboard and radio advertising will also apply to online platforms such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter in future.
The background to the tightening of the guidelines is the now widespread practice of many advertisers using bloggers and members of community portals to spread their own marketing messages. It is usually not clear to the user that these are paid postings. The intended deception of users in this way is not only a thorn in the side of British consumer advocates. According to the industry service Pressetext, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the regulatory authority responsible in the USA, set stricter advertising guidelines for bloggers as well as Facebook and Twitter users back in October last year.
