Paid Bloggers and Disclosure

Posted on June 29, 2005

The Boston Herald has an interesting article about bloggers who are getting paid to mention a product or store. The article discusses USWeb, an onlie marketing firm, which paid 2,000 bloggers as little as $5 to mention products and web stores.

''No more driving to the corner to buy flowers and hand-deliver them," he wrote on his Web page. ''Nope. Now I go online to places like Dot Flowers.com and 1-800-Flowers. I like Dot a little better just because of the personal touch."
Dot Flowers's ad agency paid Cutler $5 this spring to promote the florist and put a link to its website on his blog, or online journal, short for web log. Cutler, who does not disclose the payment on his blog, is one of more than 2,000 bloggers whom marketer USWeb enlisted to hawk products and services. That helped the nascent florist double its sales in the first three months and shoot up near the top of Google's search list, according to USWeb.

The idea of paying individual bloggers raises questions about how open bloggers should be about gifts or money they are receiving. Ed Schull at USWeb makes a comparison between paying bloggers and Nike sponsoring Tiger Woods. However, people know Nike is a sponsor of Tiger Woods so how far should bloggers and sponsors go to make blog readers aware of their agreements?

While Marqui remains open about paying bloggers, not all companies are so forthcoming. Though laws exist to protect consumers from deceptive practices and false advertising in other media outlets, there is no formal oversight in the blogosphere.
For now, self-regulation rules. ''We try to be as ethical as possible," said Ed Shull, chief executive at USWeb, the ad agency that pays bloggers to post about Dot Flowers and other companies.
''In our opinion, paying bloggers is no different than Tiger Woods getting money to wear the Nike logo."

The Boston Herald article primarily covers situations where bloggers did not disclose that they were being paid to discuss products or stores. There are plenty of examples in blogs today where advertisements are clearly labeled as paid advertisements or sponsor mentions.