In an interesting story from News.com.au Laurence Benhamou reports that advertisers are using pay for blog services to deceive customers.
While I don’t think every company that uses such services is deceptive, I do wonder why companies don’t just start their own blog, be very upfront about it, and use the same methods that anyone else uses to drive traffic to their new site. Seems to be a lot easier and cheaper to me than having to go through all this PR nonsense.
THE curtain has been pulled on a deceptive new advertising tactic in which companies camouflage ads as product praise masquerading as independent blog postings.
Several companies have been exposed for launching fake blogs – known as “flogs” – in a practice that coincides with an increase in the number of real bloggers secretly paid to endorse products.
Online firm Technorati reported it was tracking more than 63 suspicious blogs.
Wily marketers have infiltrated the blogging world, paying for favourable commentary on products.
However posting product commentary without alerting readers that bloggers were compensated for their opinions is unethical and potential illegal, according to US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rules.
Originally posted on December 26, 2006 @ 5:46 am