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Member Alert: WOMMA Supports Clear Disclosure of Compensation on Blogs
Concerns continue to mount over companies such as PayPerPost, Loud Launch, ReviewMe, and SponsoredReviews.com, which compensate bloggers for product mentions or reviews. In a March 9 article, "Blogging for dollars raises questions of online ethics," Los Angeles Times writer Josh Friedman is the latest to focus on the controversy broiling within the marketing community over such practices.
Focusing on Orlando-based PayPerPost, Friedman notes concerns that such business models blur the ethical line between unbiased opinion and product placement. Jeff Jarvis and Jason McCabe Calacanis, two of the nation's most respected business bloggers, are included amongst the critics.
Jarvis, a journalism professor at City University of New York, gets to the heart of the ethical matter when he says, "The problem is the advertisers are trying to buy a blogger's voice, and once they've bought it they own it."
Calacanis, a well-known entrepreneur and founder of Weblogs Inc., was even more critical. "PayPerPost versus authentic blogging is like comparing prostitution with making love to someone you care for deeply," he said. "No one with any level of ethics would get involved with these clowns."
WOMMA shares these critics' concerns and has previously made its reservations known to PayPerPost, which has publicly claimed to have toughened its disclosure standards following a December 2006 decision by the Federal Trade Commission on a related issue.
To test this claim, WOMMA visited the blog cited in the Times story as being compensated by PayPerPost. Apparently, PayPerPost is publicizing this blogger's relationship with its company, as a separate article in the Orlando Sentinel is prominently displayed and reads, "During the past six months, Colleen Caldwell has blogged herself into a new set of dishes, a weeklong vacation in North Carolina and a good chunk of her family's Christmas presents ..."
The "prominent disclosure" that PayPerPost purports? If you click on the icon in the sidebar it tells you:
This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation. The compensation received may influence the advertising content, topics or posts made in this blog. That content, advertising space or post may not always be identified as paid or sponsored content.
The owner(s) of this blog is compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though the owner(s) of this blog receives compensation for our posts or advertisements, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the bloggers' own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question.
To get your own policy, go to http://www.disclosurepolicy.org.
And who, by the way, created www.disclosurepolicy.org? PayPerPost.
Although PayPerPost claims to have just 15,500 compensated bloggers ("posties") out of more than 60 million blogs in existence, WOMMA remains enormously concerned at the corrosive impact of these practices on consumer trust of consumer-generated media in general, and the blogosphere in particular.
WOMMA will continue to monitor these issues, urging not only clear standards for ethical disclosure within sponsored blogs, but also strict guidelines on the method and mode of disclosure. Current guidelines are too weak and we therefore encourage their revision according to standards already set by the WOMMA Ethics Code.
We advise our members to watch this issue in coming weeks and months, as we expect it to heat up as criticism of sponsored blog content spreads.
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I find it ironic that you criticize the Disclosure Policy movement when you are the one organization that could have influenced it the most. I have tried to reach out to you guys again and again. I think you should tell the whole story:
http://blog.payperpost.com/2007/03/wommas-great-deception.html
Hi,
I'm the blogger referenced in this article, and your use of quotes is a bit skewed in my opinion.
You say that my Orlando Sentinel article and LA Times article are "prominently displayed"
The LA Times article was posted on my site on March 9th, 2007. It has already scrolled off the main page of my site, and is only accessible by viewing the archives.
The Orlando Sentinel article was posted on my site over a month and a half ago, and hasn't been linked on my main page for 6 weeks, and is only available in my archives.
Neither is what I would say to be "prominently displayed".
Your article goes on to point out my disclosure in the sidebar, and I am assuming by your use of quotes you don't feel it is prominent enough.
I'd like to point out it is much more noticeable than either of the articles you feel were "prominently displayed", because the disclosure link remains in my sidebar, at the top of the site, above the fold, and it is linked on every single page of the site.
I personally feel that it is a lot easier for visitors to find that, than either of the articles you pointed out on my blog, so I respectfully disagree with you as to the placement.
Thanks for allowing me to voice my opinion,
Colleen Caldwell
www.simplekindoflife.com
This is Dan Rua. I am a blogger, advertiser and investor in PayPerPost's marketplace. This comment is directed to every WOMMA member.
I have spoken with WOMMA leaders and WOMMA lobbyists about powerful frameworks like Disclosure Policies (similar to Privacy Policies) to maximize social media transparency long-term. Some of your leaders have different agendas than you. Some of them compete directly with PayPerPost. Put simply, there is a war afoot for your marketing mindshare and sponsorship dollars that has nothing to do with transparency or ethics.
I will explain this as clearly as I know how: every WOMMA member can use PayPerPost in accordance with every WOMMA guideline. In fact, PPP provides the only marketplace with a built-in review system to help you track disclosure compliance across tens, hundreds or thousands of blogger relationships. Beyond the great marketing ROI, that disclosure compliance system is a huge reason that fear of PPP is misplaced.
Therefore, research, think and decide for yourself. If you find any industry or corporate disclosure guideline that you cannot implement via PPP's marketplace, I'd like to know. This is a topic I've studied more than most and I'm willing to help anyone with questions. Seriously, email me: dan (at) inflexionvc (dot) com
Thanks for your attention and viva la revolucion! ;-)
I believe all this publicity is wonderful for PPP and their posties, specially Collen!
And, I agree with Dan: "If you find any industry or corporate disclosure guideline that you cannot implement via PPP's marketplace, I'd like to know."
Long life to PPP
Congratulations on your extremely selective biased reporting.
I would suggest you correct you post to show correct attribution, and remove the link to the LA Times before they decide to charge you for it.
I wonder how much they charge for quoting them? I didn't check.
Why don't you do something useful such as give some coverage of solutions to improve disclosure. My own Disclosure Policy Plugin, or Disclosure Feedflare for use with feedburner would be good examples.
I seriously doubt that any of your members who run a blog currently have better disclosure than the average PPP writer.
Interested WOMMA members:
It can all work together and it does. We all want the same thing. Contrast blogging for pay with disclosure and the FLOGs of Edelman or Zipatoni, or the SPLOGs that .info has unleashed on the Internet.
Honesty is not optional and deception is always exposed. Ask Edelman, ask Zipatoni.