FTC Talks Staying Safe With Social Media Endorsements At Marketing Land’s SocialPro Event

Native advertising. Influencer marketing. Paid endorsements. Nothing’s wrong with these tactics on social media and in other marketing channels, as long as you’re staying within the rules of disclosure. Are you? Or are you unclear on those rules? Good news for the confused and uncertain. The US Federal Trade Commission is speaking at Marketing Land’s SocialPro conference next month to clear things up.

Consider some of our headlines over the past year or so that illustrate confusion marketers have with staying on the right side of the FTC:

1. FTC: Brand-Incentivized Pins On Pinterest Potentially “Deceptive,” Require Disclosure

2. FTC’s First Twitter Disclosure Crackdown Is A Wake-Up Call

3. Did Lord & Taylor’s Instagram Influencer Campaign Cross The Line?

4. FTC Settles With Gaming Network Accused Of Failing To Disclose Paid Endorsements

In the US, the FTC is the agency charged with ensuring that ad and marketing campaigns have required disclosures to consumers, such as where payment might play a role with endorsements. Social media isn’t immune to these rules; saying there’s not enough room in a tweet to disclose isn’t an excuse.

Earlier this year, the FTC released revised and more detailed guidelines about disclosure. Marketing Land’s coverage of the FTC’s disclosure rules was one of the most popular stories we’ve run all year, a sign to us that people are keenly interested in doing the right thing, wanting to avoid trouble and eager for guidance.

That’s why we’re very happy to have Mary Engle, associate director for advertising practices with the FTC, as the opening keynote for our SocialPro event in Las Vegas next month. Engle is instrumental in drafting and interpreting the disclosure rules.

We’ll be talking with Engle about those rules, the right way to stay on the right side of the FTC, and we’ll get to a lot of questions the audience will have. We’ll also have full coverage of the keynote after the event for those who can’t make it live. But we hope many of our readers can make it. In addition to Engle’s talk, we have two full days of great content about how to succeed as a social media marketing professional.

Check out the full SocialPro agenda here, and we hope to see many of you in Las Vegas next November 18 and 19.