FTC Issues New Rules for Native Advertising on the Internet (blockadblock.com)

popo writes: Native Advertising, or advertorial content that's camouflaged to mimic a site's original content is all the rage among web publishers these days particularly as ad-blocking takes a bigger and bigger bite out of traditional web-advertising revenues. Well the FTC reiterated its position on native ads and may have just slammed the door shut on this "alternative" form of online advertising. The verdict: If it's not clearly marked "advertising", it may be considered misleading. And by misleading, the FTC means illegal. Of course, from an adblocking perspective, once you clearly indicate something is an ad — you make it all the more easy to block. Which defeats one of the primary goals of native ads to begin with.

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Re:You mean I can't pretend my content is real?

[Darinbob]

The web sites serving ads don't even know if the ads are annoying. It's all handled by a third party and he website owner fully intends to sit back passively and wait for the money to roll in. They're too busy writing their useless blog to actually pay attention. No real newspaper or television channel would ever use an advertisement that none of the staff has viewed first, yet that is the standard practice on the internet. The web site owners don't do the necessary work to decide what sorts of ads might be relevant to their viewers, they let Google figure that part out.

It's well past he absurdity stage. Youtube required me to watch part of a movie preview first before it let me see the video I wanted, even though that video was a movie preview (this actually happened). Imagine a classic rock radio station playing ads for country music because some algorithm decided that the listener appears to have an interest in music.

The whole attitude that someone "deserves" to be paid because of minimal effort spent creating the content is absurd. No one ever deserves anything, you have to work for it. If the money doesn't come in then find a new job.

Re:Good - but it was going to happen anyway

[serviscope_minor]

Way go over sell the importance of gamer gate. Undisclosed advertising has been a problem and has attracted regulations for decades. This is just one more in a 60 year old battle between advertisers wanting to trick viewers and the government trying to keep them honest to promote fair trade.

This would have happened with or without gamer gate, and I don't gamer gate had any notable effect.

Well let's see, you've provided a link. I'm sure that you're being ethical and providing a link to a nice, unbiased source, rather than something written by gaters themselves. The latter would be deeply unethical and therefore against everything gaters have ever done (excluding all the stuff they made up and the rape and death threats that is).