As many of us have been reworking our sites now that there has been clarification of existing FTC guidelines (we’re STILL working on this one) I started thinking of the strange history of affiliate marketing and how I was trained in affiliate marketing early on (especially between 1999-2005).

Richard Cleland has finally clarified once and for that affiliate disclosure should be done at the point of the affiliate link, which makes sense when it comes to being clear and conspicuous. I suppose it should have been obvious to me, but when I first started researching the issue nearly two years ago there was a lot of confusion among even the A-List bloggers about what they needed to do.

At WorkAtHomeTruth, we are finishing up moving ALL products (affiliate products and any we create) to a separate store area and within a review by the “WorkAtHomeTruth Staff” the first thing a person will see is “Available at the WorkAtHomeTruth store” so there is no possible confusion that we are selling the product we are reviewing.

But I’ll save information about the new store set up for a later post. I want to talk about the strange case of the strange history of affiliate marketing.

When I first started studying affiliate marketing many years ago almost all of the major courses recommended “hiding” affiliate links – and not just to prevent affiliate theft, but because they said an affiliate link would look strange to a consumer and would potentially make them hesitant to click on the link.

Now, the marketers weren’t necessarily saying to hide the material connection, but on the other hand none of them were saying to make the material connection explicit – and as anyone knows who’s been in affiliate marketing since 1999 as I have – affiliates didn’t even think in terms of disclosing material connections (initially because most affiliates were more concerned with providing tremendous value to their visitors, although obviously that changed over the years).

It’s strange to think about the early years of affiliate marketing now after learning more about how the FTC views “clear and conspicuous disclosure” this year. The first time I read their actual information on clear and conspicuous disclosure over a year ago I was more confused after reading the guidelines than before. So either the new guidelines are clearer or I’m just smarter.

How the FTC viewed the future of interactive marketing in 1996

Since when I first started studying affiliate marketing I wasn’t keyed in at all to the tremendous amount of information the FTC has available, I was curious to see what was potentially available at the time.

I’ll post more, but the first thing that caught my eye were the remarks of Mary L. Azcuenga (FTC Commissioner at the time) PMAA Promotion Law/Marketing Conference on November 20, 1996…specifically this section:

“THE FUTURE

Speaking of the future, let me look forward for a moment to future challenges. It is difficult to overstate the rapid evolution that is occurring in the communications marketplace. These changes, principally the growing ascendency of computers and the Internet, can provide enormous benefits to consumers in terms of choice, convenience and the ability to obtain information about products or services. They also present some significant challenges for law enforcement.

Interactive marketing on the Internet will rely heavily on attracting consumers to particular websites. This can be accomplished in many ways, including contests, games and sweepstakes. One company even announced last week a proposal to begin paying consumers to watch advertising. Other Internet advertisers may seek new audiences by trying to enhance the content on their websites. One of the potential challenges of Internet marketing that may loom ahead and is reason for some concern is the very real possibility of a further blurring of the lines between editorial content and advertising.

This blurring already has occurred in traditional media. Newsweek referred to the problem as the “New Hucksterism.” The Commission has just announced final issuance of a consent order in a case that presented a novel form of marketing(8). The company sent mailings to several million consumers across the country. Inside the envelope was what appeared to be an article torn from a magazine, printed on glossy, magazine stock and complete with a ragged margin, a byline, and a page number and month and year at the bottom of the page. The article, entitled “Applause, Applause,” appeared to be a favorable review of a $300 book on how to be a successful speaker. To complete the picture, a self-adhesive, yellow note was attached to the article with the following handwritten notation directed to the name of the individual recipient: “Try this. It works! J.”

In fact, the Commission alleged, this mailing was a promotion designed to sell the book. The supposed book review was written by the marketer and never had appeared in a magazine. The attached note was not from a friend or acquaintance, the mysterious “J,” but again, was part of the promotion. In short, the entire solicitation was designed to fool consumers into believing that it was not just another promotion, but rather an independent review of the book mailed to the consumers by some acquaintance vouching for its quality.

This case is a good illustration of an important principle of law. It is deceptive for an advertiser to disguise a promotion as an independent review, editorial content, or something other than an advertisement. We have applied this principle in several contexts in recent years, including our guides for the use of endorsements and testimonials, “infomercials,” those feature-length advertisements appearing in news report format that imply an independent review of the virtues of a product, and, more recently, the “advertorial,” the term often used to describe an advertisement made up to look like an editorial. Consumers should be able to tell when a message comes to them as a paid advertisement. Only then can they evaluate the message critically.”

Click here for the entire text of the remarks.

Clearly the FTC already had in its mind that it would have a hard time keeping up with technology. But what’s amazing to me – considering that it was never addressed in my early affiliate marketing training is that the FTC predicts with dead-on accuracy:

“One of the potential challenges of Internet marketing that may loom ahead and is reason for some concern is the very real possibility of a further blurring of the lines between editorial content and advertising”.

I think that the fact that most of us as affiliates didn’t think about this issue much early on really reflects something Steven Wagenheim stated over at the Warrior Forum:

“Know what the problem is?

Too many of you folks have been marketers for too long and have
forgotten how to just be regular folk.”