.com Disclosures Business Guidance Publication

FTC Staff Invites Comments Regarding .com Disclosures Business Guidance Publication In May 2000, the FTC staff issued a business guidance document, “Dot Com Disclosures: Information about Online Advertising.” Its primary focus was to counsel marketers on how to provide clear and conspicuous disclosures of information that consumers needed in order to make informed decisions about goods and services offered on the internet. In March 2013, FTC staff announced a revised guidance document, “.com Disclosures – How to Make Effective Disclosures in Digital Advertising,” (“.com Disclosures”) that sought to address the dramatic changes that had occurred in the online world, including the ubiquity of smartphones and the use of social media as a marketing tool. Specifically, .com Disclosures advises online advertisers that the same consumer protection laws that apply to commercial activities in other media apply online, and that any disclosures required to prevent an online advertisement from being misleading must be clear and conspicuous. It focuses on how required disclosures may be presented clearly and conspicuously and provides key considerations for evaluating their effectiveness. .com Disclosures discusses, in the context of online advertisements, the traditional factors used to evaluate whether disclosures are likely to be clear and conspicuous, including: the placement of the disclosure and its proximity to the relevant claim; the prominence of the disclosure; whether items in other parts of the advertisement distract from the disclosure; whether the advertisement is so lengthy that the disclosure needs to be repeated; whether disclosures in audio messages are presented in an adequate volume and cadence, and visual disclosures appear for a sufficient duration; and, whether the language of the disclosure is understandable to the intended audience. The document’s appendix contains mock advertisements that illustrate these particular factors.