ESPN Employees Keep Failing To Disclose Their Advertising Tweets As Advertising

from the paging-the-ftc dept

Several weeks back, the FTC posted some guidelines on how it expects disclosures to be used in native advertising campaigns. The short of it is that advertising campaigns should come with some kind of prominent disclosure, one easily read and understood by the public. Specifically regarding online content, the FTC guide states:

The Federal Trade Commission Act prohibits deceptive or unfair practices. It’s the FTC’s job to ensure that long-standing consumer protection principles apply in the digital marketplace, including to native advertising. The FTC has issued an Enforcement Policy Statement on Deceptively Formatted Advertisements that explains how the agency applies established truth-in-advertising standards in this context. This Guide for Businesses supplements the Enforcement Policy Statement by offering informal guidance from FTC staff to help companies apply the Policy Statement in day-to-day contexts in digital media.

Disclosures that are necessary to avoid misleading consumers must be presented clearly and prominently. Whether a disclosure of a native ad’s commercial nature meets this standard will be measured by its performance – that is, do consumers recognize the native ad as an ad? Only disclosures that consumers notice, process, and understand can be effective. Inadequate disclosures can’t change the net impression created and won’t stop consumers from being deceived that advertising or promotional messages are something other than ads.

As of this writing, those two tweets remain in their original form, but in case they disappear, here are some screenshots:

ESPN says this is all a mistake and that future tweets associated with Domino’s ad buy with the network will be compliant with federal law. Which is fine, though we’re still skeptical that New Year’s Eve means either college football or pizza—and so were the millions of fans who didn’t tune in for this year’s college football playoff games.

ESPN told us yesterday that tweets from NFL reporters Adam Schefter and Chris Mortensen in which they implausibly expressed strong desires to spend New Year’s Eve eating Domino’s pizza were improperly not labeled as ads, and that in the future all promotional tweets from ESPNers would be properly labeled. Today, an ESPN reporter did it again. This afternoon, college football reporter Kaylee Hartun tweeted some junk about Buick:

"If you’re in Phoenix for #CFBPlayoff, look for me at the @Buick tent. #ThatsABuick"

This isn’t just some hoary ethics sermon. Three years ago the Federal Trade Commission released its .com Disclosures to offer guidance for how ads online should be labeled to avoid running afoul of the law. And as they note, the FTC Act’s prohibition of “unfair or deceptive acts or practices” doesn’t make an exception for the internet. The FTC has popped Deutsch LA and Kim Kardashian, among others, for deceptive tweets.

Filed Under: ads, advertising, disclosure, espn, ftc
Companies: espn

Advertising Is Content: The Threat To Streaming Sports Posed By A Tiny Advertisement Inventory

from the jingle-this dept

I've talked about the coming and evolving world of wider streaming in professional and major college sports for quite a while now. Even measuring only the past few years, streaming of sporting events has seen immense progress, from the leagues themselves getting on board and expanding options, to broadcast partners opening up their product online, to forward-looking team owners recognizing that the future is in streaming. Wide-spread streaming sports is going to happen, due to all of the above and the fact that cord-cutting is simply not going to go away.

Which isn't to say there aren't barriers to hurdle as progress is made. Today, I want to talk about one of them: the horrifically small advertising inventory too many sports streams have. Ads that become annoying due to repetition isn't a new concept. There is even a TV Tropes page for it. But what for television is repeated ads as a mild annoyance due to poor scheduling or the notion that repetition makes ads more effective is something entirely different for the current crop of online stream ads. What we're dealing with today is repetition of the same ads or ads for the same products/services over and over and over again, in break after break, often times repeated within breaks, all because the inventory is too low.

Contrary to what you might think, this isn't a small problem. Not every person needs to use the bathroom at every commercial break. For sporting events in particular, this becomes a greater issue because the natural breaks in game action often times mean that commercial breaks will occasionally occur in near proximity to one another. Repeated ads in this case over the course of an entire event aren't just annoying, they're absolutely jarring to the viewer.

An anecdote: most of my NFL viewing occurs in my kitchen, typically using one of the streaming services, while I cook my family's Sunday dinner. It's a tradition in my house that I do dinners on Sunday. Having the NFL Foxsports.com stream on my tablet in the kitchen made my wife angrily leave the room entirely and refuse to come back. I'm not exaggerating. There was a particular commercial featuring a certain quarterback saying random things in the sing-song of a particular company's jingle that, over the course of roughly fifteen minutes, was played no less than ten times. It made her hate the stream, the advertiser, and probably me for having it on in the first place. Whatever advertising is hoping to achieve, the broadcaster cannot accept it causing viewers to literally leave the room in annoyance.

Television doesn't have this problem currently, because the ad inventory is much higher. If you see an ad repeated two or three times during a single game, it's no big deal. I'd guess that I saw three or four total ads on Fox's stream something like thirty times each during the course of one game. That can't go on. It makes the streaming product less valuable and less desirable. If advertising is content, and it is, then that content must never cause us to turn away and hide from it.

Filed Under: ads, advertising, content, oversaturation, repeats, sports, streaming

AOL CEO Promises 'The Market' Will Keep Verizon, AOL Honest About Sleazy New Stealth Cookies

from the trust-us,-we're-the-phone-company dept

"He said the market would prevent companies from abusing the swaths of data they collected. "If consumers don’t trust you it’s not worth whatever you’re going to do with the data,” Armstrong said. “Verizon is probably more sensitive to data than most Internet companies.” Armstrong said he would not want to be at a company in the future that had the opportunity to gather and optimize data and didn’t use it. “Data is oil for this economy,” Armstrong said. “Oil can be used really well, and oil can be used really poorly."

"A couple of years back during the debate on net neutrality, I made the argument that industry leadership through some form of oversight/self-regulatory model, coupled with competition and the extensive oversight provided by literally hundreds of thousands of sophisticated online users would help ensure effective enforcement of good practices and protect consumers."

Filed Under: advertising, stealth cookies, tim armstrong, tracking
Companies: aol, techcrunch, verizon

Verizon's Sneaky Zombie Cookies Now Being Used Across The Entire AOL Ad Empire

from the snoopvertising dept

"Verizon said in a little-noticed announcement that it will soon begin sharing the profiles with AOL’s ad network, which in turn monitors users across a large swath of the Internet. That means AOL’s ad network will be able to match millions of Internet users to their real-world details gathered by Verizon, including — “your gender, age range and interests."...AOL will also be able to use data from Verizon’s identifier to track the apps that mobile users open, what sites they visit, and for how long."

"I think in some ways it’s more privacy protective because it’s all within one company,” said Verizon’s Zacharia. “We are going to be sharing segment information with AOL so that customers can receive more personalized advertising."

Filed Under: advertising, media, privacy, zombie cookie
Companies: aol, verizon

Reddit's New 'Upvoted' Clickbait Website Will Ignore Everything That's Great About Reddit

from the the-future-of-democracy-is-solitary-confinement dept

"Upvoted is a way for Reddit to recapture some of the attention (and, ahem, traffic) that the site loses when other news organizations take stories from the site; it serves as a kind of introduction to the world of Reddit for non-users; and it acts as a testing ground for advertisers who may be hesitant to dive straight into advertising in a world moderated by unaffiliated, unpaid volunteers. Upvoted may be our first look at what the future of Reddit might hold."

"The stuff our community creates on a daily basis blows our mind. Unfortunately, rather than telling that story, some news outlets take our users’ content and repackage it as their own. They don’t tell the backstory of our communities. We think our users’ stories need to be told, but with them at the center of it."

"Rather it will post sponsored content paid for and approved by advertising partners—and written by the same editorial team that writes editorial posts. “They’re going to be just as interesting as actual content,” Chang says. “It could be a piece on Tesla, a piece on how WiFi works, no matter what it’ll be good content—and it’ll just happened to be sponsored."

Filed Under: advertising, clickbait, community, journalism, upvoted
Companies: reddit

Gosling's Rum Forgoes Free Promotion Of Famous Cocktail In Favor Of Trademark

from the rummy dept

It's a common refrain whenever we discuss trademark disputes that appear to be barely-necessary, if necessary at all: companies must protect their trademarks. That's not actually true, of course. What a company must do, actually, assuming it wants to be good at company-ing, is it must maximize its revenue, profits, and exposure and be as successful as it can be. If that means protecting its trademark interests in a valid way, so be it. But that isn't always necessarily the case.

Take the recent news about Gosling's Rum and its apparent attempt to enforce its questionable trademark over the drink-name "Dark n' Stormy." Now, I've known about dark and stormies for quite some time, having honeymooned in the Caribbean and having some close friends that are Cuban. Based on my prior knowledge, a dark and stormy is a cocktail of ginger beer mixed with black rum. It's absolutely delicious, by the way. Turns out, a true dark and stormy is made with Gosling rum, as the originator of the term were Royal Naval officers in Bermuda experimenting with Gosling Black Rum in the mid-1800s.

By 1850 Gosling’s Black Seal was a hot commodity. The liquor piqued the interest of nearby Royal Naval Officers, who tried putting it in the ginger beer they’d been brewing, to help with seasickness. The combination was delicious. The dark coloring, not quite as appealing, lead a sailor to famously remark that it was: “the color of a cloud only a fool or a dead man would sail under.” The Dark n’ Stormy was born.

In an 18-page complaint filed to federal court, E. Malcolm Gosling Jr. and his brother allege that the liquor conglomerate Pernod Ricard has committed federal trademark infringement. Their case stems from a recipe Pernod Ricard posted for a Dark n’ Stormy in 2014 on its website. The drink calls for ginger beer, just like Gosling’s original, but suggests a different main ingredient: Malibu Island Spiced Rum.

The lawsuit claims that Gosling not only invented the cocktail, but is the driving force behind its popularity today. The company owns not one trademark on the name, but five, extending to clothing, kits containing rum and ginger beer, “bar services,” and the premixed version of the drink.

Filed Under: advertising, cocktails, dark n' stormy, drinks, marketing, rum, trademark
Companies: gosling, pernod ricard

DailyDirt: Beverage Marketing At Its Highest... Altitudes?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

• Ardbeg Scottish whisky aged in space for 3 years has been tasted (finally!) by human beings, and it looks like space-aged whisky is somewhat nasty. Lots of fancy adjectives were used to qualitatively describe this whisky that we mentioned 3 years ago, but the aftertaste was "intense and long, with hints of wood, antiseptic lozenges and rubbery smoke" -- and "rubbery smoke" doesn't sound too appealing. [url]
• American whiskeys and bourbons have a history of tricky marketing tactics. Aging these alcoholic beverages or producing them in smaller quantities doesn't necessarily make them any better, and the name on the labels might not actually mean much beyond a "doing business as" moniker. [url]
• The Japanese distillery Suntory will be sending its own whisky to the International Space Station to "observe" the effects of aging its product in space. This probably isn't about the scientific exploration of whisky chemistry as much as it is marketing, but maybe someday, we'll see more ads with Bill Murray shot in space with more intensity. [url]

Filed Under: advertising, bill murray, bourbon, international space station, iss, marketing, microgravity, space, taste, whiskey, whisky
Companies: ardbeg, suntory