Google Strikes $9.4 Million Settlement With FTC For Paying DJs And Influencers To Praise Phones They Never Touched

from the artificial-enthusiasm dept

The FTC and 4 condition lawyers standard this week struck a $9.4 million settlement with Google around allegations that Google covertly compensated celebs money to endorse a mobile phone none of them experienced ever applied.

The FTC’s announcement states that the company had earlier submitted go well with in opposition to Google and iHeartMedia for airing practically 29,000 misleading endorsements by radio personalities and influencers, promoting their use of and encounter with Google’s Pixel 4 phone in 2019 and 2020. The FTC and state AGs stated the DJs and influencers had in no way actually so a lot as touched the telephones, violating truth of the matter in marketing guidelines:

“It is frequent feeling that individuals set far more stock in initially-hand encounters. Consumers hope radio ads to be truthful and transparent about products, not misleading with phony endorsements,” reported Massachusetts Lawyer Basic Maura Healey. “Today’s settlement retains Google and iHeart accountable for this misleading advertisement marketing campaign and ensures compliance with condition and federal law going ahead.”

Of training course, this kind of obscured fiscal relationship is going on regularly, in particular in the influencer room. But like most U.S. regulators, the FTC lacks the workers, finances, or all round sources to law enforcement this stuff with any significant consistency. So rather, they sometimes hearth a warning shot around the bow of the most significant and worst offenders, in the hopes that it scares many others into behaving.

The Pixel 4 is a a few-generation old cell phone, so, as typical, any regulatory action on this sort of things takes place quite late, if it happens at all. It appears like Google would have been high-quality if it experienced just experienced the influencers more normally suggest that they beloved the cellular phone, and it was the phony to start with-man or woman endorsements that bought Google and iHeartMedia in hassle.

Much more commonly, badly or non-disclosed influencer marketing arrangements are everywhere you go, and the FTC’s just much too inundated with other tasks to acquire aim at the issue with any serious regularity. Still, the company issued warnings to 700 organizations in 2021 that it was at least paying notice to the trouble, something that simply cannot be stated of previous incarnations of the company.

Filed Underneath: disclosure, ftc, influencers, internet marketing, phones, regulatory enforcement

Businesses: google