Today the US Federal Trade Commission decided that bloggers, celebrities, and other media outlets must disclose any payments in cash or in-kind material compensation that they accept from companies in exchange for product reviews or endorsements; payments in this case are not limited to cash, but anything of value, up to and including the product itself. This is the first time since 1980 that they have updated the document entitled Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

The Icrontic editorial inbox lit up today with concerned readers and friends asking how this affects us. The short answer is–it doesn’t. In the first place, we have never accepted (or actually even been offered) cash to review a product. It is, however, implied that we have received the actual product in order to review it–after all, we can’t exactly review something unless we have it in our hands.

Sometimes companies demand things be sent back to them. This is common with expensive hardware or with certain large game publishers, for example. We get the product, review it, and send it back at their expense. We don’t get to keep the product, but we do get the exposure and traffic from having reviewed it. Sometimes, of course, we do get to keep the items involved. There is, however, only so much you can do with a box of review heatsinks or piles of review cases; most of the time we collect it all up and give them away as door prizes at events such as Expo Icrontic. Occasionally we get use out of review hardware. For example, the HTPC setup at IcronticHQ is made up of hardware given to us by AMD. Our media room and guest areas are full of Sumo bags that we’ve gotten as review samples. In exchange, they get exposure and headlines from the reviews and other content we generate from those goods.

There are sites that sell the hardware they’ve gotten for reviews. We will never engage in that practice. We’ll either keep it and use it, or give it away to our members.

Published July 8, 2008

In the end, we don’t feel that this affects us in any way. We’ve never been shy about disclosing our relationships with review supplies (See our Sumo reviews as an example; we clearly state that we have an affiliate relationship with them), and if a product is worth talking about and recommending, we’ll talk about it. If we believe in a product, and believe that our readers can enjoy or benefit from it, there is nothing unethical or shameful about making that connection.

The FTC has not revealed any specific language that needs to go into product reviews. The actual end result of this decision may be a small sentence or a disclaimer on every product review that says we got to keep the product in question. For now, we’ll continue doing business the way we’ve always done it–with a high regard for the intelligence of our readers, and the assumption that they can see the obvious.