The Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday it has sent letters to 60 companies, including 20 of the 100 largest advertisers in the country, stating they have failed to make adequate disclosures in their television and print ads.
The agency said response to the staff letters, sent as part of its “Operation Full Disclosure“ program, has been “'extremely positive.”
The FTC said the program has focused on disclosures that were in fine print, or otherwise easy to miss and hard to read, yet contained important information needed to avoid misleading consumers.
In the letters, staff identified problematic ads, recommended that advertisers review all of their advertising to ensure any necessary disclosures are truly “clear and conspicuous” and asked them to report on the action it intended to take with respect to their advertising.
FTC guidance calls for print disclosures to appear in a font that is easy to read and in a shade that stands out against the background, while those in television ads should be on the screen long enough to be noticed, read and understood, with no elements that distract from them, the agency said.
The FTC said the ads it complained about fell into many different categories, including that they quoted the price of product or service, but did not adequately disclose the conditions for obtaining that price; did not adequately disclose an automatic billing feature; and did not reveal that consumers would have to pay shipping on items sent for trial periods.
Clothing manufacturer American Apparel Inc. has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it falsely claimed it was abiding by a privacy framework that enables U.S. companies to transfer consumer data from the European Union to the United States in compliance with E.U. law, the agency said.