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Last month the FTC issued warnings to celebrities who plugged products on their Instagram accounts without clearly identifying their relationships with brands. The letters were meant to “educate” the celebrities on how to post without violating the organization’s disclosure guidelines.

The FTC said it sent out similar letters to each influencer to “call attention” to the post in question. Each letter reads: “The FTC’s Endorsement Guides state that if there is a ‘material connection’ between the endorser and the marketer of a product — in other words, a connection that might affect the weight or credibility that consumers give the endorsement — that connection should be clearly and conspicuously disclosed, unless the connection is already clear from the context of the communication containing the endorsement. Material connections could consist of a business or family relationship, monetary payment, or the provision of free products to the endorser.”

The FTC cited cases in which disclosures appeared in captions at the bottom of a post, and were only found if consumers clicked on the “more” button to reveal the full text. Multiple hashtags, tags and links also were frowned upon, as they obscure the disclosure.

U.S. truth-in-advertising enforcers have sent letters to supermodel Naomi Campbell, actresses Lindsay Lohan and Vanessa Hudgens and other celebrities asking whether they have paid deals to endorse products on the photo-sharing app Instagram.

Instagram, which is owned by Facebook Inc, has seen a sharp increase in recent years in promotions of products and services by famous people, often without disclosures of whether there was an endorsement deal. Celebrities have talked up clothing brands, food, alcohol, spa treatments and a wide array of other items.

In May, the agency released dozens of letters it had sent to companies and stars giving them notice that they must tell fans about compensation for promotions on social media.

no putting your sponsor message below the “more” button, where no one will see it. And no disguising it ambiguously as “thanks Nike,” as if Nike was just cool enough to let you use their corporate getaway beach house because you asked nicely. And! No burying the disclosure in obscure terminology, like #sp or #partner, deep in the sea of hashtags.

Brands may not adopt Facebook's new ad media in large numbers: It seems unlikely, but it is possible that marketers are just not prepared for the dynamic new ad model Facebook has unveiled.

FTC pushes for much more obvious disclosure of sponsored ads in users' newsfeeds: Allowing marketers to turn their posts into ads within the newsfeed is not new--Twitter is already doing the same thing with Promoted Tweets--but is the fact these are paid ads obvious enough to users? The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has a longstanding standard that people must recognize ads as such and cannot be duped into thinking advertising is content.

"MySpace felt a lot of pressure to monetize quickly after it was sold to News Corp. And I think as result, they added advertising, they added things we might consider to be spammy, things users found intrusive."