Back in March last year, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) took Google to court claiming that “sponsored links” on its site might not be recognised as advertisements by some people. That assertion has essentially been thrown out by the Federal Court, which found that most internet surfers could recognise ads for what they were.
It’s worth noting that since the ACCC bought the original case, Google has changed its approach, labelling advertisements as “ads”, but the outcome suggests it didn’t need to change for legal reasons. The Federal Court also upheld an ACCC argument that businesses should not include the names of a rival provider in their ad text. Telstra’s Trading Post was found to have made misleading representations by doing that. The big lesson? Dubious ad practices will catch up with you eventually.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.