Clickbooth Agrees to Pay $2 Million to Settle FTC Charges of Deceptive Weight-Loss Advertising
Clickbooth, an affiliate network, has agreed to pay $2 million to settle Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charges that its affiliate marketers duped customers with the use of phony weight-loss claims involving acai berry supplements and “colon cleansers” on fake news sites. The FTC will use the $2 million to give refunds to consumers who were allegedly deceived by the marketing.
“The settlement also bars the defendants from a wide range of deceptive marketing practices, including making misleading or unsupported claims; misrepresenting any material fact in the sale of any product; failing to adequately disclose a material connection to the seller of any product, service, or program; and misrepresenting the existence or result of a test or study,” according to the FTC.
The commission explains that Clickbooth has been paid by merchants since 2008 to market supposed weight-loss products and recruited a network of affiliate marketers who pushed those dubious products. The FTC alleges that John Daniel Lamp and Clickbooth LLC and IntegraClick LLC (two of Lamp’s companies) recruited affiliate marketers and monitored the ads they ran, suggesting claims for the affiliates to use. The defendants even designed some websites for the affiliates to use for these ads. (FTC.gov)
