One of our mantras here at FM is “Quality, Safety, Scale, Engagement.” Today, we’d like to take a moment to concentrate on the “Safety” side of that equation (which, btw, has plenty to do with quality and engagement, but that’s for another day).

One of our strongest selling points has always been safety. At FM, a marketer’s message will never end up on a low-quality site, or one with objectionable content, and it will always be on a site where the message is welcomed by the author and appropriate to the audience.

We created policies to address this in 2005 and again in 2007, but things have changed.  The recent buzz about the new FTC guidelines didn’t bother us, because our disclosure standards have always been more comprehensive than the law requires. But the rapid evolution of new kinds of ad opportunities meant it was time to revisit and reconfirm our approach.

So we put together a document entitled Quality Conversations: It’s All About Trust (PDF). It’s a set of guidlines that we’re now using inside FM as we design campaigns, making sure we enhance and uphold the integrity and trust between Author and reader that’s essential to the FM ecosystem.

This is a living document, something we’ll review and update as needed. We welcome your feedback.