Good morning. The Federal Trade Commission just took a couple of new swings against alleged misleading marketing.

The FTC said the kids’ supplement brand TruHeight has agreed to pay $750,000 to settle charges including using employees to fake thousands of five-star reviews and deploying bots to simulate enthusiastic customers on Instagram and Facebook. 

The commission also said the self-publishing company Publishing.com will pay $1.5 million to settle allegations that it

• misrepresented customers’ likely earnings,
• promised “no questions asked” refunds that instead imposed many fine-print conditions
• and didn’t mention it when reviews were written by employees or top executives’ relatives.

​Some positive reviews that did come from real customers were extracted as a condition of getting refunds, the FTC said.

The actions are the latest scenes from the long grind to protect truth in advertising—including the truth that it is advertising.

A unit of BBB National Programs called the Institute for Responsible Influence is trying another approach, introducing a certification program designed to teach creators how to comply with standards like FTC guidelines. Creators who complete the 90-minute program will be added to a database that brands can use to find such responsible partners.

These sticks and carrots will always be with us. Eighty-one percent of consumers say they try to ignore and tune out ads, according to a survey released yesterday by Gartner. It’s the kind of thing you don’t strictly need research to know, but it’s a useful data point to help understand why influencers might occasionally forget to prominently say “#ad” or why companies might fake their customer reviews.

They think marketing works better when nobody knows it’s marketing.

I’m just not sure they’re right. The Anthropic Super Bowl ad mocking the idea of unmarked ads in chatbot replies worked because the vision was so horrible, and so familiar. It’s an uncanny valley for advertising: Nearly passing for human is so much more disturbing than just admitting you’re an ad.

Maybe everyone should be more like Keegan-Michael Key. The actor is turning into “TV’s Most Popular Pitchman,” Variety reports this morning, with a new campaign for Ore-Ida tater tots adding to a body of ad work that has recently already included State Farm, Choice Hotels, Lay’s and EY.

And he’s not conflicted about it.

“A commercial can sometimes be more ubiquitous than, maybe, a little indie film, or a TV show that’s on a streamer, among the thousands of TV shows,” he told Variety. “It’s also satisfying, filling, mentally simulating, creative. Very often, a commercial sometimes is the thing that can put someone out there.”

I’m thrilled that the NBA Playoffs are here, and not just because the Knicks are still on the court. The end of the regular season also means the brand-killing tankapalooza is finally over.

The Journal’s Robert O’Connell writes this morning:

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has promised to “fix it,” but many fans and (worse) potential fans will remember this season, when so many teams dreamed of losing, night in and night out. 

Let’s perhaps hold off on expansion until the league has figured out how to get its current teams playing to win.

There’s a different wrinkle with the postseason.

The NBA’s Play-In Tournament starting tonight will be telecast exclusively on Amazon Prime instead of ESPN and TNT as in previous years. That means plenty of fans won’t be able to watch.

Then the first round of the Playoffs will be divided up among national networks and streamers with no more access for regional sports networks. None of the Knicks’ upcoming series against the Hawks will be available on MSG, for example, a change that gave play-by-play announcer Mike Breen some extra material during the last night of the season.

“I personally think it’s a poor decision,” Breen said. “Fans want to hear their teams’ announcers, at least in the first round, because, for so many of us, they become part of the family, such a big part of why you root for the team.”

Publicis Groupe said it expects an acceleration in top-line growth this quarter, signaling that clients continue to spend despite the war in the Middle East, Adrià Calatayud reports this morning.

The owner of agencies like Saatchi & Saatchi and BBH said Tuesday that strong demand for AI-powered services drove organic revenue growth in the U.S. and other key markets in the first quarter, offsetting a hit from the war on its Middle East operations.

Organic net revenue at Publicis grew 4.5% for the first quarter, topping consensus expectations compiled by the company but trailing its 4.9% growth in the period a year earlier.

Publicis kicked off the earnings season for global ad-agency groups at a time when investors are worried about the implications of the conflict in the Middle East for the industry’s short-term prospects and the long-term risks posed by AI.

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A federal judge dismissed President Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the publisher of The Wall Street Journal over an article about a birthday letter to financier Jeffrey Epstein bearing Trump’s name. [WSJ] 

The Texas attorney general is investigating Lululemon Athletica for allegedly using so-called forever chemicals in its workout gear. But the athletic-apparel company said it stopped using the chemicals more than two years ago. [WSJ] 

Whoopi Goldberg is starting a book imprint called WhoopInk focused on “fresh, diverse new talent.” [AP] 

Dollar General is using AI to help double the footprint of its in-store audio ad network. [RetailWire] 

7-Eleven will close hundreds of stores in North America as it pivots to a larger, food-focused format—and converts some locations to fuel wholesaling. [C-Store Dive]

Major League Soccer’s Los Angeles Galaxy hired Jessica Jacobi to be the team’s new chief marketing officer. [Sports Business Journal] 

Meta Platforms is working on an AI version of CEO Mark Zuckerberg that can chat with employees and give them feedback in real time. [FT]