Lately, the Federal Trade Commission has been acting all kinds of feisty.

First it busted two app developers for using “persistent identifiers” to collect kids’ information for targeted advertising. The FTC has also fielded two complaint about the YouTube Kids app, which runs junk-food videos like this but claims they’re not ads.

Now the FTC has issued new rules for the persistent purveyors of native ads, which the agency finally realized have hit epidemic proportions. As the New York Times reports, “the tactic now called native advertising is not new — many radio ads, magazine inserts and infomercials, for example, have long used a similar strategy. But native ads have grown more sophisticated online, and the line between marketing and journalism has blurred.”

To the point where we could use an FTC Deputy Commissioner of Optometry.

And maybe we’re sort of getting one. From Kristi Ellis at WWD . . .

Read the rest at Sneak Adtack.