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Jakarta. With social media reaching more people every day, advertisers have turned to bloggers and other users as the next generation of product endorsers to spread the word online, but this has sparked a debate over the ethics of the practice.

FX Ridwan Handoyo, chairman of the supervisory committee of the Association of Indonesian Advertising Agencies, said on Wednesday that not divulging the relationship between advertisers and bloggers was a breach of fairness — one of the advertising industry’s basic principles.

Although advertisers pay bloggers to produce positive reviews for products and services, neither side is obligated to make the arrangement public.

Ridwan said there appeared to be an increase in product endorsements among bloggers, adding he had met with the bloggers in question over their positive testimonials for certain products.

“Some of them were honest about the fact that they were making money from posting these testimonials on their blogs, while others were reluctant to admit to it,” Ridwan said.

Among the most common paid online reviews, he said, were those for travel-related products, consumer goods and telecommunications services.

Enda Nasution, a popular blogger and twitterati, said it was inevitable that companies would recognize the advertising potential of social media.

“There’s a survey that shows consumers have more trust in online peer reviews,” said Enda, who admits to having been paid to endorse products online.

Those who give glowing reviews online are often paid in cash or get the product free.

A recent report by the Boston Consulting Group on Internet users in Brazil, Russia, India, China and Indonesia showed that this nation had the most active online social networkers among emerging economies, with more than half of its 31 million Internet users participating.

The report showed that in 2009, 58 percent of Internet users in Indonesia were active on the social networking site Facebook, while 33 percent had blogs.

Indonesians were also among the most active users of online bulletin boards and forums.

Users here spend an average of 54 minutes online each day in 2009, and this is expected to increase to 66 minutes by 2015. Indonesia is believed to have also the largest number of Twitter users in Asia.

The report, released in September, also listed Facebook, Blogger and WordPress among the 10 most popular sites in Indonesia in terms of Web traffic.

Data from checkfacebook.com, a site that monitors the spread of the social network, lists Indonesia as having the second -largest number of Facebook users in the world at 27,953,340, behind the United States but ahead of Britain.

The total number of Indonesians with access to the Internet is expected to increase to 94 million by 2015.

Firman Kurniawan, a marketing communications expert at the University of Indonesia, said it made good business sense for advertisers to take advantage of this growing sector.

He said advertisers were eager to embrace this community-based approach as part of their strategy to benefit from a larger audience, which “would create a stronger effect than conventional advertisements.”

Wimar Witoelar, chairman of InterMatrix, a public relations firm, said blogger endorsements complemented the kind of advertising already seen in conventional media.

“It’s useful for [advertising] certain products [to an audience with] a short attention span,” he said.

However, Firman cautioned that consumers might eventually spot the difference between paid endorsements and original testimonials, particularly if the messages conveyed did not fit the blogger’s profile.

“Disingenuously positive reviews by bloggers would raise suspicions among their followers, who would start questioning their credibility and whether they would write so positively if they hadn’t been paid to.”

“The online opinion makers should realize that their followers trust what they say.”

Ridwan, meanwhile, said that in the absence of advertising guidelines for these types of endorsements, the basic rule of fairness in advertising should be applied to all types of media, whether new or conventional.

“There’s no harm in using digital media for brand or product endorsement, as long as online media users disclose that they’ve received cash or other forms of payment to post a product review on their blogs,” he said.

“Otherwise, it’s unethical.”

He added that just as with advertorials in conventional media, a paid testimonial should be clearly distinguished from a blogger’s opinion.

The mandate to disclose any connection to the seller of the product or service, Ridwan said, was overcome because “once they’re paid to endorse a product, they’re no longer bound by personal ethics only but also by business ethics.”

But for Wimar, the ultimate ethical question is choosing between “long-lasting credibility or getting rich quick,” saying the decision lies with social media users themselves.

According to Enda, the issue is a point of debate within the blogging community, since there are no regulations requiring a Web writer to post a disclaimer for paid testimonials.

Some insist that passing off such a testimonial without a disclaimer is acceptable as long as it fits the profile of the blogger.

“But for me, I would declare any tweets for which I’ve been paid,” Enda said.

The effectiveness of such an online advertising campaign has not yet become apparent, however, as online social networking is still in its infancy around the world.

“We’re still testing the waters, since social networking sites only began booming in Indonesia two years ago,” Enda said.