{"id":383263,"date":"2022-11-29T14:03:26","date_gmt":"2022-11-29T14:03:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/?p=383263"},"modified":"2022-11-29T14:23:16","modified_gmt":"2022-11-29T14:23:16","slug":"google-sued-over-paying-radio-hosts-to-promote-pixel-4-even-though-they-hadn-t-used-the-phone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/news\/google-sued-over-paying-radio-hosts-to-promote-pixel-4-even-though-they-hadn-t-used-the-phone","title":{"rendered":"Google Sued Over Paying Radio Hosts To Promote Pixel 4 \u2014 Even Though They Hadn&#8217;t Used The Phone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, announced lawsuits against Alphabet Inc.&#8217;s GOOG GOOGL Google and iHeartMedia Inc. IHRT for allegedly paying radio hosts to read scripted endorsements of Pixel 4, even when they hadn&#8217;t used the smartphone. What Happened: Google and iHeartMedia are required to pay &#8216;$9.4 million in penalties&#8217; to the FTC and seven state attorneys general. &#8220;Google and iHeartMedia paid influencers to promote products they never used,&#8221; said Samuel Levine, the Bureau of Consumer Protection director. As per the complaint, &#8220;Google paid iHeartMedia more than $2.6 million to record and broadcast advertisements featuring Radio Personalities endorsing the Pixel 4.&#8221; In 2019, Google hired iHeartMedia and 11 other radio networks in 10 major markets, said FTC. The tech giant wanted to have on-air personalities record and broadcast endorsements of the Pixel 4 phone and even provided them with scripts, the FTC added. About 29,000 deceptive endorsements were aired by radio personalities, speaking about their experiences with the Pixel 4<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, announced lawsuits against Alphabet Inc.&#8217;s GOOG GOOGL Google and iHeartMedia Inc. IHRT for allegedly paying radio hosts to read scripted endorsements of Pixel 4,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[134,1,130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-383263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cell-phones","category-news","category-technology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383263\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}