Disclosure and compliance
FTC disclosure
FTC disclosure is the requirement in the United States that a creator clearly reveals any material connection to a brand, such as payment, free product, or commission, when endorsing it. Disclosure must be clear, prominent, and hard to miss.
Also called ad disclosure, sponsorship disclosure, advertising disclosure.
The Federal Trade Commission's guidance is about whether an ordinary viewer notices the disclosure, not about whether a particular word was used. A label at the very start of a caption or spoken aloud early in a video qualifies. A hashtag after several lines of text, buried among others, or visible only after tapping more, does not.
Responsibility runs both ways. Creators are expected to disclose, and brands are expected to tell creators the rules and to monitor whether they follow them. Equivalent regimes exist elsewhere, including the ASA's rules in the United Kingdom, which require ad or advert rather than looser wording.
Common questions
- Do you have to disclose gifted products?
- Yes. Receiving free product is a material connection, so a post about it must be disclosed even when no money was paid and the brand did not ask for the post.
- Is hashtag ad enough to disclose a sponsorship?
- Only if it is genuinely hard to miss. Placed at the very start of a caption it usually is. Buried at the end, mixed into a block of other hashtags, or hidden behind a more link, it usually is not.
Related terms
- Paid partnership label
- The paid partnership label is the built-in disclosure tool on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, which displays a standard notice above a post identifying the brand that paid for it.
- Sponsored post
- A sponsored post is a single piece of content a creator publishes to their own audience in exchange for payment, and which must be disclosed as an advert.
- Product seeding
- Product seeding is sending creators free product with no guaranteed post and no fee, in the hope that some of them choose to feature it.
Distinct is the workspace where brands and creators run the work behind these terms. For brands, for creators, or back to the full glossary.