What the FTC Requires From Brands in Influencer Marketing

The FTC holds brands responsible for how their creators disclose a paid relationship, not just the creators themselves. Every post a brand pays for, gifts or otherwise rewards needs a clear disclosure inside the post, and the brand needs a reasonable program to train creators and check what they publish.

A platform’s paid partnership label helps but is not enough on its own, and the FTC’s 2024 rule on fake reviews added civil penalties for paying for a particular sentiment. This article is general information, not legal advice.

Yes. In June 2023 the FTC revised its Endorsement Guides for the first time since 2009, and the update spelled out the potential liability of advertisers, endorsers and intermediaries such as agencies (FTC). The same revision brought tags in social media and virtual influencers into the definition of an endorsement.

The FTC’s staff guidance says advertisers need reasonable programs to train and monitor the people who promote them, including periodically searching for what those people are saying (FTC). It sets no fixed percentage of posts to check, and how much monitoring is reasonable scales with how much harm a misleading post could cause. If a brand approves posts before they go live, the guidance says it should review them for truth in advertising, including the disclosure. It also says one rogue influencer is unlikely to be the basis of a law enforcement action when the company has a reasonable training, monitoring and compliance program in place.

Any relationship that could change how much weight a viewer gives the post. The FTC tells creators to disclose any financial, employment, personal or family relationship with a brand (FTC). Money is the obvious case, but it is not the only one.

A paid relationship covers more than the posts the contract asks for. The FTC’s guidance says a creator paid for posts on one platform still needs to disclose an extra, unpaid mention on another, because the relationship still exists.

Plain words, placed where a viewer cannot miss them, in the same format as the endorsement. The FTC’s guidance for creators sets out what works and what does not (FTC):

Naming the relationship clearly matters as much as placement. In November 2023 the FTC sent warning letters to two trade associations and a dozen health influencers over posts it said were not adequately disclosed, citing problems that included inconspicuous placement and ambiguous language (FTC).

Not on its own. Use the platform label and add a disclosure in the creator’s own words. The FTC’s guidance says a platform’s built-in feature is no guarantee of an effective disclosure, and that it is always best to add your own (FTC).

The labels still matter, because the platforms require them. Instagram’s branded content policies require creators to tag the brand with the paid partnership label (Instagram), and TikTok’s content disclosure setting marks a post as a paid partnership so viewers can tell commercial content from organic (TikTok). The label is also what lets a brand run the post as an ad, as covered in turning creator posts into paid ads.

It turned several practices into rule violations with financial penalties. The rule, announced on August 14, 2024, prohibits (FTC):

• Fake reviews and testimonials, including ones from someone who does not exist, such as AI-generated reviews.
• Paying for a particular sentiment. Compensation or incentives conditioned on a review being positive, or negative, are banned.
• Undisclosed insider reviews from officers, managers and employees.
• Buying or selling fake indicators of social media influence, such as bot followers, for a commercial purpose.

The FTC can seek civil penalties against knowing violators. Its maximum civil penalty for these violations was set at $53,088 in January 2025 (FTC).

For a creator program, the practical line is simple: pay creators for honest content, never for a positive verdict. A brief can ask a creator to cover specific features; it cannot require them to like the product.

Yes, when it is reasonably foreseeable that the content will reach and affect US consumers. The FTC’s guidance says US law applies in that case and a disclosure is needed, and notes that the UK and many other countries have similar endorsement rules (FTC). A global creator program needs one disclosure standard that meets every market it runs in.

Build disclosure into every step, so it never depends on one creator remembering.

1. Write it into the brief and the contract. Spell out the disclosure wording, where it goes and that the platform label is required too. How to write a creator brief covers where it fits.
2. Approve content before it posts. Review every draft for the disclosure and for claims the brand can substantiate, and make sure creators know not to post until they have approval.
3. Check what goes live. Look at published posts, not just drafts, and ask for a fix the same day if a disclosure is missing.
4. Brief your agencies. If an agency or platform manages creators for you, give it clear instructions on disclosures and monitoring, because intermediaries share the liability.
5. Keep records. Save briefs, contracts, approvals and the corrections you requested. They show the program exists.
6. Remind long-term partners. Long-term creator partners need to disclose on every post about the brand, including the unpaid ones.

In the Social Native platform, brands review and approve each piece of creator content before it goes live, and creators can see who has approved their content and who hasn’t yet, so they know when it’s safe to post.