A 2019 FTC brochure spells out where a disclosure must appear

The revenue mechanism

In November 2019 FTC staff published Disclosures 101 for Social Media Influencers, a short brochure translating the agency's Endorsement Guides into instructions for people paid, or given free or discounted products, to promote a brand on social media. The mechanism behind it is the one behind most influencer and affiliate income: a brand pays cash, free product, or commission for a recommendation, and its value to the brand depends partly on the audience believing it is unprompted. The brochure is written for the earner rather than the brand, a rare primary document addressed to the income side of the relationship.

What the documents show

The brochure requires disclosure for any financial, employment, personal, or family relationship with a brand, including free or discounted products, even if unasked or believed unbiased. Tags, likes, and pins showing a brand preference are themselves endorsements. A disclosure must sit with the endorsement itself; one placed only on a profile page, or reachable only by clicking further in, is described as likely to be missed. For video, the disclosure should appear in the video itself, not only in a text description, since some viewers watch without sound. The companion Endorsement Guides FAQ, cross-referenced in the brochure, expands on how the agency judges disclosure clarity across platforms.

The assumptions exposed

The brochure is staff guidance, not a rule with independent force of law, and assumes a reader already knows they have a reportable relationship; it does not resolve every edge case, such as long-running ambassador arrangements with irregular gifting. It assumes English-language, US-facing content, though it notes a disclosure should match the endorsement's language and that US law can reach posts made abroad when US consumers are foreseeable. A publisher should not treat its example wording as an exhaustive safe list; other FTC guidance treats vaguer terms as insufficient, implying the real boundary is clarity, not a fixed word list.

What to check before you rely on it

This is an editorial checklist, not legal advice: check that a disclosure sits inside the post, image, or video itself rather than a linked bio or caption tail; check that live and video content repeats or embeds the disclosure rather than relying on one mention; and check that a platform's built-in partnership label supplements, rather than replaces, a clear disclosure in the content.

• Would a reader scrolling quickly see the disclosure before finishing the post?
• Is the disclosure worded in plain terms like ad or sponsored rather than an abbreviation a reader might not recognize?
• Does the disclosure appear in every format the content is republished in, including cross-posted or edited versions?

The brochure's guidance has not been withdrawn or superseded by the 2023 Endorsement Guides revision; the two documents describe the same disclosure duty at different levels of detail.