What an FTC disclosure is
An FTC disclosure is a clear, conspicuous statement that a creator has a material connection to a brand they are promoting, such as payment, free product, a commission or a family tie. The US Federal Trade Commission expects it under its Endorsement Guides. Labels like #ad, Sponsored or Paid partnership count only when viewers will actually notice them.
The Endorsement Guides (16 CFR Part 255, revised in 2023) are the rules; a disclosure is the creator's act of complying with them. The Paid partnership label is one platform tool for doing it, but the FTC's own guidance warns against assuming a built-in tool is enough by itself.
What brands are responsible for
Brands are not bystanders. The FTC can hold an advertiser responsible when a creator it paid fails to disclose, so brands are expected to tell creators the rules, monitor posts and act on lapses. That applies to influencer gifting too: free product is a material connection even with no fee attached.
Placement matters. On video the disclosure belongs in the video itself, spoken or on screen, not only in a caption that may be truncated. In a caption it should come before the More cut-off. Vague tags such as #sp or #collab are widely considered unclear. Creators can check the same ground in UGC legal basics.
A worked example
A protein bar brand gifts boxes to 30 creators with no posting requirement. Eight post. Five say the bars were sent free or tag the post #ad; three say nothing. The brand messages those three with exact wording to add, a spoken line that the brand sent the bars plus #ad at the start of the caption, and logs each fix.
For the paid creators in the same campaign, the contract already lists disclosure as a deliverable, with payment released only after the brand checks the live post. Monitoring is a step in the workflow, not a hope.
Common mistakes
Assuming disclosure only matters on the creator's own feed. When a brand runs a creator testimonial as an ad, the Endorsement Guides still apply: claims must reflect the creator's honest experience, and a connection viewers would not expect, such as a paid creator presented as an ordinary customer, needs disclosing.
Burying it is the other failure: a disclosure among 30 hashtags, in white text for half a second, or only in a profile bio. If a typical viewer would miss it, it does not count. Write the disclosure requirement into both the creator brief and the signed agreement, and have a lawyer review the policy once rather than improvising per campaign.
How it's used
Three of the gifted creators posted without #ad. Send them the wording today and screenshot the fix for our records.
Disclosure: creator will say the product was provided by the brand within the first five seconds and start the caption with #ad.