FTC Disclosure Rules for Affiliate Programs — What Merchants Must Do
Affiliate disclosure isn't only the affiliate's problem — merchants have duties too. What the FTC expects, what good disclosure looks like, and how to build compliance into your program.
Most merchants believe disclosure is the affiliate's job: they're the ones posting, so they add "#ad". US regulators see it differently. The FTC's endorsement rules treat the advertiser — you, the merchant — as responsible for having a reasonable program in place: telling partners the rules, and not looking away when they're broken. Similar duties exist elsewhere (the UK's ASA/CMA regimes, EU consumer-protection law), so this applies well beyond the US.
This is education, not legal advice — for your specific program, ask a lawyer. But here's the practical shape of doing it right.
The core principle: material connections must be disclosed
If someone recommending your product earns money when people buy it, that's a material connection, and the audience must be able to know about it — clearly, conspicuously, and before they act on the recommendation. Commission links, gifted products, and discount codes that pay the promoter all count. It doesn't matter that "everyone knows influencers get paid"; the disclosure duty is on each piece of content.
What "clear and conspicuous" actually means
The standards are more concrete than most people expect. The disclosure must be near the recommendation, before the link — not buried in a bio, a linked "about" page, or below the fold. It must be in plain language: "I earn a commission if you buy through my link" works; a lone "#sp" or "#collab" doesn't. It must match the medium: spoken in podcasts and videos (early, not minute 42), on-image in stories where text may not be read aloud, above the fold in posts. And it must survive the platform: if a caption truncates, the disclosure belongs before the fold line.
Give your affiliates copy-paste versions. For example: "Heads up: this post contains affiliate links — if you buy through them, I earn a commission at no extra cost to you." Short, honest, compliant, reusable.
The merchant's four duties
Regulators look for a program that takes disclosure seriously, which in practice means:
- Put it in your terms. Your affiliate agreement should require clear disclosure of the material connection in every promotion, in the medium-appropriate form. (What else belongs in your terms.)
- Say it at onboarding. A paragraph in the approval email with the copy-paste disclosures above. Partners overwhelmingly comply when told how — most violations are ignorance, not defiance.
- Monitor proportionately. You're not expected to surveil the internet, but you are expected not to ignore what you see. When you review a partner's content (and you will, while checking their promotion quality), glance for the disclosure.
- Act on violations. A documented escalation — warn, then pause, then terminate — turns "we have rules" into "we enforce rules", which is what a reasonable-program defense is made of.
Keep records of all four: the clause, the onboarding note, and any warnings sent. If a question ever comes, the paper trail is the answer. (An append-only audit log helps here for the program-side events — approvals, warnings, terminations.)
Honest claims beat disclosure problems
Disclosure gets the attention, but the deeper rule is about the claims themselves: affiliates repeating your product claims are making your claims. If a partner says "cures back pain" or invents "results," the liability conversation lands on your desk too. Give affiliates an approved-claims sheet — what the product does, what you can substantiate, and the three things they must never say. It protects them, you, and honestly, the quality of their content.
A compliance-minded program is a better program
Here's the quiet upside: everything above correlates with quality. Partners who disclose cleanly and stick to true claims produce content that converts better and refunds less. Audiences trust disclosed recommendations more than they punish them — the research on this has been consistent for years. Building disclosure into your program from day one costs a paragraph in your terms and a template in your onboarding email; retrofitting it after a regulator's letter costs considerably more.
Set the rules, hand out the wording, glance at what your partners publish, and keep receipts. That's the whole merchant playbook — and it's an afternoon of work.