New FTC Guidelines for Affiliate and Influencer Marketers: What You Must Know Before Your Next Video

If you do any affiliate marketing or post sponsored content on social media, the Federal Trade Commission just made some changes you cannot ignore. These are not vague suggestions buried in a government PDF. They are updated guidelines with real teeth, real fines, and a clear signal that the FTC is finally catching up to how money actually moves on the internet in 2024. If you have a YouTube channel, a TikTok account, a blog with affiliate links, or any kind of deal with a brand, this affects you.

Alston Godbolt pulled this information directly from a National Law Review article covering 10 major changes to how the FTC governs social media marketing and influencer content. The timing is not random. The FTC had not meaningfully updated its guidelines since before TikTok existed. Short-form video changed everything about how products get promoted online, and the rules finally caught up. Here is what you need to know before you hit record on your next sponsored video or drop another affiliate link into a caption.

What You’ll Walk Out With

A plain-English breakdown of the FTC’s 10 updated guidelines for influencers and affiliate marketers
Exactly what “clear and conspicuous disclosure” means and where to put it
Why AI-generated content is now covered under the updated endorsement definition
How to properly disclose affiliate links in video descriptions, blog posts, and email
What the Kim Kardashian Bitcoin case tells you about how real the fines actually are
A compliance checklist you can run through before publishing your next piece of content
How to find which online income path matches your current skills at finder.platformproof.com

What the FTC Is and Why It Has Power Over Your Content

The Federal Trade Commission is the US government agency responsible for rules, laws, and guidelines around money, finance, and internet marketing. If you are based in the United States and you make money online by promoting products, the FTC has jurisdiction over how you do it. If you live outside the US, you can exhale a little, but Alston recommends watching this anyway because the European Union has similar consumer protection frameworks and Canada is not far behind.

The key thing to understand about the FTC is that it cannot put you in jail. This is not a criminal law enforcement agency. What it can do is levy civil fines, and those fines can be severe enough to wipe out your business and your personal finances if you are a repeated offender. The FTC has gone after individual influencers and affiliate marketers before, not just the brands they were promoting. If you think the risk is only at the brand level, you are mistaken.

The updated guidelines were released in 2023 and are being enforced in 2024. The central goal, as stated in the National Law Review coverage, is to ensure consumers can clearly identify when a social media post, blog post, video, or similar media is sponsored or contains affiliate links. That sounds simple, but the application of that principle across TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and blog content has a lot of specific requirements that creators have been getting wrong.

Change 1: Clear and Conspicuous Disclosures

This is the first and arguably most important change. The FTC now requires that any disclosure of a sponsored relationship be clear and conspicuous. That phrase has a specific legal meaning. It means the disclosure cannot be buried. It cannot be hidden in a wall of hashtags. It cannot be stuck at the bottom of a 300-word Instagram caption where nobody will actually read it.

On YouTube, the most reliable approach is to include a short disclosure in your video description near the top, something like: “This video contains affiliate links. I earn a commission if you click and purchase at no extra cost to you.” You can also state it verbally in the video itself, particularly at the beginning before the viewer tunes out. For blog posts, put the disclosure at the top of the article, not after the introduction, and not only at the footer.

Alston’s recommendation is to have a dedicated disclosure or disclaimer page on your own website and then link to it from your content. This satisfies the “unavoidable” standard the FTC applies to electronic media. If you do not have your own website yet, this is another reason to build one. A website gives you a permanent home for all the legal language you need in one place, and it protects you across every platform you post on.

On TikTok and Instagram specifically, the FTC is watching for disclosures that appear before the “see more” cutoff so that viewers see them without having to tap to expand. Disclosures buried under six hashtags after the cutoff do not meet the standard. The platform’s built-in “paid partnership” labels are the easiest way to stay compliant on those apps, and we will get to that in a moment.

Change 2: The Updated Definition of Endorsement Now Covers AI

This is the update that a lot of creators in 2024 are either ignoring or simply do not know about. The FTC has broadened the legal definition of an endorsement. Before the update, the common assumption was that endorsements involved celebrities, athletes, or well-known public figures. The new definition is much wider.

AI-generated content that promotes a product or service is now explicitly covered under the endorsement definition. If you are using an AI avatar, an AI voice, or AI-written copy to promote an affiliate product, that counts as an endorsement and it requires disclosure. This is not a gray area anymore. The FTC has caught up to 2023 and the rules apply to synthetic content just as much as they apply to a person standing in front of a camera.

This matters because faceless YouTube channels and AI-generated content pipelines have exploded in the past two years. If you are running a channel where an AI narrator reviews products and drops affiliate links in the description, you are subject to these rules. The solution is not complicated. You disclose that the content is AI-generated and that it contains affiliate relationships. But you do have to actually do it.

Change 3: Hashtag Disclosures Have Specific Requirements

The FTC has provided clearer guidance on which hashtags actually count as proper disclosures and which ones do not. Hashtags like #ad, #sponsored, and #paidpartnership are considered acceptable when they appear clearly and early in the post. Hashtags like #collab, #gifted, or #ambassador are not clear enough for most audiences and do not meet the standard.

The FTC’s standard is whether a typical consumer would understand from the hashtag alone that money or something of value changed hands. “#gifted” fails that test because a lot of people interpret it to mean the creator received a gift from a fan, not that a brand sent product in exchange for promotion. “#ad” or “#sponsored” pass the test because the meaning is unambiguous.

In addition to hashtags, most major social media platforms now provide built-in tools for marking content as paid. Instagram and TikTok both have “paid partnership” labels you can apply directly to your posts. YouTube has a “paid promotion” toggle in the video settings. Use these. They satisfy the platform’s own policies and they also give you a paper trail showing you made a good-faith effort to disclose.

Change 4: Affiliate Links Are a Material Connection and Must Be Disclosed

This one catches a lot of affiliate marketers off guard. The FTC’s updated guidelines make explicit what was previously implied: if you include affiliate links in your content, that alone is considered a material connection and requires disclosure. You do not have to have a formal brand deal or receive a cash payment. The fact that you stand to earn a commission is enough to trigger the disclosure requirement.

The specific language the FTC considers acceptable includes phrases like “affiliate link,” “commission earned,” and “I earn a commission if you purchase through this link.” What does not work is a generic disclaimer buried in the footer of your website that you never actually mention in your content. The disclosure needs to be in the piece of content itself, close to where the affiliate link appears.

For blog posts, put the disclosure at the top of the article. Something like: “This post contains affiliate links. If you click and purchase, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.” For YouTube, put it in the first two lines of the description so it is visible without expanding. For email, include it in the footer of every email that contains affiliate links. For social media, include it in the post itself, not only in a link in bio.

Alston’s approach is straightforward. He puts a clear disclosure at the bottom of his blog posts noting that the page may contain affiliate links and that he earns a commission. Most readers do not care, and a lot of them appreciate the transparency. The disclosure does not reduce clicks. It protects you legally and it builds trust with your audience over the long run.

Change 5: Long-Term Brand Partnerships Still Need Disclosure Every Time

Some creators assume that once they have disclosed a brand relationship one time, they are covered going forward. That is not how the updated guidelines work. The FTC now requires disclosure in every single post, video, or piece of content where a material connection exists, regardless of how long the relationship has been in place.

If you have a six-month brand deal with a supplement company and you mention their product in your 47th video of the partnership, that video still needs a disclosure. The audience watching that specific video may never have seen any of your previous content. They have no way of knowing about the partnership unless you tell them. The FTC takes the perspective of the first-time viewer, not the loyal subscriber who has been watching for a year.

The practical solution here is to build disclosure language into your content template so it becomes automatic. If you use a script structure or a description template, put the disclosure in by default and only remove it when the content is genuinely unsponsored.

Change 6: Content Targeting Children Has Its Own Section Now

The FTC added a new section to the updated guidelines specifically addressing advertising aimed at children. If your content is aimed at or frequently watched by children, you face a higher standard of disclosure because the FTC recognizes that children are less able to identify when they are being marketed to.

This affects toy reviewers, gaming channels popular with kids, educational content, and anything in that space. Alston specifically mentioned Ryan’s World as an example. A channel that large, with an audience that skews young, has to pay close attention to how and where it discloses brand relationships. The FTC’s language says that content reaching children as the intended audience should meet an even clearer and more conspicuous standard than adult-focused content.

If you are on the edge of this category, meaning your content is about a topic like Legos, model airplanes, or family activities that children watch but that is not exclusively for children, you should still read this section carefully and err on the side of more disclosure rather than less.

Not sure which online income path actually fits your skills right now?

Take the two-minute quiz at finder.platformproof.com and get a specific recommendation based on what you already know how to do.

What Happens If You Ignore These Rules

The FTC takes non-compliance seriously and the penalties are financial, not criminal. Here is what that means in practice. A first-time violation may result in a warning or a consent decree, which is a formal agreement to change your behavior. A repeated violation after a consent decree can trigger fines in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. For large-scale campaigns involving multiple influencers or big brand budgets, the fines have reached into the millions.

The FTC can hold you personally liable as the influencer, not just the brand that hired you. This is a critical distinction. You cannot assume the brand’s legal team will protect you if something goes wrong. The FTC has gone after individual creators and marketers directly, especially in cases where the promoted content made false or misleading claims. The affiliate marketer who promoted a pyramid scheme business opportunity is the clearest example. Those people were individually named and fined, not just the company at the center of the scheme.

Beyond the direct fines, there is a second consequence that is just as damaging to a creator’s income: brands will drop you. A brand that discovers you are not following disclosure guidelines faces its own liability under the updated rules. Brands and marketers can be held responsible for ensuring that the influencers they work with are compliant. That means a company like Amazon, if they are running an affiliate program and you are not disclosing your affiliate links, has a legal reason to cut you from the program. They will do that rather than risk their own fines.

The Kim Kardashian Case: What Real FTC Fines Look Like

In 2022, Kim Kardashian settled with the SEC (not the FTC, but the same concept applies) over her promotion of a cryptocurrency called EthereumMax without disclosing that she was paid to promote it. She paid 1.26 million dollars in penalties, disgorgement, and interest. She was not arrested. She was not charged with a crime. She simply had to write a very large check and agree not to promote crypto securities for three years.

That case shows exactly how this plays out at scale. The government does not want to put influencers in prison. It wants them to stop misleading consumers, and the most effective tool for that is making non-compliance more expensive than compliance. For someone like Kim Kardashian, a 1.26 million dollar fine is painful but survivable. For a small creator or affiliate marketer with a 50,000 dollar annual income, even a fraction of that fine could end their business entirely.

The lesson is not “only worry about this if you are famous.” The lesson is that the FTC has demonstrated it will act, and the proportional damage to a small creator is much greater than to a celebrity. Follow the guidelines now, before you need to.

How Brands Are Already Responding to the Updated Guidelines

The updated guidelines do not just put pressure on creators. They put pressure on brands, and brands are already responding by tightening up their influencer and affiliate compliance programs. If you are in any affiliate network or brand partnership, expect to see more monitoring, more check-ins, and more contract language about disclosure requirements.

Amazon’s affiliate program is a clear example. Amazon has its own terms of service requiring affiliates to disclose their affiliate relationship clearly, in every piece of content that contains an affiliate link. They audit this. If you are in the Associates program and you are not disclosing, you risk losing your account, not just getting a warning from the FTC.

For sponsored content relationships outside of affiliate programs, brands will increasingly include compliance checkpoints in their contracts. Some are already requiring creators to send them final content for review before it goes live, specifically to verify that disclosures are in place. This is not because brands care about your legal exposure. It is because they care about their own.

A Compliance Checklist Before You Publish

Here is a practical checklist you can run through before publishing any content that involves a paid relationship, affiliate links, gifted products, or brand deals. Run through every item before you hit publish or post.

Does this content contain affiliate links? If yes, is there a clear disclosure near the top of the content (not only at the footer)?
Is there a paid brand relationship involved? If yes, does the content use #ad, #sponsored, or the platform’s native “paid partnership” label?
If posting on YouTube, does the disclosure appear in the first two lines of the description (above the “show more” line)?
If the content is AI-generated, is there a disclosure that the content is AI-generated and that it contains affiliate or sponsored relationships?
If the audience includes children or skews young, is the disclosure earlier and more prominent than it would be in adult-focused content?
Is this part of a long-term brand deal? If yes, does this specific piece of content have its own disclosure, not just a reference to a previous video?
Does your website have a dedicated disclosure or disclaimer page that you can link to from your content?
If this content is an email, does the footer of the email include affiliate disclosure language?

Honest Drawbacks: What the FTC Guidelines Leave Unclear

The updated guidelines are much better than what existed before, but they are not perfect. There are several areas where the guidance is still vague enough that creators are left making judgment calls without a clear standard to follow.

The rules for exactly how prominent a disclosure has to be on a short-form video, where there is no description and the caption disappears in seconds, are not fully worked out. TikTok’s “paid partnership” label does exist, but for organic affiliate content without a formal brand deal, the practical standard is murky.

The guidelines also do not give clear thresholds for what counts as targeting children. If your DIY channel is mostly watched by adults but 15 percent of your audience is under 13, where do you fall? The FTC’s answer is essentially “use your judgment and err on the side of caution,” which is not a satisfying answer for a creator trying to build a business without legal exposure.

Finally, the enforcement reality is that the FTC goes after the biggest, most visible violators first. A small affiliate blogger with 2,000 monthly readers is not the top priority. But that does not mean you are safe. Complaints from consumers or competitors can trigger individual investigations, and the FTC has pursued smaller cases when there is evidence of active deception rather than just a missing disclosure.

Find Your X

Affiliate marketing and influencer content are real paths to income, and the FTC guidelines are not designed to stop you from building a business online. They are designed to make sure you are honest with your audience about when money is involved. That honesty, it turns out, is also good business. Audiences trust creators who are transparent about their affiliate relationships far more than they trust creators who hide them.

If you are still figuring out which online income path makes sense for your skills right now, the clearest next step is to take the free quiz at finder.platformproof.com. It takes about two minutes and gives you a specific recommendation based on where you are, not a generic list of options that applies to everyone and fits no one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do FTC affiliate disclosure rules apply outside the United States?

The FTC’s jurisdiction is the United States, so technically the rules only apply to US-based creators and creators targeting US audiences. However, if you are a Canadian or European creator with a significant US audience, you are not fully in the clear. The FTC has acted against foreign companies that target US consumers. More practically, the European Union has its own consumer protection regulations with similar disclosure requirements, and the UK has the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) with comparable rules. Alston’s advice is to have proper disclosures regardless of where you live, because the global standard is moving toward transparency anyway.

What exactly counts as a “material connection” under the updated FTC rules?

A material connection is any relationship between a creator and a brand that could affect how the audience perceives the creator’s endorsement. Cash payments are the obvious example, but the definition is broader. It includes receiving free products, getting early access to something, being given a discount code that generates income when used, earning a commission through an affiliate link, or having a personal or professional relationship with the brand (like being an employee or family member of the owner). If any of those apply, disclosure is required.

Is putting a disclosure in the footer of my website enough?

No. A footer disclosure on your website is a good start and you should have it, but it is not enough on its own. The FTC requires that disclosures be clear and conspicuous in the specific piece of content where the affiliate link or sponsored relationship appears. That means a blog post about an affiliate product needs its own disclosure at or near the top of that post. A YouTube video needs a disclosure in the description. The website footer is a backup layer, not the primary disclosure.

Can the FTC fine me personally, or only my business?

The FTC can and has pursued individual creators personally, in addition to or instead of the businesses they operate through. This is especially true when the deception is serious, when there is a pattern of violations, or when the creator was the primary force behind the misleading content. Operating through an LLC offers some protection in some circumstances, but it does not automatically shield you from personal FTC liability the way it might shield you from some civil lawsuits. Talk to a lawyer if you have serious concerns about your specific situation.

Does this apply to UGC (user-generated content) creators who do not have their own channel?

Yes. UGC creators who produce content for a brand to use on the brand’s own channels are covered under the updated guidelines because the FTC looks at the content itself, not the platform or account it comes from. If you create a video that a brand posts on their Instagram, and that video promotes their product, the brand has an obligation to disclose the relationship. As the UGC creator, you should also understand this and make sure the brand you are working with is handling disclosure properly, because in some cases liability can flow back to you as well.

Do I need a different disclosure for every platform I post on?

You need a disclosure on every piece of content, but the format can be adapted to the platform. On YouTube, a written description disclosure plus a verbal mention in the video is a strong approach. On TikTok and Instagram, use the platform’s built-in paid partnership label and include #ad or #sponsored in the caption. On a blog, put a written disclosure at the top of the article. The underlying requirement is the same across all platforms: the viewer or reader needs to be able to see and understand the disclosure without having to hunt for it.

How does the updated definition of endorsement affect people who review products honestly?

If you review products honestly and have no financial relationship with the brand, the guidelines do not require you to disclose anything beyond what is already obvious. The disclosure requirement kicks in when there is a material connection. If you bought the product yourself, received it as a gift from a fan (not the brand), and have no affiliate link or deal in place, you are just giving your opinion and the FTC is not interested in requiring a disclosure for that. The problem arises when you receive something of value from the brand and do not mention it.

What should I do if I published old content without proper disclosures?

Go back and add disclosures to the old content that still contains affiliate links or references to past brand deals. Yes, this is tedious. Yes, it matters. The FTC does not have a formal “safe harbor” for past content, and if a complaint leads to an investigation, your existing content will be reviewed. Updating your old posts and video descriptions is the right move. For very old content where affiliate relationships have since expired, use your judgment about the level of risk. Content that is still ranking, still getting traffic, and still contains active affiliate links is the priority.

Sources

National Law Review: FTC Updated Endorsement Guidelines for Social Media Marketing (2023)
Federal Trade Commission: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising
SEC Press Release: Kim Kardashian Charged With Unlawfully Touting Crypto Security (2022)
Amazon Associates Program Operating Agreement: Disclosure Requirements
Alston Godbolt, Platform Proof YouTube channel: New FTC Guidelines For Affiliate and Influencer Marketers

Helping 1 million working adults make their first $3,000 online with the skills they already have. Alston Godbolt, Platform Proof.