What Are the FTC Endorsement Rules for Ecommerce Reviews, Affiliate Links, and AI Product Recommendations?

Which rules apply?

What does the review rule prohibit?

The rule's main sections ban:

• Fake or false reviews and testimonials (section 465.2): writing, creating or selling reviews that misrepresent that the reviewer exists, used the product or holds the stated view. The FTC explicitly aimed this at AI-generated fake reviews. Buying such reviews or spreading testimonials you should know are false is also covered.
• Buying positive or negative reviews (465.4): offering compensation or incentives conditioned on the review expressing a particular sentiment.
• Undisclosed insider reviews (465.5): reviews by officers or managers without a clear disclosure of their relationship, and testimonials from employees or agents without disclosure.
• Company-controlled review websites (465.6): presenting a site you control as an independent source of reviews.
• Review suppression (465.7): using unfounded legal threats, intimidation or certain false accusations to prevent or remove negative reviews, or hiding negative reviews while claiming to show all.
• Fake indicators of social media influence (465.8): buying or selling fake followers or views generated by bots or fake accounts.

What counts as a proper disclosure?

The 2023 revision added a definition of “clearly and conspicuously”: a disclosure must be difficult to miss and easy for ordinary people to understand. The FTC's guidance for endorsers gives practical examples:

• Affiliate links: say something like “I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.” A single disclosure can work when it is in the review and visible at the same time as the link; if the review and the link are separated, readers may not connect them.
• Videos: disclose in the video itself, and near the links in the description, not only in one place.
• Social posts: a disclosure only in the comments is not clear and conspicuous. “Ad:” or “#ad” at the start is likely to work; buried at the end is easier to miss.
• Free products and trips: disclose them, even if you were not paid.
• Employees: staff who post about the company's products should disclose the relationship, for example “I work for this company.”

How do these rules apply to AI product recommendations?

The FTC has not written a special rule for AI answers, but the existing rules reach most of the practices that affect them:

• Content that feeds AI answers. Assistants read review pages, affiliate lists and comparison articles. If those are fake or undisclosed, the problem sits with whoever published or paid for them, and an AI repeating them does not change that.
• AI-generated reviews. Using AI to write reviews that pose as real customers' experiences is the kind of fake review the 2024 rule targets.
• Your own AI shopping assistant. A chatbot on your site that recommends your products is your advertising. Its claims need the same substantiation as any ad, and it should not present sponsored products as neutral picks without saying so.
• Paid placements in AI answers. Platforms label ads in ChatGPT, AI Overviews and Copilot. Do not describe a paid placement as “recommended by ChatGPT” or similar, as covered in what ChatGPT ads mean for AI visibility.
• Hidden instructions to AI. Tricks such as hidden text or prompt-filled “summarise with AI” links that tell assistants to recommend a brand are deceptive in spirit and are treated as manipulation by the search platforms.
• Arranged mentions. Paying for undisclosed mentions to steer AI answers also runs into Google's guidance, as covered in whether Google warns against buying brand mentions.

What should an ecommerce brand do?

1. Ask every customer for an honest review, and never tie a reward to a positive rating. Merchant Center and review platforms have similar rules.
2. Publish all genuine reviews, negative ones included, and apply the same moderation rules to all.
3. Label insider and staff reviews, or keep staff from reviewing.
4. Require affiliates and creators to disclose clearly, near the link and at the start of posts and videos, and monitor them; the Guides expect advertisers to train and check the people they pay.
5. Disclose free products sent for review, in your outreach terms and in the resulting content.
6. Check your review app settings for anything that hides or delays only negative reviews; delaying all reviews equally is different from delaying only bad ones.
7. Keep AI-written marketing truthful and never generate testimonials.

How review apps present reviews to AI crawlers is covered in Judge.me vs Yotpo for AI citations, and running an affiliate programme with proper disclosure in how to build an affiliate programme that earns AI mentions.

What about outside the US?

Other countries have their own rules on fake reviews and hidden advertising, and several are stricter or enforced differently. The same practical standard, genuine reviews and clearly labelled paid content, is a safe starting point everywhere, but check local law before launching campaigns abroad.

We are not lawyers, and this page is not legal advice. It is based on the FTC's Endorsement Guides and staff guidance, the Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule and the FTC's announcements.

What might this look like in practice?

Consider an illustrative skincare brand, Vaskcombe, that sent free products to 40 creators, paid an affiliate network for comparison-site placements, and offered a discount code to customers who left five-star reviews. A compliance review found three problems: the review incentive depended on the rating, most creators disclosed only in video descriptions, and one comparison site did not mention its commission. Vaskcombe dropped the review incentive and now asks every customer for an honest review in their own words, offering nothing in return. It also required “Ad” or “gifted” at the start of every creator post, and asked the comparison site to add a disclosure next to its links. When AI answers later cited those pages, they cited disclosed, genuine content.

What do people ask about FTC rules and reviews?

Are AI-generated reviews illegal under the FTC rule?

Reviews that misrepresent a real person's experience, whoever or whatever wrote them, are banned; the FTC specifically aimed the rule at AI-generated fakes.

Can I give customers a discount for leaving a review?

The FTC rule bans only rewards that depend on the review's sentiment, and any incentive has to be disclosed. But Google and Yelp forbid incentives for reviews altogether, so the simplest compliant practice is to ask every customer for an honest review and offer nothing in return.

Do affiliate sites have to disclose commissions?

Yes. The Guides expect a clear disclosure close to the endorsement and the links.

Do these rules apply to what ChatGPT says about my products?

Not to the assistant's own answers, but they apply to the reviews, content and paid placements you are responsible for.