FTC Influencer Marketing Rules: What Every Beauty Brand Needs to Know Before Your Next Collab

Influencer marketing is the backbone of most beauty brand growth strategies. A partnership with the right creator can launch a product overnight. But the legal landscape around these partnerships has gotten significantly more complex, and beauty brands that are not paying attention are exposing themselves to FTC enforcement, platform penalties, and reputational damage.

In 2023, the FTC updated its Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising for the first time since 2009. The updated Guides reflect how dramatically marketing has evolved in the social media era, and they make clear that the rules apply to brands, not just to the influencers posting on their behalf.

Here is what every beauty brand needs to understand before your next influencer collab.

The Core Rule Has Not Changed, But the Enforcement Has

The fundamental principle behind FTC endorsement rules is simple: if there is a “material connection” between an endorser and a brand, meaning a relationship that might affect how a consumer views the endorsement, that connection must be clearly and conspicuously disclosed.

Material connections include:

Payment or compensation of any kind (cash, free product, affiliate commissions, discounts, gifts)
Employment or ownership relationships
Family or personal relationships that might not be obvious to consumers
Anything of value given in exchange for a review or post

This rule has existed since the original Endorsement Guides were issued. What has changed is the FTC’s enforcement posture, its willingness to pursue brands directly (not just creators), and the specificity with which it expects disclosures to be made.

What Changed in the 2023 Updated Guides

The 2023 updates clarified and expanded several areas that were fuzzy before:

1. “Clear and Conspicuous” Has a Specific Meaning

The FTC made explicit what “clear and conspicuous” requires. A disclosure is not clear and conspicuous if:

It is buried in a block of hashtags
It appears at the very end of a long caption
It is in a font size or color that makes it hard to notice
It flashes on screen briefly in a video
It is audible only, without a visual component, in a format where consumers may have sound off

The disclosure must be hard to miss, meaning it should be near the top of a post, clearly visible before any “more” or “see more” prompt, and in a format that matches the platform.

2. Platform-Native Disclosures Alone Are Not Enough

Many brands and creators have relied on Instagram’s “Paid partnership” label or TikTok’s “Branded Content” toggle as their disclosure. The FTC’s updated Guides make clear that these platform labels are helpful but not sufficient on their own in all circumstances.

The language should still appear in the post itself, something like “#ad,” “#sponsored,” or “I was gifted this product by [Brand]” placed prominently. Both the platform label and in-post disclosure is the safest practice.

3. Brands Are Responsible for What Their Partners Post

This is the part that surprises most beauty founders: if your influencer partner fails to disclose properly, you, as the brand, may be liable to the FTC.

The updated Guides make clear that companies must take responsibility for influencer disclosures. This means:

Your influencer contracts must require proper disclosure
You must provide creators with clear guidance on how to disclose
You must monitor posts to ensure disclosures are being made correctly
If you see a post that does not have proper disclosure, you are expected to address it, including asking the creator to correct or remove the post

The FTC has taken enforcement action against brands directly for their influencers’ failures to disclose. Ignorance of what a creator posted is not a defense.

4. Reviews and Testimonials Are Subject to the Same Rules

If you send free products to customers, salon professionals, or bloggers in hopes of a positive review, even without a formal paid partnership, and they post a review, that material connection (the free product) must be disclosed.

This applies even to:

Samples sent to beauty editors or journalists
Products gifted to estheticians, MUAs, or salon owners for use on clients
Subscription boxes or PR packages
Affiliate relationships where creators earn a commission on sales they generate

If there is any form of compensation or material benefit, and the creator posts about your product, disclosure is required.

5. Fake Reviews and Review Gating Are Prohibited

The updated Guides, along with a separate FTC rulemaking finalized in 2024, take direct aim at fake reviews and review manipulation. Prohibited practices now include:

Buying or creating fake reviews
Asking customers to remove negative reviews
Asking customers to post reviews only if their experience was positive (“review gating”)
Incentivizing reviews without requiring disclosure of the incentive
Suppressing negative reviews through any mechanism

For beauty brands on Amazon, Sephora, or direct-to-consumer review platforms, this is significant. Many brands have historically sent follow-up emails asking satisfied customers to leave a review, without mentioning the product at all, or while filtering out dissatisfied customers. That practice is now squarely in the FTC’s crosshairs.

What Your Influencer Contracts Should Include

If your influencer agreements are not currently addressing FTC compliance, they need to be updated. At minimum, your contracts with creators should:

Require FTC-compliant disclosure in all content related to your brand, including organic posts, stories, Reels, TikToks, YouTube content, podcast mentions, and blog posts
Specify the language and placement of required disclosures (or require the creator to follow FTC Guides)
Require pre-approval of any claims about product efficacy or results (to protect both of you from false advertising exposure)
Prohibit claims you have not substantiated, particularly for skincare or cosmetics with implied therapeutic benefits
Require prompt correction if a post is found to be non-compliant
Indemnify the brand against FTC enforcement actions or claims arising from the creator’s failure to disclose properly

Working with an attorney to draft or update your influencer agreement is worthwhile, especially if you are running campaigns at any scale.

Common Mistakes Beauty Brands Are Still Making

Even brands that know about FTC rules are making these errors:

Hashtag stacking. Putting “#gifted #ad #sponsored” in a list of 20 hashtags at the end of a caption does not satisfy the clear and conspicuous standard. The disclosure needs to stand on its own near the top of the post.

Story-only disclosure. If the paid content appears in a feed post, a Story disclosure that disappears after 24 hours is not sufficient.

“Ambassador” or “partner” language without “#ad.” Terms like “brand ambassador,” “collab,” or “partner” are not clear enough disclosures. The FTC expects language that unambiguously communicates a commercial relationship. #ad or #sponsored are the gold standard.

Not monitoring creator posts. Sending a contract requirement and then never checking whether creators are complying is not a defense. Brands should have a process for reviewing posts from influencer partners.

Sending products without any disclosure guidance. If you send a PR box or gifted product, you should be communicating the disclosure requirement to the creator, even if they are not a formal paid partner.

What Happens If You Get It Wrong

FTC enforcement actions can result in civil penalties, injunctions, and mandatory compliance programs. The FTC has the authority to pursue brands and creators, and it has been increasingly willing to do so. In 2023 and 2024, the FTC sent warning letters to dozens of brands across multiple industries, including health, wellness, and beauty, for influencer disclosure failures.

Beyond FTC exposure, non-compliant influencer marketing can also violate platform terms of service (which can result in account suspension or demotion in algorithms) and may create exposure under state consumer protection laws.

The cost of getting this right (clear contracts, good creator guidance, periodic monitoring) is far lower than the cost of an enforcement action or a reputational hit.

A Note on AI-Generated Content and Synthetic Endorsements

The FTC’s guidance is evolving rapidly around AI-generated content, virtual influencers, and synthetic endorsements. If your brand uses AI-generated reviews, virtual influencer partnerships, or any form of synthetic social proof, you should be working with counsel specifically on those issues. The FTC has made clear that AI does not create a loophole from endorsement disclosure rules. If anything, AI-generated content may require additional disclosures about its synthetic nature.

The beauty industry moves fast. The regulatory environment is working hard to keep up. Brands that treat compliance as a foundation, not an afterthought, are the ones positioned to build at scale.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For guidance specific to your situation, book a consultation with Antonella Colella, Esq.