About the Commercial Content Disclosure setting for advertisers

Last updated: September 2025

When posting content that promotes a brand, product, or service on TikTok, you must turn on the Commercial Content Disclosure setting. This ensures that you're transparent about the type of content you're posting and helps build and maintain trust between the TikTok community and advertisers.


TikTok's Community Guidelines have been in place since 2021. Exact legal requirements may vary by country.


Note: In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has clear legal requirements through the Endorsement Guides pursuant to Section 5 of the FTC Act.


Benefits of Commercial Content Disclosure

Using the Paid partnership and Commercial content disclosures allows all viewers to clearly see which posts are organic and which are commercial content. TikTok's commercial content requirements are aimed at creating a better experience for everyone as part of our long-term commitment to:

  • Transparency: Requiring branded content disclosure helps create a more transparent ecosystem for creators, advertisers, and viewers.

  • Safety: Protecting viewers from misinformation, misrepresentation, and false advertising.

  • Accountability: Standardizing disclosure on TikTok helps create a fair branded content ecosystem that focuses on TikTok's effort to drive greater accountability among creators, advertisers, and viewers.


How TikTok determines commercial content

TikTok flags videos as commercial content when they show clear marketing intent based on three factors:

  • Financial incentives: This includes any money or benefits received for promoting something. This could include URLs, promo codes, hashtags, collaboration mentions, QR codes, or overlay ads.

  • Brand mentions: When a brand’s name appears as a hashtag (#brand), a tag (@brand), or a logo is shown.

  • Product recommendations: Showing or talking about a product or service, such as demos, tutorials. This could also include calls to actions, such as buy now or shop today.


Impact on performance

Turning on the Commercial Content Disclosure setting and labelling your post as a Paid partnership will not affect the way our system recommends content to TikTok users. TikTok ran a study comparing nearly 2 million TikTok videos with and without proper commercial content disclosure and there was no performance difference (2023 TikTok Marketing Science: Tested in ID and PK).


Note: If commercial content isn't properly disclosed, the video may not be eligible for distribution in the For You feed and will impact organic performance.


What happens if you don't properly use the Commercial Content Disclosure setting

If a video does not have obvious financial incentives but includes both brand mention and product recommendation, it may also be flagged as commercial content.


An in-app system notification will be sent if a video potentially contains branded content but is not following proper disclosure. These notifications should be responded to within 24 hours before the video is ineligible for the For You feed and experience limited traffic distribution.


Note: Only the original video poster can appeal flagged videos. If you are a brand or agency, learn more about why a creator collaboration has experienced restricted For You feed delivery.


For successful appeals, your videos will resume eligibility for organic distribution in the For You feed.


Learn how to turn on Commercial Content Disclosure for your videos

  • Advertisers who work with creators through the TikTok One platform will automatically have the content disclosure setting managed through that platform. All TikTok One projects automatically turn on the Commercial Content Disclosure, and all TikTok One or TikTok Creative Exchange project videos posted to your Business Account will be considered compliant. Learn more about TikTok One for advertisers.

  • If creating commercial content outside of the TikTok One platform, either with a creator or using an in-house TikTok Business Account for your brand, learn how to turn on the Commercial Content Disclosure setting for your videos.