The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) requires anyone engaged in affiliate marketing in the U.S. to clearly and conspicuously disclose that they may receive compensation for their promotion of third-party products or services. This applies to all based in or conducting business from the United States and applies to any format of affiliate marketing activity, including:

• Mobile apps, websites, or blog posts;
• YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter) or any other social media promotion;
• Podcasts, chat boards, Bulletin Board System, image dumps, apps, redirected pages;
• Any media whatsoever that contains a relationship where an affiliate may be compensated by a third-party or merchant in exchange for their referral to the third-party sales pages.

If you are an Affiliate Marketing Manager, or Influencer Network Manager, these rules apply to your entire network, so long as affiliate links are being used to generate revenue.

We encourage you to review the full guidance from the FTC.
Information for Social Media Influencers can be found here.

Summary of FTC Guidance

Disclosure Must Be Clear

When using written media with a link of any kind, consider using one of the following statements (or something similar):
“This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated”
“As an affiliate, I may be compensated if you make a purchase”

In written formats that are limited by size, such as X or a small banner link, the FTC has indicated that #Ad or #Sponsored is sufficient.

When using voice or video promotion, a similar statement must be made during your video or audio presentation, whether written in bold letters (video) or said aloud for the audience (video or audio).


Disclosure Must Be Close and Easily Seen (Conspicuous)

• Disclosure must be easy for any reasonable visitor to your content to find.
• Place it in close proximity to the affiliate link:

- Directly preceding the affiliate link,
- Said aloud in a video or audio presentation at a point near where the link is posted or displayed,
- Fonts should not be unreasonably small.

• In banner ads or tweets, the short form of disclosure listed above must be plainly visible as part of the link;
• For links that appear in mobile applications, the disclosure needs to be “above the fold”, which means it is visible once the page loads without needing to scroll. It should not be located at the bottom of a field of text, or in small print tucked into a menu. This is not generally seen as conspicuous by the FTC.

Local rules

We also encourage to review local rules applied in your region. Below are some links to local regulations:

CA Guidance: The Advertising Standards Canada’s Influencer Disclosure Guidelines
UK Guidance: The Advertising Standards Authority ("ASA")
UE Guidance: GDPR and Digital Services Act
AU Guidance: The Australian Association of National Advertisers ("AANA") and ACCC guidance for advertising and promotions

Affiliate disclosure in RSS Ground affiliate feeds

Each RSS Ground affiliate feed now contains a mandatory disclosure:
This page contains affiliate links for which we may be compensated.

It will appear every time you display your affiliate feeds in browser:

Affiliate disclosure in RSS Ground content widgets

To add affiliate disclosure to your content widgets, you can use the HTML wrap before option in the Basic settings:

And your disclosure will appear on the top of your content block above affiliate products:

Affiliate disclosure in RSS Ground social media posts

To add affiliate disclosure to automated posts made by your posting campaigns, you can use the Hashtags pool option in the Posting Advanced settings: