What Advertisers Must Know About FTC Reviews + Testimonials Rule

Online reviews used to be “nice to have.” Now they’re basically the digital version of asking your neighbor, your cousin, and that one coworker who reads
ingredient labels like it’s a thriller novel. Which is why the FTC finally did what everyone’s compliance team has been begging for: it turned a pile of
guidance and enforcement trends into a real, enforceable rule aimed squarely at fake reviews, shady testimonial tactics, and reputation “management” that
looks a lot like reputation manipulation.

If you advertise in the U.S. (or market to U.S. consumers), you should treat this rule like a speed limit with a cop behind you. Not because the FTC
suddenly invented honesty, but because the rule gives the agency a clearer path to civil penalties when businesses knowingly cross the line. In plain
terms: you can’t “oops” your way through reviews anymore and hope a strongly worded email will fix it later.

Note: This is practical advertising guidance, not legal advice. When in doubt, talk to counselpreferably before launching “5 stars for $5” night.

1) The Basics: What This Rule Is (and Why It Matters)

The FTC’s Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule (16 C.F.R. Part 465) targets deceptive and unfair conduct involving consumer reviews and testimonials.
It’s designed to cut down on fabricated reviews, suppressed negatives, and fake social proofbecause those tactics don’t just mislead shoppers; they also
punish honest competitors who play by the rules.

Here’s the big shift for advertisers: a trade regulation rule can unlock civil penalties for knowing violations. That changes the risk
calculus from “Could we get a warning?” to “Could we be paying for this campaign long after the CTR report is forgotten?”

2) Key Definitions Advertisers Should Actually Read

You don’t have to memorize the CFR like it’s karaoke night at the law library. But there are a few concepts you should understand because they show up
again and again in enforcement:

Consumer review vs. testimonial

A consumer review is typically a consumer’s evaluation of a product, service, or businessoften the “stars + comment” format.
A testimonial can be broader (including endorsements in advertising). Practically, that means different parts of the rule can apply
depending on whether you’re running a review campaign or using endorsements in marketing assets.

“Clear and conspicuous” disclosures

The rule uses a “clear and conspicuous” standard for certain required disclosures (notably insider relationships). In practice, this is the FTC saying:
don’t hide important context in mouse-hover tooltips, hard-to-read overlays, or “click here to learn why this person is totally not your employee.”
If a consumer has to take extra action (like clicking a hyperlink) to see a disclosure, the disclosure may not count as “unavoidable.”

Material relationship

If the reviewer/testimonialist has a relationship that could affect credibility (employee, executive, agent, paid connection, family tie, etc.), that
relationship can be “material.” The rule’s insider provisions and the FTC’s broader endorsement principles expect advertisers to disclose material
connections in a way real humans actually notice.

3) The Six Big Prohibitions (in Human Language)

The rule is detailed, but for advertisers it boils down to a handful of “don’t do this” categories. Here’s what to watch, with examples that map to real
marketing workflows.

A) Fake or false reviews and testimonials

You can’t write, generate, or sell reviews/testimonials that pretend to be from real people with real experiences when that’s not true. That includes:

• Reviews from people who don’t exist (hello, “Sarah J., Verified Buyer” who lives in the Land of Make-Believe)
• Reviews from people who never used the product or service
• Reviews that misrepresent the reviewer’s experience (e.g., claiming results they never got)

Example: An agency offers a “reputation boost package” with 200 five-star reviews posted over 48 hours. If those reviewers didn’t
actually buy/use the product, that’s not “marketing.” That’s a compliance problem in a trench coat.

B) Buying reviews that are conditioned on sentiment

Incentivized reviews are a common gray zone, and the rule puts a bright line in the middle of it: you can’t offer compensation or incentives in exchange
for reviews that are expressly or implicitly required to be positive (or negative).

Example: “Leave us a 5-star review and get 10% off” is the obvious version. The sneaky version is wording that strongly implies you only
want praiselike asking people to “tell us how much you loved your visit” to get a coupon. If the incentive feels tied to positivity, assume the FTC will
read it the same way.

Better approach: If you offer an incentive, make it clearly for leaving an honest reviewno matter the ratingand consider how you’ll
disclose the incentive where consumers will see it.

C) Insider reviews without disclosure

The rule targets “insider” reviews/testimonialsthink officers, managers, employees, and certain agentswhen they post about your business without a clear
and conspicuous disclosure of their relationship.

Example: Your head of sales posts a glowing review on a third-party platform without disclosing they work for the company. Even if the
review is “true,” the missing relationship disclosure can make it deceptive.

Also watch the “helpful enthusiasm” trap: executives nudging employees or relatives to post reviews. If the result is a wave of undisclosed insider
reviews, you may be stepping into the rule’s risk zone.

D) Company-controlled “independent” review sites or entities

If you control, own, or operate a website, organization, or entity, you can’t materially misrepresent that it provides independent reviews or opinions.
In other words: you don’t get to run “TotallyUnbiasedBestToothbrushRankings.com” if you are, in fact, the toothbrush company.

Example: A brand creates a “seal program” that appears independent but is actually run by the brand, and then awards the seal to its own
products. That’s exactly the type of “looks independent, isn’t independent” vibe the rule is aimed at.

E) Review suppression and intimidation

The rule goes after review suppression in multiple forms. A few high-risk behaviors include:

• Using physical threats, intimidation, or harassment to pressure someone to remove or change a review
• Using unjustified legal threats to silence a reviewer
• Misrepresenting that the reviews displayed represent “most” or “all” reviews while quietly hiding the negatives

Important nuance: You can moderate reviews for legitimate reasons (spam, profanity, off-topic content, wrong business) if you do it
consistently and not in a way that selectively buries criticism. You can also respond publicly to negative reviewsbut don’t make false accusations about
the reviewer or use the response as a veiled threat.

F) Fake indicators of social media influence

Selling, buying, or using fake followers, likes, views, or similar metrics to misrepresent influence is in the FTC’s crosshairs. If a business knew or
should have known the indicators were fake, the risk goes up fast.

Example: A brand buys 50,000 followers so it can pitch itself as “America’s fastest-growing wellness brand,” then uses that number in
ad creative and influencer outreach. If those followers are bots, that “social proof” can become “social evidence.”

4) The “Dropped” Piece: Review Hijacking Was Proposed (and Still Looks Risky)

During rulemaking, the FTC proposed a specific ban on “review hijacking” (repurposing reviews so they appear to be for a different product). The final
rule ultimately reserved that section instead of adopting it as a standalone prohibition.

Advertisers should not interpret that as a green light. Reusing reviews in a way that changes what consumers think they’re reading can still be deceptive
under general FTC principleseven if it’s not its own numbered section in Part 465.

5) How This Rule Fits with Endorsements, Influencers, and “#Ad” Reality

If you’re thinking, “Wait, aren’t reviews and endorsements already regulated?” Yesand that’s the point. The FTC has long enforced deception in reviews,
testimonials, and endorsements under Section 5 of the FTC Act and through the Endorsement Guides.

What’s different now is that Part 465 makes certain conduct explicitly unlawful and can strengthen penalty options for knowing violations. Meanwhile:

• Influencers: Even when a specific subsection is framed around consumer reviews, influencer testimonials and endorsements are still heavily regulated through disclosure principles and other parts of the rule ecosystem.
• Disclosure tools: Platform “paid partnership” labels can help, but they’re not automatically sufficient. A disclosure must be noticeable and understandable in context (especially in video).

6) A Practical Compliance Playbook for Advertisers

You don’t need a “Chief Vibes Officer” to run compliant review marketing. You need process. Here’s a workable approach that marketing teams can actually use.

Step 1: Map your review supply chain

List every place reviews or testimonials come from: onsite widgets, email/SMS flows, third-party platforms, influencer content, UGC agencies, affiliates,
and customer success “advocates.” If you can’t trace it, you can’t defend it.

Step 2: Fix incentives so they reward honesty, not positivity

If you offer an incentive, ensure your copy doesn’t imply a positive review is required. Keep it neutral (“Share your honest feedback”) and apply the
incentive regardless of rating. Then consider the disclosure angle: consumers should know when a review was incentivized, especially if you’re using it
in marketing materials.

Step 3: Put guardrails around insiders

• Create a simple policy: employees/executives can review only with clear disclosure (and in some cases, not at all on certain platforms).
• Train customer-facing teams not to “request a favor” from staff or family.
• Don’t let insiders quietly inflate star ratingsespecially if your marketing highlights the average rating more than the underlying reviews.

Step 4: Moderate reviews consistently (and document it)

If you remove reviews for profanity, spam, or irrelevant content, apply the same criteria to positive and negative reviews. Keep an internal log of
takedowns and the reason. Consistency is your best friend in a compliance audit.

Step 5: Vet agencies, PR firms, and “review management” vendors

Put review integrity language in contracts. Ask vendors to confirm they don’t:

• generate reviews (including AI-written ones) for people who didn’t use the product
• buy reviews
• pressure reviewers with threats or bogus legal warnings
• use bots or fake follower services

Step 6: Build an internal “red flag” checklist

A few easy-to-spot warning signs:

• Unnaturally fast spikes in five-star reviews
• Repeated phrasing across multiple reviews
• Reviewers with no history and generic names
• “Verified buyer” labels that can’t be substantiated
• Follower growth that jumps overnight with no campaign explanation

7) Concrete Scenarios (and What to Do Instead)

Scenario 1: “Leave a 5-star review for 10% off” (Ecommerce)

Problem: Incentive tied to positive sentiment.
Fix: Offer a post-purchase incentive for an honest review, regardless of rating, and disclose the incentive where appropriate.

Scenario 2: “We only ask happy customers to review” (Local services)

Problem: “Review gating” can distort the overall impression and may be considered deceptive depending on execution.
Fix: Invite all customers to leave feedback, and handle unhappy customers through service recovery without blocking public review options.

Scenario 3: “Our CEO loves our product!” (B2B/SaaS testimonial page)

Problem: Insider relationship may be unclear to the audience.
Fix: Add an obvious disclosure (e.g., “CEO of [Company Name]”) near the testimonial and make sure it’s noticeable on mobile.

Scenario 4: “We hired a growth shop and got 30k followers” (Social media)

Problem: If those followers are bots, you may be buying fake indicators of influenceespecially if you use the numbers in ads.
Fix: Vet growth vendors, demand transparency, and avoid using vanity metrics as advertising claims unless you can substantiate that they reflect real people.

8) Penalties and Practical Risk: Why This Isn’t Just a Policy Update

The reputational fallout from fake reviews can be brutal: platform takedowns, negative press, competitor complaints, and consumer backlash. But the legal
risk is what forces change. Civil penalties can scale quickly when each deceptive act is treated as a separate violation. And beyond penalties, the FTC
can seek court orders that reshape how you market and collect reviews going forward.

The smartest advertisers treat review integrity as an asset: it protects conversion rates and reduces compliance risk. When you can truthfully say,
“These reviews are real, representative, and earned,” you’ve got a competitive edge money can’t buybecause money buying it is the problem.

Conclusion

The FTC Reviews + Testimonials Rule isn’t here to ruin anyone’s marketing fun. It’s here to stop the small (and not-so-small) tricks that turn review
ecosystems into fiction sections. If your strategy depends on manufactured praise, hidden connections, or quietly sweeping criticism under the rug,
it’s time to rebuild.

Build review programs that reward honesty, disclose material relationships, moderate consistently, and verify your vendors. Do that, and you won’t just
be saferyou’ll be more persuasive. Because real trust converts better than fake stars ever will.

Experiences From the Real World (What Advertisers Commonly Run Into)

If you’ve ever watched a marketing team try to “improve reviews” under deadline pressure, you know the story usually starts innocently. A campaign is
underperforming, competitors look shinier, and someone says, “What if we just… encouraged more reviews?” That’s fineuntil the word “encouraged” quietly
turns into “conditioned,” “filtered,” or “incentivized in a way that only makes sense if people say nice things.”

One common pattern is what you might call the coupon copy slip. A business drafts an email like, “Leave us a review and get $5 off,” which is
neutral. Then someone “optimizes” it for positivity: “Tell us what you loved and get $5 off.” That tiny change can create an implied requirement that
the review be positive. In real compliance cleanups, fixing this is often less about deleting the incentive and more about making the language neutral,
making the reward unconditional, and ensuring the team understands that “we expect happy reviews” is not the same thing as “we require happy reviews.”

Another frequent issue is the well-meaning insider. Employees are proud of the product. A manager sees competitors with higher ratings and asks the
team to “support the company.” Suddenly, a wave of reviews appearsmany without disclosures. Even if nobody lied about their experience, the missing
relationship is what creates deception risk. The best fix tends to be simple: clear internal rules, a disclosure template that’s impossible to miss, and
training that says, out loud, “If you work here, you don’t get to pretend you don’t.”

Then there’s review moderation drift. Many companies start with legitimate moderation: remove profanity, spam, or reviews about the wrong business.
Over time, the criteria quietly expandespecially when negative reviews feel “unfair.” That’s when moderation becomes suppression. In practice, the
healthiest review programs treat negative reviews as operational data: respond publicly, fix the process, and let the review stand unless it violates a
clearly documented, consistently applied standard. When businesses document moderation reasons and apply them evenly, they’re far more defensible.

Finally, plenty of advertisers run into the third-party surprise: a vendor promises “growth,” “reputation management,” or “social proof,” and the
results look too good to be truebecause they are. The operational lesson most teams learn is that compliance can’t be outsourced. You can outsource
execution, but you can’t outsource accountability. The brands that stay out of trouble are the ones that ask uncomfortable questions early, require
written assurances in contracts, and monitor outcomes for red flags (like sudden review spikes or suspicious follower jumps).

The good news: advertisers who clean this up almost always end up with better marketing. Not louder marketingtruer marketing. And when your reviews
are real, representative, and transparently earned, you don’t need hacks. You just need a product (and customer experience) worth talking about.

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