FTC Giveaway Disclosure Requirements

The FTC does not care that your giveaway is small. It cares whether an ordinary reader can tell that money, product, or a prize entry changed what someone posted. That is the whole rule, and almost every disclosure failure is a failure to make it obvious.

If any part of your audience is in the United States, the Endorsement Guides apply, regardless of where you are based.

The Rule Underneath Everything

The FTC's Endorsement Guides (16 CFR Part 255) sit under Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits deceptive practices. The operative concept is the material connection: any relationship between an advertiser and an endorser that a consumer would not reasonably expect and that could affect how much weight they give the endorsement.

Payment is a material connection. So is free product. So is a family relationship, an employment relationship, an affiliate commission, and, importantly for giveaways, the chance to win a prize.

When a material connection exists and is not obvious from context, it has to be disclosed clearly and conspicuously.

The Guides were substantially updated in 2023, and the update tightened rather than loosened things. Platform-native disclosure tools were called out as often insufficient on their own. Standalone hashtags fared badly. The FTC also made clear that advertisers carry responsibility for monitoring what endorsers actually post.

Two Disclosure Duties in Every Giveaway

Giveaways create disclosure obligations in two directions at once, and most hosts only think about the first.

Duty one: disclose your own connections

If a brand paid you to run the giveaway, gifted you product, or supplied the prize, that is a material connection between you and the brand. It belongs in the post.

Meta's paid partnership label helps and you should use it, but the FTC has been explicit that platform tools alone often do not meet the standard. Add your own words in the caption.

Working examples:

"Sponsored giveaway with @brand — prize provided by them." "@brand sent me this bundle and is covering the prize for this giveaway." "Paid partnership with @brand. Giveaway details below."

Duty two: tell entrants how to disclose

This is the one that surprises people. If entering requires posting content that features a product or brand, each entrant post is itself an endorsement, and the entry they receive is the thing of value creating the material connection.

The origin case is Cole Haan. In 2013, the brand ran a Pinterest promotion where entrants pinned Cole Haan shoes using #WanderingSole for a chance at a $1,000 shopping spree. In March 2014, the FTC sent a warning letter saying the pins were endorsements, and that the hashtag did not adequately communicate the financial incentive behind them. No penalty followed, but the letter set the standard everyone has worked from since.

So if your giveaway asks entrants to post a photo with your product, film a Reel using it, or share it to their Story, you have to instruct them to disclose, tell them what to say, and tell them where to put it.

A promotion that only asks for a comment on your own post does not trigger this second duty, because the comment sits on your clearly branded post and the context is obvious.

What "Clear and Conspicuous" Actually Means

The standard is that an ordinary consumer engaging with the content can easily notice and understand the disclosure. In practice that breaks into a few requirements.

Placement. Above the fold. Visible before anyone taps "more." A disclosure at the bottom of a 2,000-character caption after twenty hashtags is not conspicuous.

Prominence. Legible size and contrast. On video, on screen long enough to read, not flashed for half a second.

Plain language. Words ordinary people understand. Not jargon, not abbreviations.

Same medium. Audio content needs audio disclosure. Video needs it on screen and preferably spoken too. Text-only disclosure on a spoken-word Reel is weak.

Unavoidable. It should not require clicking, scrolling, expanding, or hovering.

Hashtags That Work and Hashtags That Do Not

This is where creators lose most often, so it is worth being specific.

Generally acceptable:

• #XYZBrand_Sweepstakes
• #XYZBrand_Contest
• #ad placed at the very start of the caption
• #sponsored placed at the very start
• Plain text: "Sponsored by", "Paid partnership with", "Entering to win"

Generally not acceptable:

• #sweeps — the FTC has said many consumers do not know what it means
• #sp, #collab, #partner, #thanks
• #ad buried in a hashtag block at the end
• #XYZRocks or any branded hashtag that does not say contest or sweepstakes
• Platform labels used alone with no caption text

The reasoning is consistent. The word "sweepstakes" or "contest" has to appear in a form ordinary readers recognise, and it has to be somewhere they will actually see it. #XYZ_Sweepstakes passes because the full word is right there. #sweeps fails because it is an abbreviation many people cannot decode.

Instructions to Give Your Entrants

If your entry mechanic requires entrants to post, your rules and caption need to spell out exactly what they must do.

To enter, post a photo of your setup and start your caption with #BrandName_Sweepstakes. The hashtag must be the first thing in your caption, not in a hashtag block at the end. Entries without it are not eligible.

Three things make this work. The hashtag contains the full word "sweepstakes." The placement is specified. The consequence of skipping it is stated, which gives you a clean basis for disqualification.

For video entries, add: "Say or show on screen that you are entering a sweepstakes."

You are also expected to monitor. The 2023 update made advertiser responsibility for endorser compliance explicit. That means checking entries, removing non-compliant ones, and keeping a record that you did.

Format-Specific Guidance

Feed posts. Disclosure in the first line or two of the caption, before the truncation point.

Reels. On-screen text held long enough to read, plus caption text. If the entry instructions are spoken, say the disclosure too.

Stories. Overlay text on the frame, large enough to read, not tucked behind a sticker. If the giveaway spans several frames, disclose on each one that mentions the brand or the prize.

Lives. Say it when you announce the giveaway and repeat it periodically, since viewers join at different times.

Carousels. First slide.

Penalties and Enforcement Reality

The FTC's most common first step is a warning letter, as with Cole Haan. Beyond that it can pursue consent orders with compliance obligations lasting years, and civil penalties where a party had knowledge of the standards, which can run into thousands of dollars per violation.

Enforcement has historically focused on brands more than individual creators, but the Guides apply to both, and the 2023 update strengthened the language on advertiser oversight of endorsers. State attorneys general and the National Advertising Division bring their own actions.

The practical risk for most creators is not a federal case. It is a brand partner terminating a contract because your post created exposure for them.

Disclosure Is Not the Only Requirement

FTC disclosure sits alongside two other rulebooks. Meta's Promotion Guidelines govern whether your post is permitted on the platform, covered in our guide to the Instagram giveaway rules for 2026. Sweepstakes and lottery law governs whether your structure is lawful at all, which is a question of whether your giveaway is a lottery or a sweepstakes.

A perfectly disclosed promotion can still be an illegal lottery. A perfectly structured sweepstakes can still be a deceptive practice. You need all three right.

Compliance Checklist

•  Sponsorship, payment, or gifted product disclosed in plain text at the top of the caption
•  Platform paid partnership label used in addition to, not instead of, caption text
•  Prize provider named if different from the host
•  Entrant disclosure hashtag specified with the full word "sweepstakes" or "contest"
•  Placement of the entrant hashtag stated explicitly
•  Consequence of omitting the disclosure stated in the rules
•  Video entries required to disclose on screen or aloud
•  Disclosures visible without expanding the caption
•  Entries monitored for compliance and non-compliant entries removed
•  Record kept of monitoring and of the final eligible entry list

That last point matters more than it looks. When you filter entries for disclosure compliance, your draw has to run on the filtered list, and you need to be able to show it. Insta Picker lets you require a specific hashtag, exclude accounts, remove duplicates, and export the eligible pool, which gives you the audit trail. The release wording that pairs with it is in our Instagram giveaway disclaimer template, and the full rules document can be assembled with our Instagram giveaway terms and conditions generator.