TikTok Branded Content Policy (effective 31 August 2026): what the notification means and what you actually have to do
- The notice went to everyone; the policy only applies if you post in exchange for payment or any other incentive — gifted products included.
- It took effect 31 August 2026 and covers everything posted from that date, whenever it was filmed.
- Two rules change your work: the product must be clear inside the video itself, and the commercial content toggle is mandatory.
- Prohibited and Restricted are different lists with opposite outcomes; some category names appear on both.
If you're here because TikTok sent you a notification that says something like "our Branded Content Policy has been updated, effective 31 August 2026" — here is the short version, then the long one.
What it is: the rules for any post you make in exchange for payment or anything else of value from a brand. Is it live: yes, it took effect on 31 August 2026 and applies to everything you post from that date, regardless of when you filmed it. Do you have to do anything: only if you take brand deals. If you do, there are exactly two things that change how you work, and both are below. If you don't, you can close this tab — the notification went to everyone.
Everything in this article is quoted from the policy page itself (tiktok.com/legal, "Branded Content Policy"), re-read on 9 September 2026. The page states the effective date as 31 August 2026 and defines branded content as "Content that promotes or reviews a third-party brand or its products or services in exchange for payment or any other incentive." Note the last four words — "any other incentive" is why gifted products count.
The rule nobody is talking about: your product has to be clear inside the video
Straight from the policy:
"You must ensure that the product or service you are promoting is sufficiently clear, without requiring viewers to access your profile page or any links."
Read that twice. The entire "check my bio" school of branded content is on the wrong side of the line. If a viewer has to leave your video to work out what you're selling, that's not a disclosure problem you can fix with a toggle — it's a content problem you fix in the edit.
Practically, that means one of these has to appear in the video itself: the product on screen, the product named in the voiceover, or the product named in on-screen text. Not the link. Not the pinned comment. Not the bio.
The disclosure toggle is mandatory, and it does more than you think
The policy is unambiguous: "When posting Branded Content, you must enable the commercial content disclosure toggle."
Flipping it does three things, and creators usually only know about the first:
- Your post is automatically labelled as Branded Content.
- The post may be added to TikTok's Commercial Content Library.
- TikTok may keep that record even if you delete the original post.
That third one changes how you should think about the toggle. It isn't a caption you can revise later — it's an entry in a public-facing archive. We broke that down separately in what the TikTok Commercial Content Library actually stores, and the step-by-step for the toggle itself is in how to disclose commercial content on TikTok.
And the consequence line, verbatim: "To the extent that your Branded Content does not comply with any of these rules, we may remove the content or impose other restrictions." "Other restrictions" is doing a lot of work in that sentence — it is deliberately open-ended.
Prohibited vs Restricted: two lists, two very different outcomes
This is where creators get burned, because the two lists look similar and mean opposite things.
| Prohibited | Restricted | |
|---|---|---|
| Can you run it at all? | No | Yes, conditionally |
| Typical conditions | — | Geographic limits, age limits, approval |
| Partnering route | — | TikTok One only |
Prohibited (as listed on the policy page): adult and sexual products; animals; cigarettes, tobacco and nicotine; drug-related products; political advertising; products enabling dishonest behaviour; sensitive religious content; weapons, ammunition and explosives; weight loss products; counterfeit products; and "other controversial, distasteful or dangerous businesses". The page also lists dating and live video applications, financial services, pharmaceuticals/healthcare and professional services under Prohibited in their general form — with narrower, conditional versions of some of the same categories reappearing under Restricted.
Restricted (conditional, TikTok One only): alcohol; dating apps and live video applications; energy drinks; film, TV and game trailers; financial services; over-the-counter medicines; prescription medicines; vitamin supplements; gambling, lotteries and real-money games; underwear; government advertising.
Note where weight loss sits versus vitamin supplements. Those two get pitched to creators by the same kind of brand, land in the same inbox in the same week, and sit on opposite lists. If you accept both without checking, one of them is a violation before you shoot a frame. The same category name appearing on both lists (financial services, dating apps) is the other trap: the general version is out, a narrowly-conditioned version may be in — and only through TikTok One. See how restricted industries work on TikTok One for what that route actually requires.
Why "sufficiently clear" is a production note, not a legal one
It is worth sitting with the clarity rule a moment longer, because it is the only part of this policy that changes what you physically do on a shoot day.
The reason platforms end up writing rules like this is that disclosure had quietly split into two things. There was the formal disclosure — a label, a toggle, a hashtag — and there was the actual disclosure, which is whether a person scrolling at speed understood they were being sold something. For years creators optimised the first and let the second drift, because the second costs you the hook. "Link in bio" was the compromise that let a video stay clean and still technically point somewhere.
The new wording closes that gap by making the content carry the information rather than the profile. And once you read it that way, it stops being a compliance chore and becomes a fairly ordinary editing constraint — the same category as "say the payoff in the first three seconds."
Three ways to satisfy it without wrecking a video:
- Show it doing the thing. The product on screen, in use, for more than a beat. This is the strongest version because it survives muted playback.
- Name it in the voiceover. One clause. "This is the [brand] one." Costs you a second and satisfies the rule in audio-first viewing.
- Put it in on-screen text. The cheapest retrofit if you're sitting on already-shot footage.
What does not satisfy it, on a plain reading: a link sticker, a pinned comment, a bio line, or a brand name that only appears in the caption's fourth paragraph. Those all require the viewer to leave the video, which is the specific thing the sentence rules out.
There's a second-order benefit worth taking seriously. Content that names what it's promoting tends to convert better than content that teases it, because the audience that clicks through already knows what they're clicking toward. We are not going to attach a number to that, because nobody has published one worth citing.
The policy is live. Here is what to do this week
The effective date has passed, so the question is no longer "what do I change before the deadline" — it's "what is already out there under the new rules."
- Audit what's live and scheduled, not just your last post. Anything published on or after 31 August 2026 ships under this policy, even if you filmed it in July. Anything sitting in a queue does too.
- Add "name the product on screen" to your shot list. One line of on-screen text solves the clarity rule permanently.
- Check every open deal against the two lists before you invoice, not after. Pay special attention to categories that appear on both.
- Make the toggle a default step, not a thing you remember. If you publish through any tool or a team member, put it in the checklist that ships with the file. The one-page version is in the branded content policy checklist.
- Stop treating disclosure as a reach tax. An undisclosed brand deal that gets caught costs you the partnership and the account standing. There is no version of this where hiding it is the cheaper option.
The notification wasn't a warning about something you did. It was a change to what "done properly" means from now on. If your deals are already disclosed and your product is already on screen, you're finished — nothing else in the policy is new.
If you run several accounts, the failure mode is predictable: one template, one missing toggle, replicated everywhere. The same structural problem shows up in Instagram partnership ad permissions — the permission model is per-account, but the mistake is per-template. Tools that publish to many accounts from one queue (NoobClaw is one) make this worse or better depending on one thing: whether the disclosure setting travels with the content or gets set per post at the moment of publishing. Put it with the content.
FAQ
I got the notification but I've never done a brand deal. Do I need to do anything?
No. The notification went to everyone. The policy only applies to content posted in exchange for payment or another incentive. If none of your posts are that, nothing changes for you. Keep the two rules in mind for the day a brand does reach out: product clear in the video, toggle on.
Does the disclosure toggle reduce my reach?
TikTok has not published reach data tied to the toggle, and we won't invent a number. What we can say is that the policy makes it mandatory, and the Commercial Content Library gives TikTok a durable record either way. Optimising around an unpublished reach penalty by hiding a required disclosure is a bad trade at any assumed size.
Does this policy cover AI-generated content?
No. The Branded Content Policy contains no AI provisions. AI labelling is a separate obligation under separate rules — see AI content disclosure rules by platform. Keep the two checklists apart; satisfying one does nothing for the other.
What if I'm gifted a product rather than paid?
The policy's own definition says "payment or any other incentive". A gifted product with an expected post is an incentive. Treat it as branded content and flip the toggle. The cost of over-disclosing is a label; the cost of under-disclosing is the deal. For how the label works on other networks, see the paid partnership label on every platform.
Source: TikTok Branded Content Policy, tiktok.com/legal/page/global/bc-policy/en (official; first retrieved 2026-08-22, re-read 2026-09-09; page states effective 31 August 2026). Industry lists summarised from the page, not exhaustive — check the policy page for your specific category before signing.