The FTC Said Copywriters Are Liable. Here's What That Means for Your Brand.

What the December 2022 FTC Guidance Changed

Before December 2022, the practical assumption across the supplement and health product industry was that the FTC's primary enforcement target was the brand selling the product. Content creators — copywriters, marketing agencies, advertising consultants — operated under the assumption that they sat one step removed from direct liability.

The FTC's December 2022 Health Products Compliance Guidance dismantled that assumption explicitly. The document — the first comprehensive FTC health advertising guidance update in more than a decade — identifies a broader set of parties the FTC considers responsible for unsubstantiated health claims in product advertising. The guidance states that parties who create, approve, or distribute advertising that contains false or unsubstantiated claims may all face FTC enforcement — regardless of whether they are the company selling the product.

This shift matters enormously for how supplement brands manage their content operations. A brand can no longer use a third-party copywriter as a buffer against regulatory risk. The copywriter, the agency, and the brand all bear responsibility for claims that appear in published copy.

The guidance is also notable for what it clarified about the FTC's enforcement priorities. Health product advertising has become a priority area — driven by the explosion in supplement marketing during and after COVID-19, the rise of influencer marketing for health products, and the proliferation of disease claims on Amazon and Shopify. The FTC is actively looking at supplement advertising, and it now has a clear legal basis for pursuing everyone in the content supply chain.

Why the Timing Matters

The December 2022 guidance arrived alongside significant enforcement activity. The FTC brought 30+ health product enforcement actions in 2022 and 2023 alone. The agency has made clear that it considers digital advertising — including product page copy, email campaigns, social media content, and blog articles — to be advertising subject to the same standards as traditional broadcast and print advertising.

For supplement brands selling on Amazon, Shopify, or any direct-to-consumer channel, this means every text element on a product listing — the title, bullet points, description, A+ Content, backend search terms, and even image text — is advertising subject to FTC standards. There is no "product information" exemption for digital listings.

Who Is Liable: The Full Chain of Accountability

Understanding who bears regulatory risk under the FTC's 2022 framework requires looking at what the guidance says about each party in the advertising supply chain.

Brand Owners and Manufacturers

The brand is always the primary liable party. The brand sells the product, controls the messaging, and collects the revenue. If the brand approves copy that makes unsubstantiated claims — even copy written by an external agency — the brand bears primary responsibility for substantiating those claims and for any enforcement consequences that follow.

Copywriters and Advertising Agencies

Here is the significant change from prior practice: copywriters and agencies who produce health product advertising are now explicitly named in the FTC's framework. The FTC's position is that professional content creators should know the applicable legal standards for the products they write about.

The guidance uses the phrase "knew or should have known." A copywriter who regularly writes supplement advertising — and who is therefore presumed to understand that disease claims require FDA drug approval — cannot successfully claim ignorance when they write "cures arthritis" or "treats anxiety" in a product description. Producing that copy, and getting paid to do so, creates liability exposure under the FTC's current framework.

This is a meaningful change from how most freelance copywriters and content agencies have historically understood their risk. It means that any copywriter working in the supplement, skincare, or health product space needs to understand FTC compliance rules as part of their professional competency — not as an optional add-on.

Endorsers and Influencers

The 2022 guidance and the July 2023 Endorsement Guides update addressed influencer liability directly. An influencer who says "this supplement cured my anxiety" in a sponsored post is making an unsubstantiated disease claim on behalf of the brand. Both the brand (for publishing and failing to correct the claim) and the influencer (for making it) face FTC exposure. The influencer cannot successfully argue that they were sharing a personal experience — the FTC looks at the overall impression created by the content, not the intent behind it.

Distributors, Resellers, and Amazon Sellers

Third-party sellers on Amazon and other platforms are not insulated from FTC liability simply because they did not manufacture the product. If a reseller creates or modifies a product listing with unsubstantiated claims — even claims taken from the original product packaging — they can face enforcement action for publishing those claims to US consumers.

What Counts as an Unsubstantiated Claim

The FTC's substantiation standard for health claims is specific and demanding. "Competent and reliable scientific evidence" — the defined threshold — means tests, studies, or research conducted by qualified experts using methods that are generally accepted in the relevant field and that yield results that can be reproduced.

In practice, for therapeutic benefit claims about supplements, this standard means:

The Qualifier Problem

The FTC has been explicit about one of the most persistent misconceptions in supplement copy: adding qualifiers like "may," "helps," "supports," or "preliminary research suggests" does NOT automatically make an unsubstantiated claim compliant. The FTC has found, through consumer research and enforcement experience, that people interpret these modifiers positively — they read "may help treat arthritis" and hear "helps treat arthritis."

This matters because many supplement brands — and their copywriters — believe they have created a legal buffer by adding "may" before a prohibited claim. They have not. The underlying claim must still be substantiated by competent and reliable scientific evidence, regardless of the linguistic hedge placed in front of it.

What "Clinically Proven" Actually Requires

"Clinically proven" is the highest-risk phrase in supplement advertising. To substantiate this claim under FTC standards, a brand needs randomized controlled human clinical trials (RCTs) — the same evidence threshold used for pharmaceutical drug approval. Animal studies, in vitro research, observational data, practitioner endorsements, and customer testimonials do not meet this standard, individually or in combination.

The practical reality is that very few supplement brands have the RCT data required to make "clinically proven" claims about their specific formulations. Ingredient suppliers may have clinical data for individual ingredients, but that data rarely translates directly to specific finished product claims. A brand using a clinically-studied ingredient form (such as Magtein for magnesium) can reference the clinical research — but must be careful about how directly they apply ingredient-level study results to finished-product claims.

Disease Claims vs. Structure/Function Claims

DSHEA created a specific legal category for dietary supplements in the US. Understanding the boundary it draws is the single most important compliance skill for anyone writing supplement advertising.

Structure/function claims describe what a nutrient does in the normal structure or function of the human body. They do not claim to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Disease claims do exactly that — and making them without FDA drug approval is a violation of both DSHEA and the FTC Act.

The Required FDA Disclaimer for US Supplement Copy

Every structure/function claim in US supplement advertising must be accompanied by this exact language:

"These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease."

This disclaimer is required on the product label (DSHEA requirement) and is standard practice for product pages, email marketing, social media posts, and all other promotional materials targeting US consumers. Omitting it when structure/function claims are made creates additional compliance exposure. Importantly, it does not protect a disease claim — it only applies to legitimate structure/function claims.

The Penalty Numbers: Real FTC Enforcement

Abstract penalty numbers are easy to dismiss. Real enforcement cases make the risk concrete.

The Per-Day Math

At $53,088 per violation per day, the numbers compound quickly. Consider a supplement brand with three product listings on Amazon, each containing a disease claim ("treats arthritis," "cures insomnia," "prevents heart disease"). If those listings have been live for 180 days:

• 3 listings × 1 disease claim each = 3 violations
• 3 violations × 180 days = 540 violation-days
• 540 × $53,088 = $28.6 million in theoretical maximum civil penalty exposure

The FTC does not routinely pursue maximum penalties in first-offense cases. But enforcement actions regularly result in six-figure cash settlements, permanent injunctions against specific claim types, mandatory destruction of advertising materials containing prohibited claims, and multi-year compliance monitoring with third-party auditors — all of which have significant operational costs beyond the settlement amount itself.

Avast Ltd — $16.5 Million (2024)

The Avast enforcement action is important for supplement brands for a single reason: Avast is a Czech company. The FTC pursued them anyway, secured a $16.5 million settlement, and obtained injunctive relief covering their US-facing business operations. If your supplement brand is based outside the United States and markets to US consumers through any channel — Amazon, your own Shopify store, email marketing, or social media — you are subject to FTC jurisdiction. Geographic distance is not a legal defense.

The FTC's Current Enforcement Priorities

The FTC has publicly identified priority enforcement areas for health product advertising that directly affect supplement brands: weight loss and obesity claims (the most consistently enforced category), immune system claims made during and after COVID-19, cancer treatment or prevention claims, cognitive enhancement claims (particularly those targeting aging populations), and sexual health claims. These categories attract the most enforcement attention and should be treated with the highest level of compliance scrutiny.

The Revised Endorsement Guides: July 2023

The July 2023 Endorsement Guides update — the first since 2009 — introduced significant changes to how supplement brands can use customer testimonials, influencer endorsements, and before/after claims.

"Results May Vary" Is No Longer Sufficient

For decades, "results may vary" was used as a catch-all disclaimer accompanying testimonials that described dramatic or exceptional outcomes. The revised guides removed this as a sufficient safeguard.

Under the revised rules: if a testimonial describes results better than typical consumers can expect — "I lost 40 pounds in two months" or "my arthritis pain disappeared completely" — the advertiser must either:

• Substantiate with evidence that those results are representative of what most users experience, or
• Clearly and prominently disclose the results consumers can generally expect — not buried in fine print, and not placed where it's unlikely to be seen before the testimonial

A disclosure like "Results not typical. In a 12-week study, participants using this product experienced an average of X" is acceptable. "Results may vary" as the sole disclaimer is not.

Influencer Disclosure Requirements Under the Revised Guides

The revised guides made influencer disclosure requirements more specific and more stringent. Key points for supplement brands:

• Gifted products require disclosure — even if no cash payment was made, a free product constitutes a material connection requiring disclosure
• Affiliate arrangements require disclosure — any financial benefit from a promotion, including commission structures, must be disclosed
• Disclosures must be prominent — not buried in hashtag strings (#ad buried after 30 other hashtags is not compliant), not placed below a "more" fold, not in a location where they're unlikely to be seen before the content
• Disclosures apply to all platforms — Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, and any other social platform where branded content appears

Disease claims made by influencers remain the brand's legal responsibility. If an influencer says "this supplement cured my depression" in a sponsored post, and the brand fails to correct or remove that claim, the brand faces FTC exposure for the influencer's statement — regardless of whether the brand explicitly asked the influencer to make that claim.

The UK ASA: A Parallel Enforcement Risk

Supplement brands selling in the UK face a compliance framework that differs significantly from the US DSHEA model — and in many respects is stricter.

While DSHEA permits structure/function claims without pre-approval (with the required disclaimer), UK supplement advertising may only use health claims that appear on the GB Nutrition and Health Claims (NHC) Register — an authorized list maintained by the Food Standards Agency following Brexit. Claims that are legal under DSHEA — including many standard structure/function formulations — may be prohibited in the UK without an authorized NHC Register claim alongside them.

ASA Active Ad Monitoring

The enforcement mechanism that makes UK compliance uniquely demanding is the ASA's AI-powered Active Ad Monitoring system. Unlike the FTC, which typically responds to consumer and competitor complaints, the ASA actively and proactively scans eCommerce product pages, social media content, online advertising, and brand websites for non-compliant claims — without needing anyone to file a complaint.

This has practical implications: a supplement product page that has been live for three years with language like "boosts the immune system" or "detoxes the liver" can be found and sanctioned without any consumer ever reporting it. The ASA's enforcement capacity is no longer bottlenecked by complaint volume.

In December 2025, the ASA issued 9 simultaneous rulings against supplement brands for non-compliant health claims — demonstrating the scale and speed of its monitoring capability. In July 2024, the ASA specifically ruled that "nootropic" and "adaptogen" require NHC Register authorization — terms that many supplement brands had been using freely as general descriptors.

UK Prohibited Terms (Supplement Copy)

• "Superfood" — without an authorized NHC claim alongside
• "Detox" / "cleanse" — no authorized NHC claim exists for these concepts
• "Nootropic" — requires NHC Register authorization (July 2024 ruling)
• "Adaptogen" — same classification as nootropic
• "Boosts the immune system" — explicitly prohibited under ASA rules
• "No side effects" — absolute safety claims are prohibited
• "Clinically proven" without RCT evidence — prohibited under CAP Code

Australia TGA: The Strictest Enforcement Consequences

For supplement brands selling in Australia, the TGA represents the most consequential regulatory risk in terms of individual penalty severity. The TGA's enforcement powers are broader and penalties more severe than those in any other market WriteLift serves.

The TGA's key rules for Australian supplement advertising:

• Therapeutic goods must be listed on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG) — products without ARTG listing cannot legally be marketed in Australia with therapeutic claims
• "May help" provides zero protection — the TGA treats this qualifier identically to a direct therapeutic claim
• Testimonials for therapeutic goods are prohibited — individual results cannot be used as evidence of a product's effectiveness
• Advertising therapeutic goods to healthcare professionals requires ARTG listing and compliance with TGA advertising codes
• Content creators and agencies who produce non-compliant advertising have been directly pursued by the TGA in enforcement actions

The TGA issued three direct enforcement actions against content creators and PR agencies in 2023-2025, confirming that Australia follows the same "full chain of accountability" principle as the December 2022 FTC guidance.

Pre-Publication Compliance Checklist

WriteLift runs every supplement deliverable through this checklist before delivery. The FTC's guidance doesn't create ambiguity about the rules — it clarifies them with more precision than existed before. Brands that write clear, substantiated, structure/function copy face minimal FTC exposure. Brands that push into disease claim territory, rely on outdated disclaimers, or assume their copywriter will catch compliance issues face real enforcement risk.

For more on the specific language that is and isn't permitted in supplement copy, see our article on what supplement brands can't say — and what to write instead. For Amazon-specific compliance requirements, see our guide to the Amazon March 2026 supplement ingredient deadline.

Frequently Asked Questions