Word-of-Mouth Marketing Compliance in Taiwan: The Fair Trade Act, Disclosure Duties, and Platform Rules

The legal gray area around word-of-mouth marketing in Taiwan is a lot narrower than most brands assume.

Not every kind of buzz is fair game. The Fair Trade Commission’s endorsement advertising guidelines have long covered blogger posts and forum comments, and its 2023 amendment to the internet advertising principles brought influencers explicitly within scope, so the compliance requirements for word-of-mouth marketing in Taiwan are now quite explicit. Understanding where those boundaries sit is a precondition for doing this work at all.

The core regulatory framework

The Fair Trade Act (Articles 21 and 25)

Article 21 governs false advertising and misleading representations: a business may not make false or misleading representations about its goods or services. Paying people to pose as consumers and publish untrue reviews falls squarely within this article.

Article 25 governs “other deceptive or obviously unfair conduct sufficient to affect trading order.” A paid endorsement that does not disclose the commercial relationship — leaving consumers to believe they are reading an independent, objective assessment — has been held to constitute deceptive conduct.

Penalties for violating the Fair Trade Act range from NT$50,000 to NT$25 million, and in serious cases the authorities can order a suspension of operations.

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The Fair Trade Commission’s Guidelines on Endorsement Advertising and Principles on Internet Advertising Cases

These two documents are the most direct legal reference points for word-of-mouth marketing in Taiwan. The first defines who counts as an “endorser” (including ordinary consumers, bloggers and forum posters) and requires that any relationship between endorser and advertiser “not reasonably expected by the general public” be fully disclosed; non-disclosure that is capable of affecting trading order engages Article 25 of the Fair Trade Act. The second was amended in 2023 to bring influencers’ recommendations and sales activity explicitly within scope, with false content engaging Article 21. Check the FTC website for the current wording. The core requirements are as follows.

What triggers the duty to disclose

If the sponsoring party (the brand) provides consideration of any kind — cash, a free product, a discount code, complimentary services, a sponsored trip — to a creator or a word-of-mouth participant, the resulting content carries a disclosure obligation.

How the disclosure must be made

The guidelines themselves only require that disclosure be “sufficient”; they do not prescribe a font size, position or number of seconds. The practices below are what the industry commonly relies on to stay clearly on the right side of that line:

• Keep the disclosure clearly visible: not in tiny type, not buried inside a wall of hashtags.
• Put it in a prominent position: within the first two lines of an Instagram caption (where it will not be cut off behind the “more” link), or in the title or opening of a YouTube video.
• Pair a verbal disclosure in video with on-screen text rather than relying on either alone.

Common forms of correct disclosure

• Plain text: “This post is a sponsored brand partnership,” “This article contains paid promotional content,” “Trial review (product supplied by the brand).”
• Hashtags: #sponsored #ad #brandpartner — but a hashtag is easily lost in a crowd of other tags, so it is better to pair one with a written statement.

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Category-specific regulations

Food and health supplements

Under Taiwan’s Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation, food advertising may not claim medical efficacy (for example, “cures insomnia” or “improves diabetes”). Word-of-mouth content is bound by the same limitation: a consumer writing up their experience can describe how they felt, but cannot frame it as a therapeutic claim.

The Health Food Control Act goes a step further. Only foods that have passed review and obtained a Health Food certification number may claim specific benefits, and then only within the statutory scope of the approved function. Ordinary foods — a category that covers a great many of the supplements on the market — may not claim any health benefit at all.

Medical services and aesthetic medicine

Article 86 of the Medical Care Act prohibits medical advertising from using language that guarantees results or asserts superiority (“the highest standard”), and bars the use of patient testimonials or before-and-after photographs in advertising without approval from the competent authority.

Within a word-of-mouth post, there is a meaningful difference between a consumer describing their own experience (“I had hyaluronic acid filler and I was happy with the result”) and a guarantee of efficacy (“this clinic guarantees results”). The first is a personal statement; the second breaks the law.

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Compliance in practice, platform by platform

PTT

PTT — Taiwan’s largest and longest-running online bulletin board — has no built-in mechanism for sponsorship disclosure, but individual board rules typically prohibit undisclosed sponsored posts outright.

Practical recommendations for staying compliant on PTT

1. Have real people with genuine firsthand experience write the post. Do not use farmed or purchased accounts.
2. Keep the content centered on personal experience and avoid promotional language.
3. Where there is a paid arrangement, state it clearly in the title or opening lines (for example, “[Trial review] The trial product in this post was provided by [brand]”) rather than only at the end.
4. Read the board rules first: if a board prohibits sponsored posts, do not post there.
5. Make sure the account holder is available to answer follow-up questions in the comments. If they cannot field specific questions about using the product, readers will conclude they never used it.

Dcard

Dcard — a community platform hugely popular with students and young professionals in Taiwan — requires posts to include a #廣告 (ad) or #業配 (sponsored) hashtag in the title or body. Moderators can delete posts that fail to do so.

Instagram

Under Instagram’s platform rules, the Paid Partnership label is the officially recommended disclosure method, and it also satisfies the Fair Trade Commission’s requirements. Stories offer an equivalent paid-partnership tag that names the advertiser.

YouTube

YouTube’s policies require creators to check the “contains paid promotion” box in the video settings for any video that includes paid promotional content, and recommend a verbal disclosure at the start of the video. Leaving the box unchecked can lead YouTube to apply the paid-promotion disclosure itself or to remove the video outright.

Google Maps

Google’s policies explicitly prohibit:

• Restaurant or business owners reviewing their own listings
• Offering money or discounts in exchange for positive reviews
• Competitors leaving negative reviews on rival listings
• Using fake accounts or paid services to inflate ratings

Reviews that violate Google’s policies may be deleted, and in serious cases Google will attach a warning to the business listing indicating that its reviews may have been manipulated — far more damaging than any ordinary negative review.

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Operating principles for compliant word of mouth

The test to apply: for any word-of-mouth post, a reader should be able to tell at a glance whether it is the product of a paid arrangement. If the disclosure leaves consumers feeling misled, it has not done its job.

Authenticity is the best protection: the regulations target word of mouth that deceives consumers. Real customers sharing real experiences remain compliant even where consideration such as a free product is involved, so long as it is disclosed. The key to running word-of-mouth marketing compliantly is making sure every KOC who posts has genuinely used the product and is describing how they actually felt — rather than reciting a script written by the brand.

Keep records: partnerships with KOCs and KOLs should be documented in a written agreement covering disclosure obligations, the scope of usage rights, and compliance requirements. If a legal question arises later, that agreement is your strongest evidence.

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Compliance in word-of-mouth marketing is not there to restrict you; it is there to protect you. Genuine, properly disclosed word of mouth is the only kind that compounds into a durable brand asset — and the only kind the regulations are designed to protect.

If you have questions about the compliance of your brand’s word-of-mouth strategy, or you need a framework for word-of-mouth work that meets the regulatory requirements, talk to a NETVANA consultant. We build compliance considerations into the design of every word-of-mouth program we run.

Further reading: to learn how to assess an agency’s compliance practices when choosing a partner, see How to Choose a Word-of-Mouth Marketing Agency: A Complete Guide to Avoiding Bad Actors. For the full foundations of the discipline, see The Complete Guide to Word-of-Mouth Marketing. For the details of negotiating sponsorship fees and usage rights, see The Complete Guide to Influencer Pricing in Taiwan. And for the misconceptions that trip brands up most often, see Seven Myths About Word-of-Mouth Marketing. For disclosure duties in a heavily regulated category, see Word-of-Mouth Marketing for Financial and Insurance Services. For writing disclosure duties into enforceable terms, see The Influencer Contract Checklist. Crowdfunding disclosure rules for collaborations sit inside the same broader framework, see Word-of-Mouth Marketing for Crowdfunding. Disclosure duties are one rule; clearing rights to repost someone else’s content is another, see Reposting Customer Content. For writing disclosures in review posts safely, see The Blogger Review Marketing Guide. For the claim limits on learning-outcome testimonials, see Word-of-Mouth Marketing for Cram Schools and Online Courses. For how these compliance rules apply to a medical practice, see Word-of-Mouth Marketing for Traditional Chinese Medicine Clinics. For whether AI-made marketing content needs disclosure, read AI-Generated Content in Marketing. For how recommendations and advice are kept within bounds in a health-related setting, see Word-of-Mouth Marketing for Community Pharmacies and Drugstores. Giveaways come with their own legal and platform rules, outlined in How to Run a Social Media Giveaway.