Key Points:

• Ensure that the product that you are promoting matches the listed product.
• When stitching or dueting videos, always add your own edits or commentary to keep the content original.
• Do not repost your own content.
• Comply with intellectual property laws by avoiding the use of copyrighted material or promoting counterfeits and knockoffs.

Promotional Content on TikTok Shop

These guidelines apply globally to all creators on TikTok Shop. They cover promotional content such as product photographs, videos, and descriptions, which customers rely on to make shopping decisions.
As a creator, it is your chance to make an impression. Keeping your promotional content accurate, relevant, and original builds trust with your viewers and helps your content thrive. Failure to comply with these guidelines may result in enforcement actions, such as content removal or temporary feature limitations.
Click on the navigation bar on the right for detailed guidelines on how to:

1. Promote Products Accurately
2. Post Original and Creative Content
3. Respect Others' Privacy & Intellectual Property (IP) Rights

Promote Products Accurately

Accurate and relevant promotional content enhances your engagement with customers and builds their confidence to make informed purchase decisions.
Watch the video below to dive deeper into the details.

Best Practices

• Incorporate informative visual or verbal elements in your content to make the product the focus.
  • Visual elements to include:
    • Show how to use the product in a real-time demonstration.
    • Present the product from multiple angles and highlight its key details.
    • Show how the product is made.
    • Showcase the packing of orders.
  • Verbal elements to include:
    • Share details about the product's size, weight, dimensions, color, or scent.
    • Explain the product's features and how to use it.
    • Describe the product content or ingredients.
    • Share the inspiration behind the product, its design, cultural reference, or brand story.
    • Discuss the price and mention any available discounts or deals.
    • Include details about shipping methods, prices, and delivery times.
    • Share your personal review and any relevant stories about the product.
    • Explain how the product is made.
• When featuring a product in your video or livestream, make sure the promoted product matches the listed product.
  • Products match when they share the same physical type and shape.
  • Products also match even if they differ in color.
  • Products do not match if they differ in size, weight, pattern, quantity, graphics, logo, image, or print.
  • If you showcase sample products that differ in size, weight, or quantity from the listed product, you must add a clear disclaimer. This disclaimer should state that the item shown is a sample and does not include all products in the listing.
  • Use text, descriptions, or titles of your livestream or video to accurately describe the product you are promoting.
• Use text, descriptions, or titles of your LIVE or video to accurately describe the product you are promoting.

What to Avoid

To ensure product promotions are accurate and relevant, it is important to avoid the following.

• Avoid hosting a LIVE without featuring the promoted product.
  • If you are showcasing a makeup or skincare product, it is okay to not show the product itself as long as it is clearly applied to your face or body.
• Avoid leaving out important visual and verbal information about the product.
• Avoid using stock footage or illustrated images that do not accurately represent the product.

Examples of Irrelevant Promotion

• Hosting a LIVE where you talk about your day without describing or showcasing the listed product.
• Featuring products that are obscured, out of focus, or not shown at all in your listing or promotional content
• Promoting makeup or skincare products without showing the before-and-after results achieved by using them

Examples of Inconsistent Product Promotion

• The hoodie promoted in your video is a zip-up style, but the product link is for a pullover hoodie.
• The blender used in your LIVE demonstration has a different design from the one sold in the product link.
• Featuring a vitamin packet in your video that is smaller or of a different volume than the product sold in the listing, without clearly stating that it is a sample size.
• Featuring only a blender in your LIVE but linking it to a listing for a cooking pan.
• Showcasing a t-shirt with a dog print but linking it to a product with a cat print.

Mismatched products can confuse viewers and create a negative experience. They may also lead to potential penalties for creators (such as content removal or temporary feature limitations), customer dissatisfaction, and product returns. Keep your content relevant and true to the listed product for successful promotions.

Post Original Content

Creating original content is essential to distinguish your content on TikTok Shop. This means creating posts that are uniquely crafted by you, showcasing your creative ideas, and connecting with your viewers in a way that only you can.
Unoriginal content, on the other hand, refers to anything that reproduces copyrighted work or content directly from another source. In addition, posting content sourced from other individuals, organizations, or platforms that infringe on copyright laws and intellectual property rights is strictly not allowed on TikTok Shop and may result in enforcement actions, such as content removal or temporary feature limitations.
Watch the video below to dive deeper into the details.

Best Practices

Here's how you can ensure your content is original:

• Create something new. Your contributions should be distinctive enough to be considered original. Promote and add a new perspective of the product verbally or through the use of text.
• Show yourself. Make sure you are clearly visible in the content you share. Whether it's a stitched or duet video, make sure that you are visible in that content.
• Vary your presentation. When creating content, diversify your overall presentation by changing your background setting and product display instead of simply changing your clothing.
• Refresh your scripts. Develop a new original script for each video or LIVE rather than relying on past material. Avoid repeating the same script from previous content.
• Maintain content novelty. Stay creative and ensure each piece of content is unique. Whether you manage one account or many, each post should offer something new for your audience to discover.
• Give credit. If you are using someone else's content, make sure to include proper crediting and recognize the original creator.
• Tell your story. Showcase your brand, story, and products through original videos and LIVE content.
• Report Unoriginal. If you find other creators reposting your content, you are welcome to report it through our IPPC (Intellectual Property Protection Center) platform.
• Collaborative Posting: Sellers and creators are encouraged to discuss and agree on who will publish the product promotion video to ensure the best collaboration results.

What to Avoid

To maintain the originality and integrity of your content, it is important to avoid the following.

• Do not share content from other creators, media outlets, or copyrighted sources if you are not making significant changes or adding your unique perspective through voiceovers, text edits, or personal interaction.
  • If the content contains a platform watermark, sticker, or logo, it might have been taken from an external source — do not post it.
• Do not use copyrighted material such as clips, songs, sound effects from films, TV programs, music concerts, theatrical performances, or music videos in your content. There are some exceptions where this is allowed:
  • If the content is used for educational or informative purposes, such as providing the viewers with new knowledge, skill, or commentary.
  • If the content is used to describe a promoted product.
  • If the content is posted with artistic additions.
• Do not pre-record your LIVEs or insert any pre-recorded clips in your LIVEs.
• Do not use screen recordings or recordings of an electronic device screen as part of your LIVEs.
  • Your viewers can tell if they are watching a screen recording instead of a LIVE — especially if they can see a phone status bar, computer task bar, or mouse cursor. This practice should be avoided.
• Do not use AI-generated audio or voiceover narrations in your LIVEs.
• Do not post content that simply reproduces established trends that do not help to promote the product.
• Do not repost your own content. Once you have posted a TikTok video or LIVE recording, do not upload the same content again. Reusing the same material can be seen as repetitive and does not add additional value to your viewers.
• Do not manipulate your videos using edits, effects, or filters to disguise copied or repetitive content.

Simply adding a watermark or superimposed logo to content does not make the content original and may result in a violation.

Examples of Unoriginal Content

• Stitching a product review video without any new commentary
• Uploading screen recordings from a movie or TV show and blurring the original logo or watermark
• Changing clothes between LIVEs without making any changes to the background setup or product display
• Switching between a LIVE and playback of pre-recorded clips
• Recreating a video that directly mirrors the actions of another creator's content
• Merging content that is not your own without permission with your personal original content

Content Editing Tactics to Avoid

Present videos in their original, unaltered form. Do not use technical manipulation (such as layered structures or frame tampering) to bypass content policies. This undermines platform integrity and may result in enforcement action, such as content removal or temporary feature limitations.

Best Practices

Here’s how to keep your content authentic and avoid risky violations:

• Use Native Video Formats: Upload videos directly filmed or edited within TikTok without external technical manipulation.
• Continuous Content Integrity: Ensure single visual narrative without interruptions

What to Avoid

To maintain your content’s authenticity and integrity, it is important to avoid the following.

• Layered Videos (for example, Top/Bottom Bars): Adding unrelated content, or hidden elements to disguise primary video material.
• Sandwich Frame Insertion: Splicing irrelevant frames to disrupt content detection.
• Format Disguise: Altering aspect ratios, color layers, or overlays to conceal policy-violating content.

Examples of Evasive Editing Tactics

• Layered Video: A cosmetics promotion video with unrelated videos or stickers added to the top and bottom sections to circumvent platform review
• Misleading Frame Insertion: A product showcase video that inserts unrelated content at regular intervals in an attempt to bypass platform detection systems

Respect Others' Privacy & Intellectual Property (IP) Rights

• Using a public figure's name, image or likeness in your content
• Featuring brands in your content if you are not promoting their products
• Promoting counterfeit or knockoff products for sale

• Counterfeits are unauthorized copies or replicas of actual branded products. They tend to feature the brand's trademarks. These can be a logo, slogan, symbol, design, expression, pattern, or monogram.
• Knockoffs closely resemble branded products, but they are not copies or replicas. They might "copy" elements of a branded product's design, feel or look, or some of its features or functions. Promoting such products may result in enforcement actions, including content removal or temporary feature limitations.

Best Practices

• Use accurate branding when promoting your product. If your product is from Brand A, only Brand A should appear on the product detail page, including the title, description, SKU (Stock Keeping Unit), and images.
• When you receive a product to promote, check the following:
  • The product's overall design, feel, and look
  • Any brand trademarks on the product or its packaging
• If the product features a brand's trademark, check with the seller if they have brand authorization to sell it. If they do not, do not promote that product. It might be a counterfeit.
• If the product looks similar to a branded product or "copies" elements of its design, feel, or look, do not promote it. It could be a knockoff. Products with even a 50-60% similarity are not permitted. Below are examples of knockoffs (which must not be promoted) and original products (which can be promoted):
  

What to Avoid

• Do not use trademarks (for example, brand names and logos) in your content without permission from their owner.
• Do not use someone's name, image, or likeness to promote a product without their permission.
• Do not promote products if obvious branding changes have been made to mask their similarity to actual branded products:
  • Shortened or misspelt brand names
  • Brand names with spaces added or removed
  • Brand names with repeated characters
  • Brand names with letters replaced with numbers or symbols
• Do not promote any product where the listing emphasizes its close similarity to an actual branded product.
  • Promotional phrases that violate this rule include "inspired by X brand", "similar to", "as good as", "same features as", "it works the same as", "duplicate of", and "smells like".
  • Avoid products with descriptive terms such as replica, forged, mirror, copy, alike, duplicate, dupe, clone, like the original, as the original, imitation, high imitation, 1:1, mirror quality, lushentic grade, and factory leakage.
• Do not use brand names in hashtags (for example, "#Brand") to increase traffic, especially in video content.
• Do not manipulate your videos using edits, effects, or filters to disguise copied or repetitive content.

Examples of Content That Does Not Infringe Others' Privacy and IP Rights

• Displaying a brand's name to highlight that your product works with or supports their products. Examples include charging cables and game consoles
• Mentioning another brand to compare it with your product

Examples of Content Infringing Others' Privacy and IP Rights

• Using a celebrity's name to endorse a product without permission
• Posting content of yourself wearing a T-shirt with an athlete's name or face without permission
• Claiming that another creator loves using a product, without permission
• Broadcasting a LIVE with the logo of a famous fast food chain in the background without permission
• Including a screenshot of a customer's positive review in your content without permission
• Displaying a brand's logo, while promoting a product, to suggest it is similar to the brand's product
• Promoting an unbranded game console which contains pirated video games

Unlock New Growth Through Promotional Content

Unlock new growth on TikTok Shop by creating content that is relevant, original, and valuable for your viewers. Align your content with the products you're promoting while showcasing your unique style and take your growth to the next level.
Key Takeaways:

• Ensure your promoted product exactly matches the listing.
• Create original content with your own commentary and perspective.
• Do not repost content from others or your own previous posts.
• Do not use copyrighted material or promote counterfeit products.

Frequently Asked Questions

• How can I tell if the content I want to use is copyrighted?
  • You should avoid using any content from movies, TV shows, or any other media created by others, as well as material sourced from other organizations or platforms. To avoid copyright issues, always create original content yourself.
• What to do if someone else uses my content without my permission?
  • If you believe someone has used your content without permission, you can first contact the creator directly to resolve the matter. If that does not work, you may report this through TikTok Help Center. TikTok may review the case and take appropriate action to protect your content.
  • To make a report, navigate to the TikTok Shop tab in the bottom menu, select 'Help', then tap 'Chat with Us'.