UGC
Under Japan's stealth marketing rule, a review you asked for is your own ad
Since 1 October 2023, a post a business asks for counts as that business's advertising under the Act against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations. The cases so far involve small incentives: ¥500 off, free product, a discount on a flu vaccination.
A clinic in Ota, Tokyo told patients who came in for a flu vaccination that they would get money off the vaccination fee if they gave the clinic four or five stars on Google Maps. Patients did. On 6 June 2024 the Consumer Affairs Agency ordered the clinic to stop, to tell the public, and to put measures in place so it would not happen again.
Nothing in those reviews was false. The problem was that a reader could not tell the clinic had paid for them.
What the rule tests
Since 1 October 2023, the Act against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations treats one more thing as a misleading representation: an advertisement a consumer cannot recognise as one.
The operational standards, decided on 28 March 2023, reduce it to one question. Did the business take part in deciding what the post says? If a business asks a third party to post about its product on social media or a review site, the answer is yes, and the post is treated as the business's own advertising.
The rule applies to the business. The person who posted is not the one who receives the order.
Staff count too. A post by someone whose role is to sell or market the product, such as a manager or a member of the product team, is treated as the company speaking.
What counts as disclosed
The standards give examples of wording that works: 広告 (advertisement), 宣伝 (promotion), プロモーション, PR, or a plain sentence such as "I received this product from Company A and am posting about it."
They also list disclosures that fail. A label hidden among a long run of hashtags. A label in a video that appears too briefly to read, or only in the middle or at the end of a long video. Text smaller or fainter than the surrounding copy. And a post that says 広告 at the top and then "these are my honest views as a third party" in the body.
Where the cases have landed
The agency's enforcement report for FY2025, published on 28 May 2026, counts 11 stealth marketing cases handled in the year: 4 commitment plans approved and 7 guidance cases.
The patterns are ordinary:
- A facial salon offered ¥500 off the next visit for five star reviews on a salon booking site, and its own staff posted five star reviews as well
- A frozen meal delivery service gave people free product in exchange for Instagram posts, then quoted those posts on its sales page under a heading that read "reviews posted on Instagram"
- An online seller gave a gift card for a five star rating and a written review
- A supplement seller recruited reviewers through a monitor site and paid them to post five star ratings
- A funeral company posted reviews of its own service on a review site, praising how its staff had handled a funeral
In each case the business shaped what readers saw, and readers had no way to know.
The second use of a post
The frozen meal case matters most for anyone running a UGC programme. Gifting product to creators is common. The trouble started when the resulting posts were lifted onto the sales page as if they were independent opinion.
A company's own website is normally obvious advertising, and the standards say so. They add an exception. When a page shows opinions from experts or customers that the company requested or wrote itself, the page has to say so. The standards suggest wording along the lines of "We asked Dr ○○ for a comment and have edited it for this page."
So the disclosure has to travel with the content. A creator's PR label on Instagram stays on Instagram. Once the same words sit on your landing page, the page needs its own disclosure.
A working check
- List every incentive attached to a review or post: discounts, free product, gift cards, points
- Ask for disclosure at the start of the post, in plain text, and in the opening seconds of a video
- When you reuse a requested post on your site or in an ad, add a line that says it was requested
- Treat posts by sales and marketing staff as company posts
- Keep a record of who you asked, what you gave, and when
None of this stops a company from sending product to creators or paying them. The designation asks for one thing: that the reader can tell.
Sources
- Consumer Affairs Agency, stealth marketing designation page (designation in force from 2023-10-01)
- Consumer Affairs Agency, operational standards for the stealth marketing designation (decided 2023-03-28; business involvement test, disclosure wording, unclear disclosure examples, own website rule)
- Consumer Affairs Agency, cease and desist order against a Tokyo clinic over Google Maps reviews (order 2024-06-06, published 2024-06-07)
- Consumer Affairs Agency, enforcement report for FY2025 (published 2026-05-28; stealth marketing cases 4 commitment approvals and 7 guidance, 11 in total; case summaries)