TikTok comparison ad rules: evidence or a disclaimer, no mocking

You can compare, but you must back it up. TikTok's Misleading and false content policy says comparative claims may be allowed, subject to evidence or clear disclaimers. Under the heading 'Malicious, Subjective and Before-and-after Comparisons' it then lists three things ad content and landing pages may not include: product effect comparisons such as before-and-after results that may give a false impression of outcome, malicious claims about a targeted brand, and subjective negative judgements about a targeted brand's core attributes such as price, features, functionality or quality.

So a clean 'ours versus theirs' spec table can pass with a source note, while a video that mocks rival customers or implies serious violations will not.

Allowed versus not allowed

The table restates the page in plain terms.

Produce a compliant comparison clip

Keep the video factual and put the proof on screen. With Sume video captions you can burn an authored source line as a cues item with text, start and end, for $0.20 per job on a clip of up to 60 seconds. Place it with design.placement.anchor_ratio so it clears the platform's caption area; TikTok's own safe zone shrinks with caption length, so test the preview.

Do not use a generated clip to show a rival's product failing: a generation of a named competitor misbehaving is a made-up outcome, which is exactly the false-impression risk the page describes. Compare your own measured numbers, with the date, and cite where they came from.

Steps

• List each claim in the video and attach evidence: a source, a date, a test condition.
• Remove any line that judges the rival's customers or character.
• Remove before-and-after outcome imagery; show features, not results.
• Burn the evidence or disclaimer line as a cue and check the safe zone in the ad preview.
• Match every number to the landing page.

Evidence on screen: a practical pattern

A comparison clip that survives review usually has the same three layers: the claim in the voiceover or caption, the proof as a small source line, and the date. A line like 'Tested on our own dataset, 2026-09, see page for method' tells a reviewer you can substantiate the claim and tells a viewer where to look.

Keep that source line to one short sentence. TikTok's ad captions do not support clickable links, symbols such as @, or hashtags, so put the full method on the landing page and keep the video line short enough to read in two seconds.

Caveat

The page does not define how much evidence satisfies a reviewer, nor what a 'clear' disclaimer looks like beyond the word clear. When in doubt, make the disclaimer legible, long enough to read, and on screen while the claim is on screen.