Was-price in a sale video: FTC former-price rule and cues

Before you put "Was $80, now $56" on a sale video, check that $80 is a real earlier price. The FTC's Guides Against Deceptive Pricing, 16 CFR 233.1, read 2026-10-03, describe a genuine former price as the actual, bona fide price at which the article was offered to the public on a regular basis for a reasonably substantial period of time. A video does not change that test. It only makes the claim louder.

This is guidance as quoted on the Cornell Law page, not legal advice, and I read section 233.1 only, not the retail-comparison section.

What 233.1 says

The table lists provisions I read, and what each means for the cue text.

Put the numbers on screen as cues

Authored caption cues print exactly the text you pass. A strikethrough is a styling choice that the cue does not draw, so write the claim in words: "Was $80. Now $56. Ends Sunday." The video captions docs say cues skip speech-to-text, so a silent or music-only clip works. One job costs $0.20 for clips up to 60 seconds.

Keep the claim in one cue so the former price and the current price are on screen together for the same time.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-captions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: was-now-jacket-001" \
  -d '{
  "video_url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/example/jacket.mp4",
  "cues": [
    {
      "text": "Was $80. Now $56. Ends Sunday",
      "start": 1,
      "end": 7
    }
  ]
}'

A pricing checklist

Pull the price history from your shop before you script the cue, and keep it. If you run variants for several products, the stored price-variants post shows how to change only the cue text.

Sume prints your words. It does not read your price history, judge whether a former price is genuine, or update a burned clip when the price changes. When the sale ends or the price moves, re-run the job with new cues, and retire the old file.