Turkey’s amended Commercial Advertising and Unfair Commercial Practices Regulation was published in the Official Gazette on July 1, 2026 (issue no. 33297) and took effect on August 1, 2026. The amendment expands advertiser and agency obligations around targeted advertising, influencer posts, AI-generated ad content, advertising to children, discount campaigns, and environmental claims.
This post summarizes the provisions most directly relevant to digital marketing and advertising teams, based on the Ministry of Trade’s official announcement and the Official Gazette text.
Transparency Requirement for Targeted Advertising
A new Article 25/A brings targeted ads — those shown based on analysis of a consumer’s online behavior and personal data — under the regulation’s scope. Advertisers must now disclose, directly and in an easily accessible way, which criteria were used to show a given ad to a given consumer and how those criteria can be changed.
This doesn’t ban targeted advertising; it requires an easily accessible answer to “why am I seeing this ad, and how do I turn it off.” Meta’s and Google’s ad-transparency panels may already partly satisfy this obligation, but where an advertiser runs its own targeting (for example, building custom audiences from first-party data), the advertiser itself needs to provide this disclosure.
Ban on Profiling-Based Targeted Ads to Children
Under the same amendment, targeted advertising to children based on personal-data profiling is now banned. Campaigns that reach children through age estimation, interest profiling, or behavioral segmentation fall under this ban.
Influencer Posts Must Carry an “Ad” or “Promotion” Label
A new Article 23/A directly regulates posts by social media influencers. If a post involves any benefit — payment, a discounted product or service, or participation in an event — the post must clearly indicate its commercial nature using an “ad” or “promotion” label.
The practical takeaway for brands and agencies: influencer collaboration contracts need this labeling requirement added, pre-publication content review needs to check for it, and previously published paid posts should be reviewed as well.
AI-Generated Ad Content Must Be Labeled
Article 18.8 requires that when an ad uses AI-generated digital characters that are hard to distinguish from a real person, this must be disclosed to the consumer clearly, understandably, and distinguishably. AI-generated (deepfake-style) content that creates the impression someone genuinely used or experienced a product is also restricted under this provision.
This targets AI content that stands in for a real person and implies endorsement or experience — not general AI use for product visualization or corporate marketing.
New Reference-Price Rule for Discount Campaigns
Under the amended Article 14, the “pre-discount price” that can be shown in a discount campaign must be the lowest price applied in the 10 days before the discount starts. For perishable goods (such as fruit and vegetables), the last price before the discount applies instead. The rule targets the practice of artificially raising a price right before announcing a “big discount” off that inflated price.
Other Changes
| Topic | Change |
|---|---|
| Academic titles | Restricts using academic titles in ads in a way that misleads or deceives consumers |
| Consumer complaint response time | Seller/provider response window cut from 72 hours to 48 hours |
| Illegal betting, gambling, and fortune-telling/psychic ads | Ban scope expanded to include illegal games of chance |
| Environmental claims (greenwashing) | Generic terms like “eco-friendly” can’t be used without supporting evidence from an authorized institution, university, or accredited independent research body |
| Dietary supplement ads | Can no longer create the impression that these products replace normal nutrition |
Checklist for Advertisers and Agencies
| # | Action item | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Prepare criteria-disclosure copy for channels using targeted advertising | ☐ |
| 2 | Turn off profiling-based targeting for campaigns aimed at children | ☐ |
| 3 | Add the “ad/promotion” labeling requirement to active influencer contracts | ☐ |
| 4 | Review currently live paid influencer content for proper labeling | ☐ |
| 5 | Label ads using AI-generated digital characters | ☐ |
| 6 | Set discount reference prices based on the lowest price in the prior 10 days | ☐ |
| 7 | Update complaint-response processes and SLAs to the 48-hour window | ☐ |
| 8 | Review or remove unsupported terms like “eco-friendly” or “natural” | ☐ |
Quick Take
The common thread across these changes is that they clarify three areas that have long been gray zones in digital advertising: transparency around targeted ads, clarity about the commercial nature of influencer posts, and distinguishing AI-generated content from human content. All three move in the same direction as trends in the EU’s Digital Services Act and similar regulations elsewhere.
The main risk for advertisers is reading this regulation as only “get influencers to label their posts.” The targeted-ad disclosure requirement and the discount reference-price rule affect day-to-day performance marketing and e-commerce operations more directly, and deserve the same priority.