Advertising Compliance Review
Licet — an educational resource to help you understand AHPRA and TGA advertising standards. Covers IV infusion therapy, cosmetic injectables, skin treatments, and all regulated health services. Eight tools: Compliance Checker, Evidence Checker, Promotions, TGA Schedule, Before/After, Influencer/UGC, Titles, and Scope of Practice.
Attach your AHPRA enforcement letter or agreed undertakings. Every check will be cross-referenced against your specific obligations.
AHPRA flags treatment names that imply benefit — "Immunity", "Weight Loss", "Energy Support". Check any name before using it.
Responding to reviews that mention clinical outcomes incorporates them as testimonials in your advertising. Check before responding.
Almost every judgment in cosmetic injectable advertising routes through one question: does this promote the health service (the consultation, the practitioner, the clinic), or the prescription-only product (the Schedule 4 injectable itself)? Content on the service side is where the rules permit; naming, describing, pricing, or visually demonstrating the product tips it onto the prohibited side — even if the intent was to promote a service.
What pulls content onto the "product" side
- Named product reference — brand names, logos, or sound-alike nicknames (e.g. "babytox"). Disguising the name doesn't remove the signal.
- Generic product terms — "anti-wrinkle injections", "dermal fillers", "fat-dissolving injections" describe the product, not a service.
- Price tied to the injectable, including per-unit pricing — public price lists (even in reception) carry the same signal.
- Testimonials or endorsements about the service or product, paid or unpaid, including influencer content.
- Before/after imagery implying a specific medicine produced the result — context-dependent, not automatically prohibited.
- Discounts or inducements on the injectable without full terms stated.
- Product hashtags, even buried in a caption.
- "Educational" content that in substance funnels toward booking a specific product.
Two things worth knowing
- A private consultation carve-out exists for practitioner-patient communication — it does not extend to public-facing material, including reception displays.
- Accountability follows the clinic's name, not the author — delegating to an agency or social media manager doesn't move responsibility off the practitioner.
The Advertising Code sorts claims into tiers — the tier decides whether a claim is fine-if-accurate, needs prior approval, or is off-limits. An "advertisement" is broad: any statement or image, on a website, packaging or point-of-sale, intended to promote use or supply.
Tier 0 — General requirements (always live)
Accurate, balanced, not misleading, no unrealistic expectations or minimised risk — applies to everything, even an otherwise-permitted claim.
Tier 1 — Prohibited representations
A fixed list — cancer, mental illness, STIs, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, abortifacient action. No approval pathway for public advertising, regardless of phrasing.
Tier 2 — Restricted representations
A "serious form" of a disease/condition that needs diagnosis or supervision — usable only with prior TGA approval. The definition of "serious form" has been under active regulatory consultation, so treat this tier as genuinely grey rather than a fixed list.
Tier 3 — Prescription-medicine prohibition
Direct or indirect advertising of prescription-only medicines to the public is prohibited outright. This is the tier behind the "Service or product?" pattern above.
Tier 4 — Mandatory statements & conditional rules
Where a claim is permitted, the Code may still require accompanying statements, and imposes its own rules on testimonials, samples and incentives — separate from AHPRA's own testimonial ban.
Satisfying AHPRA/TGA law is necessary but not sufficient on Google Ads — Google enforces its own Healthcare and Medicines Policy independently, and it enforces at the account level. This is a private platform rule, not government regulation — the checks above don't cover it.
What Google's policy adds on top
- Prescription-drug terms are restricted by default in ad copy, landing pages, and keywords for Australia-targeted ads.
- Certification is required for prescription-drug services, online pharmacies, or telemedicine — category-dependent, check the specific type needed.
- Speculative or unproven treatment claims are prohibited from promotion outright.
- Location targeting interacts with policy — what's permitted in one country may not be for Australia.
Why this matters more than it looks
The landing page is part of the ad — Google scans destinations, not just ad text, so a compliant-looking ad pointing at a page with prescription-drug terms can still trip the policy. And because enforcement hits the whole account, a single breach can take down unrelated campaigns too — a materially different risk from a one-off regulatory notice.
Rules tell you what's prohibited; enforcement patterns tell you what regulators actually pursue. The TGA has named unapproved therapeutic goods in cosmetic procedures a stated compliance priority for 2026–2027, and AHPRA investigated roughly 360 non-surgical cosmetic notifications between September 2022 and March 2025.
The breach-pattern catalogue
- Advertising a prescription-only injectable to the public — see "Service or product?" above; the TGA has issued infringement notices specifically for this on social platforms.
- Unlawful importation of unapproved injectables — vials/syringes not on the ARTG, including parallel-imported or counterfeit product; frequently paired with the advertising breach above. (This app checks advertising content, not supply chains — flagged here for awareness, not detected.)
- Supply of scheduled substances outside lawful channels — see "Why is this scheduled?" on the TGA Schedule Checker.
- Testimonials and influencer endorsements — see "Service or product?" signal D and Tier 4 above.
- Restricted/prohibited representations without approval — see Tiers 1–2 above.
- Misleading or unrealistic-expectation claims — see Tier 0 above; also engages the Australian Consumer Law.
- Advertiser-responsibility failures — non-compliant content published by an agency or influencer in the clinic's name; the practitioner stays accountable regardless.
- Platform-policy breaches — see "Running this on Google Ads?" above; a separate, account-level failure mode.
Penalty ranges (illustrative, published)
Treat as orders of magnitude, not precise figures. Infringement notices (pay-without-admission) typically run roughly $5,000–$13,000+ per contravention, often stacked. Maximum civil penalties reach into the millions — on the order of ~$1.5m for an individual, ~$15m+ for a body corporate at the maxima. Criminal offences exist in tiers and can carry imprisonment. Most real-world action to date has been infringement notices, but the enforcement trend is upward.