How to Use Ads

As Shopee strives to support a healthy, trustworthy, and transparent digital advertising ecosystem, these Community Guidelines have been created to help you create Shopee Ads campaigns that align with our platform and advertising policies listed below. 

Our policies are built upon feedback from people, the related policies of Shopee, and local laws. Please understand our policies may vary across regions for the legal or cultural differences, and will be updated regularly.

Policy Overview

These policies are designed to ensure a safe and positive experience for our customers while abiding by applicable laws. It covers 2 broad areas:

1. Shopee's Listing Restrictions: Content/Products you cannot list or sell
2. Shopee's Specific Ads Restrictions: Content/Products specifically restricted for advertising

Shopee's Listing Restrictions

For more details about listing issues deemed to be illegal, unsafe or untrustworthy, please check the General Listing Policy. If you want to quickly know our detailed categories of prohibited items, you can go and check Shopee's Prohibited and Restricted Items Policy

1. Shopee strictly prohibits any content that may expose youth to risks of exploitation, endangerment, or harm in psychological, sexual, physical, or developmental respects. Do not promote any content that may threaten the well-being of minors, such as inappropriate behavior, nudity and sexual activity involving a minor. Examples of what is not allowed:
2. Sexually suggestive behavior of a minor
3. Consumption of drugs, alcohol, or tobacco
4. Marriage and pregnancy of a minor
5. Bullying or violence of a minor
6. Other inappropriate behavior (underage driving, dangerous challenges etc).
7. Shopee restricts the display and promotion of adult products. For example:
8. Sex Toys
9. Non-realistic sex toys: Sexual pleasure toys that does not resemble human anatomy or reproductive organs in terms of shape, size and color;
10. Human-like sex toys: Sexual pleasure toys that resemble human anatomy or reproductive organs in terms of shape, size and color
11. Adult/child sex dolls
12. Sex enhancement products
13. Select pornographic works, such as soft porn
14. Intimate products
15. Shopee strictly prohibits the display or promotion of content and products with adult and sexually explicit themes, including:
16. SM Products
17. Sexual activities
18. Nudity, stripping, BDSM content
19. Pedophilia
20. Other inappropriate behavior, such as
21. Imagery with too many private parts exposed
22. Lingerie, underwear, bikini, or swimsuit with a real human model
23. Shopee strictly prohibits and does now allow the display and promotion of adult media and services. For example:
24. Adult media, which contain sexually explicit content intended to sexually arouse the viewer
25. Adult services, which provide access to mature or sexually-explicit content and services.
26. Shopee does not allow the presence of political content in any items. For example:
27. Candidates or nominees for public office, political parties, elected or appointed government officials
28. The spouses of candidates, elected, or appointed government officials with official duties or offices
29. Political-related items and political activities, election campaigns, clothes worn by presidential candidates
30. Shopee does not allow content and items that disrespects users’ religious beliefs, including:
31. Mystical items such as cincin aura, jimat, obat anti kesurupan, minyak buang sial, and other related items that indicate mystic, black magic, or superstitious belief;
32. Items related to pro-satanism, LGBTQ+, anti-religion, and atheism.
33. We do not allow the display or promotion of content related to anything indicating suicide or self-harm.
34. Shopee does not allow the display or promotion of dangerous activities and challenges, including but not limited to:
35. Dangerous Games and Dares
36. Speeding, driving under the influence, dangerous driving
37. Shopee does not allow language or behavior that harasses, humiliates, or threatens anyone. Content with any of the following is prohibited:
38. Promoting violence, exclusion, segregation, discrimination, and other harms on the basis of protected attributes
39. Demeaning someone on the basis of their protected attributes
40. Using hateful slurs associated with protected attributes
41. Promoting or advertising conversion therapy or related programs that attempt to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity
42. Intentionally targeting people who are transgender or gender non-conforming by referring to them using their former name or gender rather than their current name or expressed gender, such as deadnaming or misgendering.
43. Shopee does not allow item content that leaks personal information.
44. Shopee prohibits unpleasant/gory images and restricts mildly unpleasant images. Any pictures or images that look disgusting, gory, scary, disturbing which may cause visual discomfort that are not allowed.
45. Shopee does not allow the sale or promotion of dangerous weapons, ammunition and accessories, explosives, and cold weapons in real life as well as any other objects that may cause harm to individuals.
46. Shopee does not allow the display or promotion of hazardous chemical products that may cause physical hazards, health hazards, and environmental hazards.
47. Shopee does not allow ads content to display, promote, sell, solicit, or provide access to illegal drugs, controlled drugs, prescription drugs and its abuse, recreational drugs, drug paraphernalia, accessories, supplies, or their use.
48. Shopee restricts ads content to show, promote, or sell tobacco, nicotine, or related products, including:
49. Common tobacco products
50. Other shisha/tobacco products
51. E-cigarettes products & components
52. Smoking paraphernalia
53. Shopee restricts ads content to show, promote, or sell any types of alcoholic drinks:
54. High concentration alcohol (>5%)
55. Low concentration alcohol (≤5%)
56. Shopee does not allow the promotion, sale of animals, and endangered plants. For example:
57. Human or animal parts
58. Endangered animals
59. Plants or seeds belonging to the Endangered Plants List
60. Shopee prohibits and does not allow the promotion, sale of currencies, artifacts, and precious metals. The following are examples of what is not promoted:
61. Currency In circulation
62. Currency collectibles
63. Protected Artifacts
64. Precious Metals.
65. Shopee doesn't allow several kinds of tangible illicit purpose products. The following are prohibited:
66. Official gear, including government attire, law enforcement attire and equipment;
67. Signal jammer or blocker device that can be used to disrupt or interfere with wireless communication signals for emergency communications, public safety networks, and other critical services;
68. Tangible illicit documents and media:
69. Authorized documents: Any official identification document, legal authorized document, fake government-issued identification documents or other authorized documents.
70. Illicit media: Any tangible books, magazines or newspapers that spread propaganda and/or promote hate speech, racism, terrorism, regardless of political issues.
71. Shopee does not allow several kinds of intangible illicit purpose products. For example:
72. Privacy data: Any provision of private information of an individual or organization without consent, which include personal IDs, personal location, audio/video surveillance, etc
73. Hacking or fake engagement products:
74. Hacking products: Tools, software, and services designed for various purposes related to cybersecurity, penetration testing, and ethical hacking
75. Fake engagement products: Sell traffic, interaction, tracking quantity fraud on social networks. This includes selling social media accounts as well
76. Intangible Illicit documents and medias:
77. Illicit documents: Any unauthorized or illegal electronic documents that are used for deceptive or fraudulent purposes;
78. Illicit media: Any intangible media (e.g. e-books, movies) that spreads propaganda and/or promotes hate speech, racism, terrorism, regardless of political issues.
79. Secret recording devices
80. Shopee does not allow advertising to contain gambling content, including tangible gambling items, mystery box, and intangible gambling products.
81. Shopee prohibits and does not allow the promotion of in-app purchasing digital products and direct transactions outside Shopee.
82. Shopee restricts the promotion of certain types of digital products, such as:
83. E-gift Cards
84. Subscription Services
85. Cloud Storage
86. Shopee strictly prohibits the following financial activities and related products or services in ads promotion, including but not limited to:
87. Loan and investment activities
88. Cryptocurrencies related
89. Cash Advance
90. Real estate products or services
91. Shopee strictly prohibits and does not allow the following freelance services in ads promotion, i.e., any digital service provided by professionals to a client based on their requirement, including but not limited to:
92. Writing and Editing
93. Design and IT Programming
94. Religious and Spiritual
95. Personal and Household
96. Other Freelance Services
97. Shopee restricts the promotion of poor product ad listings, including livestream items, non-sale products, clickbait listings, and counterfeit products.

Shopee's Specific Ads Restrictions

Shopee restricts the promotional activities of products in some specific categories, mainly based on local laws. Content and items with any of the following is restricted:

1. Infant formula (stage 1 & 2):

a. Stage 1 infant formula: Designed for newborns from birth to around six months;

b. Stage 2 infant formula: Intended for infants older than six months, up to around 12 months;

2. Pet medicine:

a. Medication designed for the treatment and prevention of health issues in domestic animals, such as dogs, cats, and birds, are prescribed by veterinarians to improve pets' health and well-being. These medicines exclude pet health supplements, anti fleas and ticks, oral care, and hair care.

3. Funeral or afterlife products

In addition, the following are a set of prohibited ads practices:

1. Shopee does not allow advertisers to run ads, content, or destinations that attempt to trick or circumvent our ad review processes. Examples (but not limited to):

a. Sellers are not allowed to promote content that contains malware

b. Sellers are not allowed to use any form of techniques to hide the true destination that customers are directed to

c. Sellers are not allowed to promote products with URLs that direct customers to other websites or towards offline transactions

d. Sellers are not allowed to manipulate in any way to circumvent our policy review systems

2. Our advertising partners should not misuse this information, nor collect it for unclear purposes or without appropriate disclosures or security measures. Examples of irresponsible data collection and use (but not limited to):

a. Obtaining credit card information over a non-secure server, promotions that claim to know a user's sexual orientation or financial status

b. Collecting data under the guise of improving a product's user experience but then using it to promote completely unrelated products or services.

First published: 04 May 2023

Last updated: 30 June 2025