Consumer advocacy group Operation Redress has conducted an audit of advertising compliance in the non-surgical cosmetics industry. It found that 98 per cent of audited websites were in breach of national advertising rules.
Operation Redress audited 100 cosmetics businesses’ websites across every state and territory over March and April 2025. Almost every site uses words such as ‘dermal filler’ or ‘wrinkle-reducing injections,’ which are banned. Other banned terms included ‘cosmetic inject’ (used 16,671 times), ‘Botox’ (used 2983 times), and slang terms such as ‘Brotox,’ ‘Haytox,’ ‘Scrotox,’ and ‘Traptox’ used 435 times together.
Cosmetic injectables were advertised as safe on 59 per cent of the websites, which the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), the medicine and therapeutic regulatory agency of the Australian Government, also prohibits.
The breaches found by Operation Redress across the websites could be just the tip of the iceberg, since social media advertising wasn’t included in the audit.
“The true nature of breaches in digital advertising is likely to be much higher,” Michael Fraser, Operation Redress, told The Australian.
The report also raised concerns about the use of AI tools to predict how a patient would look with certain treatments, potentially leading to unrealistic expectations.
“AI is also used to glamorise cosmetic injectables,” the report stated.
In Australia, it is illegal to advertise almost all prescription-only medications directly to the public. These include dermal fillers, anti-wrinkle treatments such as Botox, cryolipolysis (fat freezing) and fat dissolving injections, which are the most popular types of restricted medications used in cosmetic injectables.
In the past few months, the regulator has sent about 100 “guidance letters” to companies it believes have breached its rules, with more letters planned in the coming weeks.
The TGA tightened its advertising rules last year for all medications used in the wellness industry.
“To resolve any inconsistency in interpretation across industry areas, the TGA no longer permits references to terms such as ‘wrinkle-reducing injections’ where those terms would result in a reasonable consumer understanding the intention of the content is to promote the use or supply of a prescription medicine,” the TGA said at the time.
Under TGA rules, advertisers cannot draw consumers to their health service with the premise that they offer prescription-only cosmetic injections.
This rule applies whether it is a direct reference to a product or an indirect reference to a product, such as ‘anti-wrinkle injections’.
These rules make it difficult for a customer to search a clinic’s website for those terms. It presents a situation that might potentially see businesses struggling to survive if regulatory rules make it virtually impossible for customers to find them.
It follows the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Aphra) announcing sweeping new guidelines across the non-surgical cosmetic procedures industry, set to take place in September of this year. The guidelines aim to crack down on how these procedures are advertised, particularly to young people.
Despite the regulatory agency tightening its rules, there are concerns that non-compliance is happening due to the lack of consequences for companies that ignore the rules.
“There’s no follow-up, there’s no enforcement,” Sheri-lee Knoop, a registered nurse and president of the Cosmetic Nurses Association, told The Australian.
“If you don’t enforce the law, then the law is kind of questionable in terms of, ‘Why are we all complying when there’s a whole lot of people that are not complying?’, and then they are not being taken to task,” she added.
As regulation and the advertising industry continue their perennial battle, it’s also up to consumers to assess what is in front of them.
