Advertising a result or a guarantee in Singapore, and the four conditions that make one defensible

A Singapore business can advertise a result, and the decision is what to put behind it before it runs. Four conditions make a performance claim defensible: the result happened and is documented, the conditions it happened under are stated on the same page, the time window is named, and the claim is about the past rather than about what will happen next. A claim that meets all four is a case study. A claim that meets none is an exposure.

Nothing on this page is legal advice. A specific question about your own wording belongs with a Singapore lawyer, and this page is about the commercial decision in front of it.

The four conditions, written as a checklist

1. It happened and you can produce the evidence. An export, a dated report, a signed reference. If the evidence lives only in somebody's memory of a good quarter, the claim is not available to you.
2. The conditions are on the same page as the claim. Budget, starting position, sector, how long it took. A result without its conditions invites a reader to assume their own conditions, which is where the complaint comes from.
3. The window is named, with both dates. From this date to that date. Not recently, not in a few months.
4. It describes the past. This client's enquiries moved from this to that between these dates is a fact. A promise about the reader's own future is a different kind of sentence and it is the one to avoid.

The promise to refuse, including when a supplier offers it to you

A number one ranking promise. Google's own guidance says it plainly, and it is worth quoting back across the table: in Google's words, no one can guarantee a number one ranking on Google. Any agency offering you that position is making a claim about a system it does not control, and a buyer who accepts it has accepted a claim they will later have to defend to their own customers.

The same logic applies to anything stated as certain about an AI assistant's answer. These are retrieval systems that change, and the honest commitment is a method and a measurement rather than an outcome. In our own Singapore readings on 22 October 2026, the same category of question produced a named supplier 38 times out of 64 and no supplier at all 26 times out of 64, which is a useful illustration of why a certainty about a machine answer is not a claim anybody can back.

What a review costs if you want one checked

The Advertising Standards Authority of Singapore publishes its advertising advice fees. Read on asas.org.sg on 22 October 2026, a normal service inside 20 working days is S$600 for a member of AAMS, AMOS or DMAS and S$1,200 for a non member, and an express service inside 10 working days is S$700 and S$1,400 respectively. With GST those are S$654, S$1,308, S$763 and S$1,526. The review begins once payment is received and the turnaround is counted from the day of payment.

ASAS administers the Singapore Code of Advertising Practice, whose basic premise, in the authority's own words, is that all advertisements should be legal, decent, honest and truthful. ASAS also states that it is not intended to be a clearing house for the approval of all advertising, so the sensible use of that fee is the launch claim that would be expensive to get wrong rather than every piece of copy you publish.

A money back guarantee is a different instrument

A refund promise is not a performance claim. It is a commercial term, and it is defensible precisely because it is within your control. If you will refund, say in what circumstances, by when, and what the customer has to do to claim it. The failure mode here is not the promise, it is a promise with conditions that only appear after somebody tries to use it.

So the practical split is simple. Promise the things you control, which are the process, the deliverables, the dates and the refund. Report the things you do not control, which are the outcomes, with their dates and conditions attached.

What to write instead of the claim you wanted to make

The claim you wanted	The defensible version
We will double your leads	One client's enquiries moved from 14 a month to 31 a month between March and September 2026 on a S$6,000 monthly budget in the same sector
A number one ranking, offered as a certainty	We publish the pages, report position and impressions monthly from Search Console, and the first review is at 90 days
Singapore's leading agency	Named in 17 of 64 blind AI readings taken for Singapore on one date, which is a visibility count and not a quality verdict
Risk free	Cancel with 30 days notice at any point after month three, and every account stays in your name

The right hand column is longer and it converts better with the buyers worth having, because every line in it is something the reader can check.

Questions about performance claims in Singapore

Can I use a client result without naming the client

Yes, and it is common. Keep the sector, the budget band, the window and the starting position, because an unattributed result with its conditions is credible and an unattributed result without them is not.

Does a disclaimer fix an overstated claim

Not if the disclaimer contradicts the headline. The test to apply yourself is whether the claim and the condition sit in the same place a reader will actually read, rather than one being prominent and the other being footnoted.

What about a result from another market

Say which market. A figure from a different country presented without its geography invites a Singapore reader to apply it to Singapore, and this market's costs and volumes are its own.

Does a guarantee help win business here

A process guarantee is. A refund term, a notice period and named deliverables answer the buyer's actual fear, which is being locked into something that is not working.

Where do the statutory obligations sit

Separately from the Code, and they are not something a marketing page should summarise. If your claim touches a regulated category, or if it involves contacting Singapore numbers under the Do Not Call provisions of the Personal Data Protection Act 2012, take it to a Singapore lawyer. Our guide to what digital marketing services cover for a business selling inside Singapore sets out where those layers meet the day to day work.

The claim we make about ourselves, and its conditions

Here is the construction applied to us. Across 64 blind readings taken for Singapore on 22 October 2026, on ChatGPT and Gemini, with the market written into every question because the interface we use ignores its own country parameter, our business was named zero times and our domain was cited zero times. That is a result with its window, its engines, its denominator and its method attached, and it is unflattering. It is also the only kind of claim that survives a reader checking it. AI Knows Us produces exactly that file for a Singapore business across five surfaces, and the second reading is where the argument actually gets made.