Influencer marketing regulations are constantly increasing, making it hard to stay compliant.
The UK has some of the most specific and actively enforced ad regulations. If you're not up to date, you risk being named and shamed or fined up to 10% of your annual global turnover.
This article tells you everything you need to know to run fully compliant influencer campaigns that don’t get removed or harm your brand.
Two-thirds (68%) of brands and agencies require influencers to comply with ad regulations, according to Kolsquare's State of Influencer Marketing in Europe 2025 report. It ranks as the most important ethical consideration when working with influencers.
The UK market is one of the most compliant, with 70% of brands and agencies requiring influencers to comply with all advertising regulations, and 64% requiring clear disclosure of sponsored posts and collaborations.
Compliance is no longer an afterthought. It should be baked into workflows to prevent missing disclosures.
Almost half (43%) of content fails to meet compliance requirements, according to ASA data. This suggests that brands and creators don’t fully understand disclosure or what counts as “paid”.
So, what is a paid partnership?
If a brand pays an influencer to create content, it’s a paid partnership. That part’s obvious.
But do influencers need to disclose a collaboration if they were gifted a product?
The answer is “yes”.
According to the ASA, “paid” includes discounts, gifting, affiliate content and access to limited-edition tickets, as well as monetary payments. Failing to label gifts has caught out brands and influencers.
In 2023, Vodafone gifted influencer Binky Felstead Wimbledon tickets and event access, and she posted about it on Instagram using the brand's campaign hashtag, with no ad disclosure. The ASA ruled that the tickets counted as payment, and Vodafone's hashtag request gave it enough editorial control to make the posts ads. Later, Felstead added “#gifted”, but the posts were banned from reappearing, and both parties were told to label future content as advertising.
As the example above shows, many disclosure failures are unintentional. They come from a genuine misunderstanding of what needs labelling. But regardless of intention, they can harm a well-planned campaign.
Here's a quick run-through of types of collaboration and disclosure requirements:
UK regulators expect ads to be instantly recognisable. To find the disclosure, the audience shouldn't need to take any action, such as scrolling, clicking “more” or reading through a long list of hashtags. The disclosure also shouldn’t be hidden, for example, by being written in a tiny or barely visible font.
Let's look at the rules for where to place disclosures in detail:
There are a few common errors brands make when disclosing adverts. They are typically caused by unclear language.
Here's a list of words that do NOT meet the legal standard for labelling ads:
Stick to “#ad”, “Ad” or similar. Vague language may be punished.
In the past, the ASA relied on complaints and spot checks to find non-compliant posts. But today, regulators use automated AI monitoring to analyse more posts and catch more non-compliant adverts.
If you don’t comply with regulations, you may face the following punishments:
Most brands run campaigns across multiple platforms. And each has slightly different disclosure requirements.
Many platforms now have native tools for tagging sponsored content. But the ASA rarely views native tool disclosures as sufficient. It’s best practice to use a label and the native tool’s disclosure option.
Here's how to disclose a paid partnership on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X and Threads across every format:
Let's say you put disclosure requirements in your brief, but the influencer doesn't properly label the content as an ad. You might think that in this scenario, the influencer alone would be at fault—after all, you clearly outlined requirements. You’d be wrong.
The most dangerous misconception is that compliance is the creator's problem. Under UK law and the CMA's 2026 guidance, it is explicitly not the case. You can be fined even if you explicitly stated that the creator should tag content.
Liability is shared across every part of the commercial chain:
Just because you need to check influencer content for compliance doesn't mean you shouldn't outline requirements in the brief. If you make the importance of disclosure clear from day one, influencers are more likely to comply.
Here's how to ensure influencers properly disclose ads:
For brands running campaigns across Europe, disclosure requirements vary significantly by market. All EU member states share the baseline of the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, but implementation and enforcement vary considerably.
Remember, regulations change often. Check the Kolsquare blog to keep up with the latest developments on influencer marketing regulations and more.
Ad compliance isn't the only consideration for brands running influencer campaigns. A new compliance question is emerging for AI-generated content. In 2026, AI-generated promotions carry a dual disclosure obligation in most markets.
According to MUSE's The Real Impact of AI on the Creator Economy report, 55% of consumers say generative AI has decreased their trust in creator content, and 52% of creators and 48% of marketers agree.
Here's how to disclose AI-generated content:
Protecting your brand isn't optional. You should run audience quality checks to ensure the creator, whether real or AI-generated, has genuine followers. Today, bots and AI-generated engagement are a significant risk. Activate an influencer with a high number of fake followers, and you're shouting into the void.
Download the free Kolsquare Chrome Extension to discover influencer audience quality scores while browsing influencer accounts on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
Sticking to ASA rules may feel like a never-ending hassle of tracking and managing content. But it doesn't have to be that way. Many tools help you find compliant influencers, track content and organise workflows.
Kolsquare's platform supports compliance at three stages:
When you’re looking for influencers, Kolsquare gives you the tools to understand who you’re reaching:
Kolsquare has a number of workflow management tools that support you in creating briefs and checking content:
Don’t just hope for the best after creators post content. Kolsquare’s post monitoring includes:
Most disclosure failures happen because compliance checks aren't built into the campaign workflow from the start. Missing a label after a post has already gone live is too late. A safer option is to make disclosure a default step in your process.
That means clear labelling requirements in every brief, a review stage before content goes out and ongoing monitoring after it's published. That applies to every gift, event and discount code, not just paid posts. Kolsquare's platform builds these checks into the workflow itself, so compliance isn't something your team has to remember to do.
No. The ASA has explicitly ruled that "#gifted" alone does not meet the UK standard for advertising disclosure. The compliant label for gifted content is "#ad" or "Ad: Gifted" — with "Ad" appearing first, at the very start of the caption. "#gifted" without "#ad" fails the "instant recognisability" test.
The correct label is "#ad", "Ad:" or "#advert", placed at the very beginning of the caption — before any other text. For Instagram and TikTok, the native Paid Partnership or Branded Content label must also be enabled, but it does not replace the caption requirement. The "#ad" must still appear explicitly.
Yes. Any product, service, travel, event invitation or other benefit with commercial value constitutes a form of payment under UK law. The creator must disclose receipt of gifted items with "#ad" or "Ad: Gifted", and the brand is jointly responsible for ensuring this disclosure occurs.
Yes. Under the DMCC Act, the CMA can impose fines of up to 10% of a brand's global annual turnover directly without going to court for consumer law breaches, including non-disclosure. The CMA's 2026 guidance explicitly states that liability is shared across the brand, agency and creator.
Yes. Affiliate links and commission-based discount codes constitute a commercial arrangement under UK law and require "#ad" or "#affiliate" disclosure in the caption. The presence of a tracking link alone does not constitute disclosure.
The UK standard includes a 12-month rule: if a creator received any form of payment or gifting from a brand in the last 12 months, they must still disclose when featuring that brand's products, even in content they were not paid to create during that period.
Not by itself. The ASA requires disclosure to be "instantly recognisable" — the YouTube checkbox adds a small label visible only to some viewers, which alone does not meet the standard. YouTube video sponsorships require verbal disclosure at the start of the video, on-screen text, disclosure in the video description, and the paid promotion checkbox — all four.
Under UK law, only "#ad", "Ad:" and "#advert" are considered fully compliant standalone labels. "#gifted", "#sponsored", "#collab" and similar terms are not sufficient — the ASA has ruled on each of these. If a creator wants to indicate the type of arrangement, the format must be "Ad – Gifted" or "Ad – Sponsored", with "Ad" always appearing first.
Yes. If you pay an influencer to create content, they must tag the content with “#ad”, “ad” or “advert”, right at the start of the description.
Here's a rundown of the essential disclosure requirements for influencers:
Here are four brands and influencers who failed to disclose ads:
While many of these campaigns have some level of disclosure, the common thread is a lack of clear disclosure.
Kolsquare is Europe’s leading Influencer Marketing platform, offering a data-driven solution that empowers brands to scale their KOL (Key Opinion Leader) marketing strategies through authentic partnerships with top creators.
Kolsquare’s advanced technology helps marketing professionals seamlessly identify the best content creators by filtering their content and audience, while also enabling them to build, manage, and optimize campaigns from start to finish. This includes measuring results and benchmarking performance against competitors.
With a thriving global community of influencer marketing experts, Kolsquare serves hundreds of customers—including Coca-Cola, Netflix, Sony Music, Publicis, Sézane, Sephora, Lush, and Hermès—by leveraging the latest Big Data, AI, and Machine Learning technologies. Our platform taps into an extensive network of KOLs with more than 5,000 followers across 180 countries on Instagram, TikTok, X (Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat.
As a Certified B Corporation, Kolsquare leads the way in promoting Responsible Influence, championing transparency, ethical practices, and meaningful collaborations that inspire positive change.
Since October 2024, Kolsquare has become part of the Team.Blue group, one of the largest private tech companies in Europe, and a leading digital enabler for businesses and entrepreneurs across Europe. Team.Blue brings together over 60 successful brands in web hosting, domains, e-commerce, online compliance, lead generation, application solutions, and social media.
Your monthly dose of exclusive insights, strategies and trends shaping the creator economy. For insiders, by insiders.
L’essentiel, directement dans votre boîte mail.
.webp)
%20(1)%20(1).png)
%20(1).png)
.webp)
