Posted on
26/9/2024

The verdict is in: France’s influencer marketing law drives greater transparency from KOLs, ARPP analysis confirms

New analysis by France’s advertising self-regulator, the ARPP, shows a marked improvement in transparency for commercial influencer content since the introduction of France’s dedicated influencer marketing law.

certification arpp logo
certification arpp logo

New laws combined with a robust education program are driving increased transparency and understanding of ethical responsibility in influencer marketing, according to France’s advertising self-regulator, the ARPP. 

Releasing the results of its annual Responsible Influence Observatory (Observatoire d’Influence Responsable) analysis, the ARPP (Authorité de Regulation Professionelle de Publicité) said an impressive 94% of KOL content in 2023 carried at least a partial mention of its commercial intent.

In addition, a comparison of content posted during the first half of 2023, before the French influencer marketing law was enacted, and the second half of 2023 (the law was enacted in June 2023) found a 12% increase in content that was fully compliant with transparency laws. The instance of non-compliant content was reduced from 9% to 4%.

“Across all types of creators combined, for fully compliant content for which there is an explicit and instant indication, we've gone from 59% to 71% between the first and second half of the year in terms of full compliance,” commented ARPP Deputy Director Mohamed Mansouri. 
“This is simply because the [law’s] text imposed conditions and the words “commercial collaboration” and “advertising” [that must be used to label content].”

The ARPP Responsible Influence Observatory used a combination of automated and manual analysis to ascertain the compliance rate of commercial content with transparency requirements in 2023.

In total, 33,166 contents published in 2023 by 7,737 influencers on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube were analysed. Of these, 11% were published by nano-influencers (<10K followers), 75% were published by micro and macro influencers (10K – 1M followers) and 11% were published by top influencers (1M+ followers).

Of the 19,315 contents that were found to be commercial collaboration content, 67% were completely compliant with transparency requirements, up from 53% in 2022. A further 27% carried at least a partial transparency label, and 6% (down from 11% in 2022) were non-compliant.

The analysis showed improvement in transparency compliance across all influencer types, although professional content creators — those with the largest followings — were more likely to comply with transparency laws for commercial content.

The rate of non-compliant commercial content published by nano influencers nonetheless decreased from 23% in 2022 to 15% in 2023.

“It is clear small content creators didn't necessarily have the support they needed, like an agent [to explain the legal requirements], and especially because they often had collaborations based on gifting,” explained the ARPP’s Mohamed Mansouri. “There was a bit of vagueness about whether receiving a low-value gift is a commercial collaboration or not. Today, the law is clear: even a low-value gift is a commercial collaboration, and this must be clearly and explicitly stated.”

Certificate of Responsible Influence goes from strength to strength

As an ARPP tech partner, Kolsquare’s contribution enabled the Responsible Influence Observatory for the first time to isolate and analyse the transparency compliance levels of creators who had successfully completed the organisation’s Certificate of Responsible Influence.

Using Kolsquare’s ARPP certification filter, the Observatory found 85% of commercial content published by certified creators in 2024 was fully compliant with transparency requirements, with a further 13% carrying at least a partial mention. This compared to 77% of fully compliant content, and 15% of partially compliant content amongst non-certified creators.

“Kolsquare is proud to have been partnering with the ARPP for several years on its important work of bringing higher levels of transparency and responsibility into the influencer marketing industry,” commented Kolsquare Founder and CEO Quentin Bordage. 
“The ARPP Certificate of Responsible Influence has been a boon for marketers in helping them identify creators who are aware of their responsibilities when creating commercial content. This leads to greater trust between the two parties, and inevitably, better content.”

Since the launch of the Certificate of Responsible Influence in 2021, some 1,800 French content creators have completed the online training course, which covers transparency and labelling obligations, and advertising regulations that apply to sensitive issues such as protection of minors, restricted products or greenwashing. 

A survey of 1,600 certified creators confirmed the enthusiastic response to the Certificate of Responsible Influence, with 91% saying they were satisfied with the course content, 84% would renew the certificate in the case of major changes to the regulatory environment, and 81% recommending it to their peers. 

The ARPP also announced the creation in September 2024 of a dedicated telephone or video consultation service, dubbed ‘Allô, Influence Responsable”, available to certified creators or member agencies of the ARPP.

“The aim is to offer them personalised expertise, so they can ask any legal or ethical questions they have that come up during the course of their work,” explained the ARPP’s Mohamed Mansouri. 

Kolsquare expands responsible influence filters to cover Dutch and German KOL profiles

Earlier this year, the advertising self-regulators in the Netherlands and Germany both replicated the ARPP initiative by implementing specific educational courses for influencers creating commercial content.

Content creators who have successfully completed the Dutch ‘Certified by influencerreguls.com’ or German ‘Training by Werberat’ are now also identifiable through dedicated filters on Kolsquare. 

At the European level, the European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA), which has also created an online toolkit dubbed the Influencer Marketing Standards Training (IMST), and training course template to help SROs develop influencer training programs and customise them for local specificities. 

The EASA advice covers advertising rules and transparency requirements, honesty in advertising, social responsibility, environmental and sustainability issues, and advertising for children and teens.  

For more information on how you can use Kolsquare’s certified influencer filters to find quality KOLs for your campaigns, book a demo with one of our influence experts.

About Kolsquare

Kolsquare is Europe’s leading Influencer Marketing platform, a data-driven solution that allows brands to scale their KOL Marketing strategies and implement authentic partnerships with KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders). Kolsquare’s technology enables marketing professionals to easily identify the best Content Creators profiles by filtering their content and audience, and to build and manage their campaigns from A to Z, including measuring results and benchmarking performance against competitors. Kolsquare has built the largest community of influencer marketing experts in the world, and offers hundreds of customers (Coca-Cola, Netflix, Sony Music, Publicis, Sézane, Sephora, El Corte Inglés, Lacoste, …) the latest Big Data, AI and Machine Learning technologies to drive inspiring partnerships, tapping into an exhaustive network covering 100% of  KOLs with more than 5,000 followers in 180 countries on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. As a Benefit Company, Kolsquare has been pioneering Responsible Influence by championing transparency, ethical practices, and meaningful collaborations to inspire change.

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