UK influencer disclosure rules for gifted products

The rules in one paragraph

Two regulators cover influencer posts in the UK. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) enforces consumer law, which says hidden ads are illegal. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) enforces the CAP Code, the advertising industry’s rules. They publish a joint Influencers’ guide to making clear that ads are ads (fourth edition, October 2026). The CMA also has its own guides for content creators and for brands. All of them say the same thing for gifts: label the post as an ad, clearly and up front.

Who regulates what

• The CMA: consumer law. Part 4 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (the DMCC Act) bans unfair commercial practices, including failing to make clear that a post has a commercial intent. The joint guide says that under consumer law, it does not matter who is “in control” of the post. Everyone in the chain, including brands, marketers and influencers, is responsible for following the law.
• The ASA: the CAP Code. The ASA acts on an influencer’s post when the brand “paid” them in some way (it doesn’t have to be money) and had some editorial control over the content. Control includes telling the creator what to say or when to post, asking for particular hashtags or key messages, approving the post before it goes up, or keeping the right to ask for changes. The joint guide adds that even an expectation that content will be created, rather than a hope that it might be, could be seen as control.

So a gift with no strings attached may fall outside the CAP Code, but it doesn’t fall outside consumer law. The CMA’s guide for brands says all ads must be labelled as ads “even if your business doesn’t control the content or ask content creators for anything in return”.

A free product is payment

The CMA’s guides say any incentive or reward is payment, and list “gifts of any products” alongside money, commissions and discounts. The creator guide says a post about a gift must be labelled “even if there’s no obligation for you to do anything with it”. The joint guide says the same: free products count “whether requested or unsolicited”, and it doesn’t matter if there was no obligation to post.

• There’s no follower threshold. The CMA’s creator guide applies to anyone who received a free or discounted product “no matter how many followers you have”.
• It lasts beyond the campaign. The joint guide expects creators to disclose throughout an ongoing relationship, and in relevant content for 12 months after it ends.
• Affiliate links and codes count too. If the creator earns from clicks or sales, the post is advertising, and both the creator and the brand are responsible for it.

#gifted vs #ad

Both regulators expect labels that “say it how it is”. The CMA’s creator guide says tagging the brand, a discount code or an affiliate link is not enough on its own.

Where the label goes

The CMA says people should understand that content is an ad “as soon as they access or engage with it”. They shouldn’t have to scroll, select a link, study the content or check the creator’s bio. The joint guide puts it as: the disclosure goes at the very beginning, whether that’s the start of the post text, a title or thumbnail, or on an image, whatever people see first. It says not to:

• bury the label in a sea of hashtags
• hide it where it can only be seen by clicking “more” or expanding the content
• place it where people need to scroll to find it
• disclose it part-way through a video

Video, stories and carousels

For videos and podcasts, the CMA says the disclosure must be given at the beginning of the ad. The joint guide adds rules by format:

• Stories: if the ad spans several stories that may be viewed separately, label each one.
• Carousels: label each item that contains promotional messaging (the CMA says the same).
• The same ad in several formats: if it appears as a story, a post and a Reel, or is reposted from one to another, label each piece.
• Long videos with an ad break: label the sections that are advertising, not necessarily the whole video.

Platform labels: only if they’re clear

The CMA says creators can use tools such as “paid partnership” or “branded content” labels, provided the label is clear and easy to see. If the tool doesn’t clearly say the content is an ad, it says to add “#Ad” in a clear, upfront position. The joint guide says a platform label may be sufficient if it’s upfront and prominent, and that tools like co-authoring “aren’t always enough”. How Instagram’s, TikTok’s and YouTube’s labels work is in our guide to the paid partnership label.

What the brand is responsible for

The CMA’s guide for brands says businesses have a responsibility to make sure content promoting them is labelled as advertising, in particular when it results from their marketing or is published on their behalf. It sets out what to do:

1. 01

   Put the instruction in the parcel

   The CMA says that if you send free gifts, include clear instructions that any content posted as a result must be labelled as an “Ad”, even if you don’t ask for anything in return. Give the exact words: “Ad” at the start of the caption and at the start of the video.

2. 02

   Have a written policy

   Set out the rules creators should follow, require them to label content in line with the joint ASA/CMA guidance, and make sure any agency you work through knows them too.

3. 03

   Check the posts yourself

   The CMA says you should check content that refers to your brand yourself, and that you may be held responsible where content published on your behalf is non-compliant.

4. 04

   Fix what’s wrong, promptly

   If a post isn’t labelled, don’t ignore it. Work with the creator to correct it. The CMA says that if a creator repeatedly fails to label content, you are at risk if you keep working with them.

The hard part is the third step. Once you gift more than a handful of creators, the posts that matter most are often the ones that don’t tag you. You can check one post at a time with our free disclosure checker.

Enforcement: what has happened so far

• The CMA can now fine directly. The CMA’s rules for its direct consumer enforcement powers came into force on 6 April 2025. Before that, it had to go to court. Under section 182 of the DMCC Act, a penalty in a final infringement notice can be up to £300,000 or, if higher, 10% of the business’s total turnover.
• No CMA fine over an influencer post yet, as far as we found. As of 2026-10-27 we found no CMA penalty under these powers for a hidden influencer ad. Its earlier social media endorsements case ended in undertakings: from 16 influencers in 2019, and from Facebook, for Instagram, in 2020.
• The ASA names creators. The ASA keeps a public list of non-compliant social media influencers who routinely failed to label their ads. Named creators get enhanced monitoring, including spot checks, and can face further sanctions such as ASA-paid ads telling their followers. The most recent entry, as of our check, was added on 9 February 2026.
• Brands can be named too. The joint guide says brands can be added to the ASA’s “non-compliant online advertisers” page.

A checklist for UK brands that gift

1. Every parcel carries a written note: “Please label any post about this as an ad: ‘Ad’ at the start of the caption and at the start of the video.”
2. The note names the words that don’t count on their own: “#gifted”, “#sponsored”, “#collab”, “PR”, a thank-you or a tag.
3. Your creator brief and contracts ask for the same, and your agency has a copy.
4. You look for posts about your product from every creator you gifted, tagged or not.
5. For each post, you check that “Ad” comes first: at the start of the caption, before “more”, and at the start of the video or story.
6. When a label is missing, you ask for a fix, and note what you asked and when.
7. You stop working with creators who keep leaving it out.

Check one post against the UK’s words now:

How Pozto helps

Pozto watches the creators you gifted on TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts and finds the posts that show your product, tagged or not. For each post, it reads the caption for disclosure words and notes whether they come before the caption is cut off. It notes YouTube’s paid promotion flag and Instagram’s “Paid partnership” label where it can read them, and, for videos it checks, whether the creator said or showed the disclosure.

In Settings, under “Disclosure rules”, set “Grade posts by the rules of” to United Kingdom. Pozto then grades each post clear, weak or none by the UK’s words. Clear: “Ad”, “Advert”, “Advertising”, “Advertisement” or “#AdvertisementFeature” before the caption is cut off, one of those words said or shown in the video, or the platform’s own label. Weak: a gift word such as “#gifted” or “#collab”, an ad word the UK doesn’t list such as “#sponsored”, or a UK word far down the caption. None: nothing.

It reports what it found. It doesn’t decide whether a post meets the law, but it shows you which posts to look at and which creators to ask for a fix. Start free with up to 10 creators. For other countries, see influencer disclosure rules by country.