How to get the biggest bang for your advertising buck is the perennial question for all marketers.
As the golden quarter comes to an end, every retailer is trying to work out if all the Black Friday, Cyber Monday, pre-Christmas and January sales marketing actually registered to the bottom line. Whether the advertising is above the line or below the line, hitting the target demographic is harder than ever which is why the use of influencers seems like an obvious route to take. Why believe the agency pitch of “eyeballs” and “page views” when you can use an influencer who has 100,000 dedicated followers in your exact target market.
Easy, right?
Send the influencer a few free samples, sit back and relax. What could go wrong?
A lot!
The UK’s Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) is now the regulator of choice for misleading marketing claims since it was given new powers under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Act 2024 (DMCC). The DMCC gave the CMA the ability to fine to companies up to £300,000 or 10% of annual global turnover (whichever is higher) in relation to infringing activities with additional daily penalties if a breach persists or for the provision of materially false or misleading information. While the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) still has a role to play, the ASA’s inability to fine companies was always a weakness leading to the introduction of the CMA’s powers in the DMCC.
In the latter part of 2025, the CMA updated both its “social media endorsements guidance for brands” and “social media endorsements: guidance for content creators” to ensure that the use of influencers stays on the right side of the line.
The CMA recognises that online content creators, such as influencers, streamers, celebrities, bloggers and social media personalities, have a big impact on consumers’ buying behaviour.
Accordingly, the CMA wants to make sure that all promoted content is clearly labelled so that consumers are not misled. If you are incentivising an influencer in any way to promote your brand or product, you must make sure that any content is clearly identifiable as an ad and reflects the influencer’s genuine experience.
These rules apply to photos (including carousels), videos, reels, shorts, stories, podcasts and any other posts online. And it is not just where you have paid an influencer to post content but also where the influencer received a gift.
Such content must be clearly labelled as an advert by using appropriate hashtags such as #ad #promoted or other wording that is clear, prominent and easy to understand. It is not enough just to have the influencer tag your brand in the post, use discount codes, affiliate links or say “thanks brand”. Where platforms have tools to label content automatically, like ‘paid partnership’ or ‘branded content’, these should be used.
This guidance applies whether or not the influencer is subject to a formal agreement or is just sent a product for free to review even if you don’t ask for anything in return. It also applies where you are the “influencer” posting content about your own business.
The CMA’s view is that unless the content is clearly labelled, it amounts to a “hidden ad”. These hidden ads are illegal and harmful as they can persuade people to buy things they might not usually buy had they known that the content was effectively paid for and so not a unbiased opinion, review or recommendation.
The CMA also regards it as a problem, and illegal, if the influencer gives the impression that the claims were experienced first-hand when in fact the influencer was paid in some way to say it.
Of course, it is nothing new to remind advertisers that the content must also not make false or unsupported statements but this is something that gets forgotten when an influencer is involved. For example, an influencer can’t say that something tastes good, washes well, etc if they haven’t tried it.
Consumers must understand that the influencer content is an ad, as soon as they access or engage with it, regardless of the format or media used.
You can’t hide or bury the labelling in a sea of other hashtags or poorly contrasted with the content background.
If consumers have to:
then the content will fail the “prominence” test.
The use of influencers is a great way to promote your products to a targeted group of consumers at relatively low cost especially if you catch the influencers on the way up. However, get it wrong and it can become expensive, quickly.
For more information please contact Iain Connor or any of the Michelmores brands and regulatory team for advice on how to keep your advertising legal, decent, honest and truthful.
