Who: The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)
Where: United Kingdom
When: 12 February 2026
Law stated as at: 6 March 2026
What happened
The ASA has published newly commissioned research into how consumers recognise influencer advertising on social media. The study shows that many consumers find it challenging to identify influencer ads and highlights significant public demand for more transparent disclosure practices.
Key findings include:
Why ads get lost in the feed. The inherent characteristics of the social media experience (no ad breaks, highly personalised algorithms and influencers frequently sharing recommendations) make it more difficult for consumers to differentiate between paid-for posts and genuine recommendations.
Brand ads v influencer posts. Brand ads remain the “gold standard” in terms of clarity: three-quarters of participants reported being able to identify them as “definitely an ad”. In contrast, only approximately half expressed the same level of confidence when it came to influencer content. That said, this stated confidence did not always reflect what happened when people were shown posts in real time. Confusion ran in both directions: some genuine reviews were wrongly flagged as advertisements, while genuinely paid-for posts were perceived as authentic content.
How consumers detect influencer ads. On the factors that enable consumers to identify influencer marketing in terms of a post’s content, the research found that people rely on a variety of signals: brand mentions, excessive positivity about a product, persuasive language, visual product placement, calls-to-action, known relationships between brands and influencers and a general sense that the content “feels different”. While these signals can suggest that a post is an ad even in the absence of a formal label, clear disclosure labels serve as a critical confirmatory backstop, either reinforcing suspicion that a post might be an ad or acting as the sole alert that it is one.
Consumers’ demand for transparency. On labelling, the majority of participants regarded clear labelling as essential for identifying influencer advertising, and over two-thirds of respondents said that they would like labels to indicate how an influencer was paid or rewarded.
Wording and placement. The study also found that a label’s wording and placement can determine its effectiveness: participants said that labels should be displayed prominently at the outset, before the caption, so that users are not required to take additional steps to locate them. Labels such as “Commission Paid”, “Paid Partnership” and “Ad” are seen as the most effective at conveying an unambiguous ad status.
The ASA observes that existing rules already require influencers to label advertising content, and says that the findings will inform a review of its guidelines to ensure that influencer marketing remains compliant with the CAP Code requirement that all marketing communications be “obviously identifiable as such.”
Why this matters
This research underlines that consumers both struggle to identify influencer ads and expect clear, prominent, upfront labelling. Terms such as “Ad”, “Paid Partnership” and “Commission Paid” are seen as the clearest, especially where they appear at the very start of a post or in platform-native disclosure tools, rather than buried in hashtags or only visible after expanding captions.
