Influencers: Ad transparency and performance ‘no longer in conflict’

Influencer ad transparency is a key concern for consumers, with straightforward labels causing the least negative impact to engagement, new research finds.  

Some 80% of consumers prefer influencers to be clear when content is advertising, according to the Advertising Standards Authority’s (ASA) Influencer Marketing Disclosure Report released today (12 February).

The analysis of 1,900 UK participants and 30 different influencer marketing posts found 79% of consumers want ad labels to be visible without having to click ‘more’ in the caption.

Straightforward labels such as ‘ad’ or ‘#ad’, ‘paid partnership’ and ‘commission paid’ were found to be more effective than ‘#gifted’. Some 37% of the UK online population ranked ‘paid partnership’ in their top three of the 16 labels tested – deemed to offer the most clarity – while ‘#gifted’ and ‘#thanks’ ranked the lowest due to not disclosing the full relationship.

Labels posted visually within the content itself or at the beginning of a caption ranked among consumers for clarity.

In practice, only around half of people were certain an influencer post was an ad and more than a quarter were unable to identify influencer ads at all, with brand ads more distinctive than influencer ads.

Primarily focused on Instagram and TikTok, the ASA research is a continuation of the regulator’s 2019 report ‘Labelling of influencer advertising’. ASA research lead, Kam Atwal, explains an update was needed as the “social media landscape has changed” over the past seven years. She notes that when the 2019 research was carried out “TikTok was virtually unknown”.

Audiences now consume so much content that they can easily distinguish what is paid, what is not paid. And when it’s not authentic, they feel it.

Nick Baklanov, HypeAuditor

According to Atwal, people now have more of a “relationship” with influencers, with a third of people saying they follow influencers for product recommendations, particularly within younger age groups.

She notes “trust” is key to this relationship, an opinion echoed by Nicky Baker, regulatory projects manager at the ASA, who says audiences are “much more likely to engage with creators that they feel are being honest with them”.

“When you’ve been at the coalface of this stuff, as we have been for some time, it’s no mystery how some influencers seem to have these wildly fabulous lifestyles, but there’s a lot of pressure on people to try and ‘Keep up with the Joneses’,” says Baker.

The industry still has work to do to make influencer ads even more native to social media, as a third of the sample disagrees influencer marketing is less intrusive than other forms of ads.

From qualitative research, the sample queried whether influencer posts were ‘worth interacting with’, questioning whether the content was trustworthy and relevant, as well as whether it was an ad.

Additionally, there was a net agree score of 30% and a net disagree score of 42% when asked if they would be more likely to buy a brand if it was promoted by an influencer than an ad directly from the brand.

A net 43% agreed they find it difficult to tell the difference between influencer advertising and genuine product/service reviews, particularly within the 13–to-24-year-old cohort. A third of 45-to-64 year old consumers think influencer advertising is as easy to recognise as other social media ads/traditional media ads, compared with three-fifths of under-45s.

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For brands and influencers, Atwal explains having a label on influencer advertising is the “baseline”, but people respond better to posts they “don’t have to work too hard to interpret” in fast scrolling environments.

“Things like #gifted or #thanks or #hostedstay, they’re much murkier and don’t really explain the commercial relationship explicitly,” says Atwal.

She explains 70% of people want to know the relationship between advertiser and influencer.

The 2026 research has also assessed scrolling feeds on platforms, whereas the 2019 iteration looked purely at still images. Through the videos, the team assessed context signals as a cue to whether the post was determined as advertising, such as who the influencer is, how the product is shown and whether the tone in which the influencer describes the product is overly positive.

The ASA found these context signals confirmed the post to be an ad through the addition of an indicator (a label, tagging brands, brand links) closing the ad clarity gap. Yet the effectiveness of the indicator depends on its clarity and the context in which it is placed.

“For example, even when you’ve got a voiceover telling you the brand name, the impact of a label – even on top of that very obvious cue – it comes through in some of that ad clarity gap,” says Atwal.

Elsewhere, the research highlighted that under-45s are most likely to be engaging with influencers on a weekly basis across all platforms, with net 69% of the sample agreeing influencer advertising is something they ‘expect to see’ on social media.

Some 67% of the sample also view influencer marketing content as ‘honest’, with 50% finding it to be ‘salesy’. The ASA reports a net agree score of 70% that people want labels to be clearer around how the influencer has been paid/rewarded for promoting the brand, particularly among consumers aged 44 to 64.

No engagement affects

The ASA work ties into separate research also released today from The Influencer Marketing Trade Body (IMTB) and HypeAuditor, which finds explicit ad disclosure on influencer marketing content is not associated with lower engagement performance. Instead, such explicit disclosure is seen as a legitimacy signal for creators, specifically those with over 500,000 followers.

The research assessed over 500,000 pieces of content from creators of different follower count sizes and found posts with #ad consistently generate stronger median interaction metrics, including likes and comments, despite non-disclosed posts achieving slightly higher reach.

The overall average engagement rate for all the posts assessed was 1.3% for posts with #ad, compared to 1.4% for those without disclosure. The median reach for #ad posts was 2,067 compared to 2,421 for non-disclosed posts.

Average likes for #ad posts were 742 compared to 650 for those without disclosure. Additionally, average comments were 36 for #ad posts, compared to 31 for posts without disclosure. Median likes stand at 153 for #ad posts, compared to 127 for non-disclosed posts, with median comments at 15 for #ad posts versus 10 for those without.

Marketing intelligence analyst at HypeAuditor, Nick Baklanov, explains that at scale “disclosure appears to act as a trust signal” and “transparency and performance are no longer in conflict”.

“Audiences now consume so much content that they can easily distinguish what is paid, what is not paid. And when it’s not authentic, they feel it,” he adds.

Viewers of creative content have no problem with the creator being paid. What they hate is feeling hoodwinked that a piece of paid for content is organic.

Scott Guthrie, IMTB

IMTB director-general Scott Guthrie claims these findings reiterate the need for consumers to trust influencers, while brands and creators need to “continually earn that trust with consumers”.

“Viewers of creative content have no problem with the creator being paid. What they hate is feeling hoodwinked that a piece of paid for content is organic,” says Guthrie.

If a creator is “lying” about this, he believes it raises questions with the consumer about what else they may be lying about, posing broader risks for the advertiser and agencies involved.

According to Baklanov, “transparency seems to matter more as creators scale”. The research finds the median reach of ‘mega’ influencers (with over 1 million followers) was 241,194 on posts tagged #ad, compared to 133,576 on posts that weren’t disclosed.

As the follower size of the influencer decreased, so did the gap between reach on posts with #ad compared to non-disclosed posts.

Guthrie argues the findings help to finally “mythbust” the belief among some influencers that social media platform algorithms downrank content when they disclose brand collaborations.

“The ASA has done a great job in making marketers, making advertisers, making creators aware of the rules, but there are still resistors to change. With this piece of work, we removed that last sort of resistance to change,” he adds.

Future steps

Both the ASA and IMTB research coming out on the same day is seen as a signal of the “maturation and professionalising” of the influencer space.

Looking ahead, Guthrie says ads need to be “obviously identifiable” no matter how they are tagged and this should be seen as a “win win”, simultaneously building trust with the community while not affecting engagement.

He is also keen to make sure this research is “part of a change management programme”, looking at the “motivators for why creators do things and don’t do things”. The IMTB also wants to make it known that advertisers, agencies, platforms and brands have a role to play in ensuring responsible influencer marketing.

Launched in October 2021, the IMTB re-launched its Influencer Marketing Code of Conduct with ISBA in June 2023 to drive transparency and responsibility.

HypeAuditor intends to take the research model into other English-speaking markets such as the US, Australia and Canada, to assess similarities and differences, and promote “proper ad disclosure” in other territories.

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The ASA is currently in the process of updating its ‘Influencers’ Guide to Making Clear That Ads Are Ads’ guidelines. Baker explains the new research provides a “really timely opportunity to further clarify and sharpen that guidance”.

Training materials will also be updated for influencers, brands, agencies and platforms, as education is the regulator’s “starting point” before escalation to sanctions. In 2024, ASA senior compliance executive, Ed Senior, reported the regulator’s online influencer guidance was its most read guidance of the year.

Sanctions include publicly naming and shaming repeat offenders, and targeted ad campaigns on social platforms which have the ASA claims have “proved very effective in bringing a lot of them back in line”. So far, the team haven’t had to refer an influencer to a statutory partner for further action.

The ASA is also continuing to use its AI-based Active Ad Monitoring system to track influencer advertising and take action on wrongdoing, with Baker saying this system has “revolutionised” the approach. The regulator also publishes its Intermediary and Platform Principles voluntary guidelines intended to help uphold the CAP Code.

When it comes to ad disclosure, Baker feels the industry is in a “better place” compared to a year ago, although she recognises there may be a “lack of awareness” in some areas.

Atwal insists the ASA’s work on influencers is “not time-bound” and is considered “of ongoing strategic importance”, the regulator’s intention being to “continue to shine a spotlight” on this work going forward.

Marketing Week will continue to explore the creator economy in future articles in our Influencers Explored series.