Brands Quietly Push Influencers to Skip Ad Disclosures

A trust economy built on hidden payments

Influencer marketing sells itself on authenticity: a creator recommending a product is supposed to carry more weight than a traditional ad because it looks like a genuine personal opinion. That premise is now colliding with a persistent, well-documented pattern of brands quietly asking creators to hide the fact that they were paid. Business Insider's reporting on the phenomenon, paired with academic research, UK regulatory findings, and years of FTC guidance, describes an industry where concealment is common, enforcement is thin, and the money involved keeps growing 16.

The clearest anecdote comes from Sharon Johnson, a Utah-based wellness influencer, who said a supplement brand asked her not to label posts showing her unboxing its product. She disclosed anyway, worried about losing her audience's trust and about running afoul of the Federal Trade Commission 16. Her experience fits a wider pattern uncovered by a survey of 365 creators conducted for Business Insider by the influencer-marketing firm SheSpeaks: 18% said a brand had explicitly asked them not to disclose a partnership in the past year 16.

Disclosure is getting worse, not better

The same survey found something SheSpeaks didn't expect: compliance has slipped over the past decade. Fourteen percent of creators admitted they don't always disclose partnerships, up from just 2% when SheSpeaks ran a similar survey ten years ago. The share who said they "always or almost always" disclose fell from 95% to 84%. SheSpeaks CEO Aliza Freud called the shift toward what she described as a "Wild West" environment surprising, given that awareness of the FTC's rules should, in theory, be higher now than it was a decade ago 16.

That self-reported decline lines up with harder data from outside the Business Insider investigation. A peer-reviewed Marketing Science study by researchers at University College London and Imperial College London analyzed more than 100 million brand-related posts on Twitter/X from 268 major brands between 2014 and 2021, using a machine-learning classifier built to detect concealed sponsorship. Its preferred estimate: 96% of sponsored posts went undisclosed, with even a deliberately conservative version of the model putting the figure at 82% 7811. The study also found nondisclosure rates fell only modestly over the eight-year period — from about 98.4% in 2014 to 94.4% in 2021 — despite tighter FTC rules and more enforcement letters during that window 8. Undisclosed posts were disproportionately linked to younger brands with large social followings, suggesting compliance may not improve as those brands grow 7811.

Across the Atlantic, the UK's Advertising Standards Authority reached a broadly similar conclusion through its own large-scale review. Examining more than 50,000 Instagram and TikTok stories, reels and posts from 509 UK accounts and 390 individual influencers, the ASA found that 34% of influencer ads carried no disclosure whatsoever, and that only around 57% of influencer advertising content was adequately disclosed under the UK's rules 910. Fashion and travel content fared particularly badly, with more than half of ads in those categories undisclosed or inadequately labeled 910. The ASA did note one bright spot: accounts it had previously flagged in a 2021 report showed disclosure rates climb from 35% to 49%, which it partly credits to its own compliance monitoring — though it still called the overall level too low 10.

Why brands want the ad to not look like an ad

The reason brands are asking for concealment, according to several people Business Insider interviewed, is a widespread belief — accurate or not — that disclosure hurts performance. Leila Marsh of The Drive Agency said brands sometimes push back against disclosure because they want posts to feel "organic." Shelby Currie of the media agency Moroch said celebrities she works with routinely ask whether they really have to include "#ad" because they believe it hurts engagement 16. AJ Eckstein, founder of Creator Match, said two brands asked his agency to skip disclosure in the past six months alone; he says the agency walked away from six-figure contracts rather than comply, framing audience trust as the asset brands are actually paying to borrow 16.

That commercial logic runs directly against what regulators are trying to protect. The FTC's Endorsement Guides require disclosure of any "material connection" — payment, free products, family or business ties — that could change how much weight a consumer gives an endorsement, and the obligation falls on brands as well as creators 121516. The agency has been explicit that vague tags like "#sp," "#partner," or simply tagging a brand's account don't meet the bar, and that disclosures buried below Instagram's "more" button or tacked onto a YouTube description rather than the video itself are inadequate 121615. Vox's earlier reporting on TikTok found the same failure pattern in practice: influencer Charli D'Amelio tagged sponsor Muse without stating she was paid, and creator Patrick Minor featured Bang drinks prominently with no disclosure at all, illustrating that even accounts with millions of followers routinely skip the label 18.

The stakes: a market now worth well over $10 billion

None of this is a fringe issue. eMarketer forecasts US influencer-marketing spending will top $10.52 billion in 2025, a milestone it now expects a year earlier than previously projected, after estimating 2024 spending grew 23.7% 13. That figure is narrowly defined — payments to US creators on platforms that primarily host user-generated content — and excludes the paid media and TV, podcast and out-of-home budgets brands are increasingly layering on top of creator campaigns 13. Statista's broader global estimate puts the influencer-marketing market above $24 billion in 2024, up from roughly $10 billion in 2020, with 14.4% of marketers surveyed devoting 10-15% of their budgets to the channel and nearly 12% devoting more than half 14. Whatever the exact figure, the trajectory is the same across every estimate: more money, flowing through a system where a large share of sponsored content is not clearly labeled.

Enforcement hasn't kept pace

The FTC has taken some action. In 2017 it sent more than 90 letters to celebrities and influencers reminding them of disclosure obligations 15. In 2020 it sued wellness brand Teami over undisclosed Instagram promotions combined with unsubstantiated health claims; the company paid nearly $1 million, though the influencers involved — including Cardi B and Jordin Sparks — received only warning letters, not fines 18. But Lauren Wolfe of Travelers United, a nonprofit that has pursued its own actions against undisclosed travel advertising, told Business Insider that infrequent FTC enforcement has convinced many brands and creators the risk of getting caught is low 16. The Twitter/X research backs that reading: the FTC has never fined an influencer, and companies caught violating disclosure rules, including Lord & Taylor and Warner Bros., have historically settled without penalties 8.

Platforms are trying to fill the gap. YouTube recently said it would deploy automated detection to flag undisclosed brand deals in creator videos, joining similar systems already used by TikTok and Meta 16. The European Commission separately pressed TikTok to let users report undisclosed branded content and to review posts from accounts with more than 10,000 followers 18. Industry groups are also trying self-regulation: the Institute for Responsible Influence launched a certification program in April, backed by TikTok and advertising trade groups, to train brands and creators on disclosure rules 16.

Where the reporting agrees

Every source examined here, from Business Insider's creator interviews to the Twitter/X academic study to the UK's ASA review, arrives at the same underlying finding through different methods: a substantial share of paid influencer content is not clearly disclosed, and this has been true for years despite tightening rules 167891011. There's also consistent agreement that enforcement, whether from the FTC or platform moderation, has lagged the scale of the problem, and that concealment tends to cluster around newer, high-following brands and categories like fashion and travel 8910. Finally, no source disputes that the money at stake is large and growing, whether measured narrowly by eMarketer or broadly by Statista 1314.

Where it doesn't

The sources diverge sharply on magnitude, and it matters why. The Twitter/X study's 96% nondisclosure figure and the ASA's 34%-having-no-disclosure figure are not measuring the same thing: one is a machine-classified estimate of historical Twitter posts from 268 major brands over an eight-year span, the other is a human-reviewed audit of current UK Instagram and TikTok content from a mix of previously flagged and randomly selected accounts 89. Applying either number to the whole of today's influencer economy overstates precision neither study claims.

The SheSpeaks 18% figure is different again — it measures how many creators recall a brand asking them to hide a deal, not what share of posts are actually undisclosed, and it rests on self-reported survey answers from 365 people rather than an audit of content 16. Business Insider's framing emphasizes deliberate brand pressure as the driver of concealment; the ASA's framing treats the shortfall more as a diffuse compliance failure spread across influencers, brands, agencies and platforms, with less emphasis on brands actively requesting concealment 16910. Spending figures also diverge by definition rather than disagreement: eMarketer's $10.52 billion U.S. figure and Statista's $24 billion global figure aren't contradictory, they're measuring different markets with different scopes 1314.

The reading the evidence supports

Taken together, the specific percentages should be treated as illustrations of scale rather than a single settled statistic, since no two studies measured the same population the same way. But the direction of the evidence is unambiguous and consistent across every independent method used — creator self-reports, machine classification of a hundred million historical posts, and a UK regulator's direct audit all land in the same place: a meaningful share of paid influencer content, likely well over a third and possibly the large majority depending on platform and era, is not adequately disclosed, and brand-driven requests to conceal partnerships are a real and reported cause, not merely creator carelessness. The persistence of that gap across nearly a decade of increasingly explicit FTC guidance is the strongest evidence that voluntary compliance and current enforcement levels have not been sufficient, a conclusion the underlying academic authors state directly and that the ASA's own before-and-after comparison of monitored accounts implicitly supports by showing improvement follows scrutiny, not goodwill.