A plain-English guide to the new rules

You started posting because it was fun. You got good at it. People liked your videos. A brand sent you a free product. Then another. Then someone offered actual money. And now there are forms to sign, hashtags to remember and rules you only hear about when somebody breaks them.

Here is the short version of where the law has landed in the United Kingdom in 2026. It is not as scary as the headlines make it sound, but it is real, and the days of "I didn’t know" are over. Read this once and you will avoid most of the trouble that catches creators out.

If after reading this you have a specific situation – a brand deal you are not sure about, a product that turned up uninvited, a letter from a regulator, a fine – please get in touch with us before you do anything else.

The rule, in one sentence

If you got something of value because of your following, and you talked about it online, the law expects you to make that clear to the people who watch you.

That is it. Everything below is just detail.

What counts as "something of value"

This is the part most people get wrong. It is not just money. The law treats all of the following as the kind of incentive that triggers the rules:

• Cash payments and affiliate commissions.
• Free products of any kind, including the one that arrived at your door without you asking.
• Free trips, hotel stays, dinners and tickets.
• The loan of a car, a handbag, a holiday rental.
• Free or discounted services.
• Anything you receive as part of an ambassadorship, even if no money is changing hands today.

If you got it for free or cheap because of who you are online, and you choose to talk about it on your platform, you are now an advertiser for whoever sent it. That includes the unsolicited PR box that turned up on a Tuesday.

The 12-month thing

This catches almost everyone. If you did a paid campaign with a brand, or you have an ambassadorship with them, then for the next twelve months every post you make about that brand has to be labelled as an ad. Even if you bought the dress yourself. Even if you have used the moisturiser for five years. Even if today’s post has nothing to do with any campaign.

The reason: your audience knows you have a financial relationship with that brand. The law thinks they have a right to be reminded of it. Once the relationship ends and twelve clear months have passed, you can talk about the brand normally again.

The same applies to your own products. If you launch your own range, your own coffee, your own app, your own affiliate code – every post promoting it is an ad and needs to be marked as one. The fact that you are not paying yourself does not matter. You are the trader.

The words to use, and the words to avoid

The regulators have been very specific about which labels are safe and which are not.

Use:

• Ad
• Advert
• Advertising
• Advertisement
• #ad

Do not use:

• Collab
• Spon
• Gifted
• In association with
• #MyEdit
• Funded by
• AFF (for affiliate)
• Just tagging the brand and assuming people will work it out

The reason "gifted" is banned is not that it is technically inaccurate. You did receive a gift. The reason is that the public reads "gifted" and pictures a friend giving them a present, not a corporation paying for content. The ASA tested this with consumer research, found that most people do not understand "gifted" or "collab" as advertising, and ruled accordingly.

Stick to "ad". It is the boring, safe choice, and it is the one that will keep you out of trouble.

Stick to "ad". It is the boring, safe choice, and it is the one that will keep you out of trouble.

Where to put it

Just as important as the word you use is where you put it. The rule is that the disclosure has to be obvious before the viewer engages with the post. Not after. Not at the bottom. Not behind a "see more" link.

A few common mistakes to watch for:

• Hiding "#ad" at the bottom of a wall of thirty other hashtags.
• Putting white text on a white story background so it is technically there but invisible.
• Relying on the line "I work with X" in your bio. The ASA has said this does not count, because someone could find your post on the explore page without ever seeing your profile.
• Using only Instagram’s "paid partnership" tag and nothing else, then having the tag get lost against a bright background.

The safer approach is to use both. Turn on the platform’s paid partnership tool, and put "#ad" at the very start of your caption or as a text overlay at the start of your video. Belt and braces. If one fails to render, the other carries the disclosure.

What happens if you get caught

This is where it has stopped being a slap on the wrist. There are three layers of consequence and they stack on top of each other.

The ASA puts repeat offenders on a public list of named creators who have been sanctioned for failing to declare ads. You sit on that list for at least three months, your accounts are monitored more closely, and journalists pick the list up. In serious cases, the ASA buys advertisements on the very platforms you use, telling your followers that you have been sanctioned. They algorithmically target your own audience to do it.

The CMA, since the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 came in, can fine you directly without going to court. The maximum fine is 10% of your global turnover. If your business turns over £200,000 a year, that is £20,000 for one undisclosed post.

The brands you want to work with are watching all of this. UK law makes the brand jointly responsible for your missing hashtag, so household-name advertisers and big agencies have started avoiding creators with compliance issues. The deals that are left tend to come from less well-governed corners of the internet, which is exactly where the next problem starts.

How regulators actually find people

A common assumption is that the regulators are too busy to look at your account. That has stopped being true. The ASA has run sweeps where it monitored 122 UK accounts over three weeks and used software to analyse around 24,000 pieces of content, including stories that disappear after a day. Of the marketing content the software flagged, only about a third was compliant.

The CMA has also leaned on the platforms. Meta has given binding commitments to detect hidden advertising on Instagram at the system level. So you are not just trying to stay under the radar of a human regulator. The platform’s own systems are now under pressure to flag you.

A short word about money advice

If you talk about crypto, trading platforms, signals or any kind of investment, you are in a different and more serious world. The Financial Conduct Authority regulates financial promotions, and the rules require authorisation and specific risk warnings. A reality television figure was caught up in exactly this in recent years. She was paid a small fee for four trading-app posts to a large young audience and ended up in FCA territory rather than ASA territory. That is closer to a criminal matter than a missing-hashtag matter. If you are tempted by a financial product offer, get advice first. Always.

What to do this week

If reading the above made you uncomfortable about your own feed, here is the short list:

• Look at your last ten or twenty posts. Anything featuring a brand you have a current or recent paid relationship with should carry an "#ad" label. If it does not, edit the caption and add one.
• Check your bio. If it says you "work with" a brand, that is fine, but it does not stand in for proper disclosures on individual posts.
• For any future post, decide before you film whether the content involves anything you got because of your following. If it does, plan the "#ad" into the caption and the on-screen text from the start.
• If a brand sends you a brief that quietly tells you to skip the label or use "gifted", say no. Ask for the brief to require proper disclosure. A brand that pulls the deal over that is a brand you are better off not working with.
• If a free product turns up at your door and you would rather not deal with the disclosure, simply do not post about it. There is no rule against being sent things. The rules apply only when you choose to feature them.

One last thing

A small comfort from the research is this: most consumers say they trust brands and creators more when the relationship is openly disclosed, not less. The instinct to hide the label so the post looks more authentic is, on the data, exactly the wrong move. People can tell. They feel the deception. And the audience trust you build by being straight with them is exactly the asset that makes brands want to work with you in the first place.

If you have a situation you are not sure about – a deal you have been offered, a letter you have received, a post you suspect is going to come back to bite you – we are happy to talk. Our office is in Soho, and we work with creators, agencies and brands on these issues every week.

Cohen Davis – internet law specialists, Soho, London.