Clear-cut ad labelling does not harm influencer engagement, UK study finds

Clearly labelling influencer posts as an ad does not reduce engagement, new UK data suggests, challenging long-standing fears that disclosure harms performance.

The study by analytics platform HypeAuditor in partnership with the Influencer Marketing Trade Body found no meaningful drop in engagement when posts were explicitly tagged #ad, and in several cases disclosed posts performed better than sponsored content without clear labelling.

The report analysed 583,000 sponsored Instagram posts from 116,000 UK creators in 2025. Around 49,000 posts included an explicit #ad label, while more than 533,000 were classified as sponsored but carried no clear disclosure.

Overall engagement rates were nearly identical. Posts tagged #ad recorded an average engagement rate of 1.3%, compared with 1.4% for non-disclosed sponsored posts.

Additionally, when stripping out viral outliers, the study found disclosed content often generated stronger interaction. The median post labelled #ad received 153 likes and 15 comments, compared with 127 likes and 10 comments for non-disclosed sponsored posts.

Robust performance was also visible among larger creators. Influencers with between 500,000 and one million followers saw higher engagement rates on posts labelled #ad than on sponsored posts without disclosure. For creators with more than one million followers, engagement rates were identical either way, but disclosed posts generated higher median reach and interaction.

Alex Frolov, chief executive of HypeAuditor, said the findings countered a widely held assumption within the industry.

“There’s long been a belief that clearly labelling ads hurts performance,” he said. “Our data shows that isn’t the case. Transparent disclosure does not reduce engagement, and in many instances it’s associated with stronger interaction.”

Scott Guthrie, director-general of the Influencer Marketing Trade Body, said the research should remove what he described as one of the last perceived barriers to compliance.

“Some creators tell us they don’t always disclose their ads through fear that platform algorithms downrank their content,” he said. “Our findings show there is no discernible degradation in reach or engagement when #ad is applied.”

Shahriar Coupal, director of advertising policy and practice at the Advertising Standards Authority, said transparency underpins trust in the sector.

“We know from our own research that the public want and expect influencers to disclose when their content is an ad,” he said. “Doing so supports transparency and fairness.”

The report arrives amid continued regulatory scrutiny. Updated guidance from the Competition and Markets Authority last year reiterated that any incentivised content, including gifted products, affiliate links and brand partnerships, must be clearly labelled as advertising. The Advertising Standards Authority has repeatedly ruled that terms such as “#gifted” or “#collab” are not sufficient to clearly identify a post as advertising.