Published by LegalLens | legallens.co.uk
Your marketing team has briefed the creator, agreed the deliverables, and the campaign is about to go live. The contract was based on a template that has done the job for the last two years. Disclosure is mentioned in passing. Usage rights say "social media" without specifying which platforms, for how long, or in which formats.
That contract was probably fine in 2024. It is a real problem in 2026.
In April this year, the Competition and Markets Authority issued its first-ever direct fine under its new consumer enforcement powers, a £4.2 million penalty plus consumer redress, without going anywhere near a court. Those powers apply just as directly to hidden advertising and influencer non-disclosure as they do to the pricing practice that triggered that first case. Meanwhile, the ASA's AI-based Active Ad Monitoring system is actively scaling up, scanning influencer content for compliance failures at a volume no human review team could match.
This guide covers what UK brands are legally responsible for when working with influencers, what changed with the CMA's new powers, and what every influencer contract needs to include to actually protect your business.
Why Brands Carry the Risk, Not Just the Creator
The most common assumption UK marketing teams still make is that disclosure is the influencer's problem. The creator posts the content, the creator adds the hashtag, and if it is missing, the creator faces the consequences.
This is not how UK regulation works, and treating it that way is now a considerably more expensive mistake than it used to be.
Both the ASA, through the CAP Code, and the CMA, through the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, treat the brand and the influencer as jointly responsible for a non-compliant post. This holds even where the brand did not create the content and did not directly control what the influencer posted. If you commissioned it, approved it, or benefited commercially from it, you share the exposure.
What Changed With the CMA's New Powers
Direct Fines Without a Court Case
Before April 2025, the CMA had to go to court to enforce consumer protection law. Under the DMCCA, it no longer does. It can investigate, decide, and fine a business directly, and its first use of that power, against a driving school operator over hidden fees, resulted in a £4.2 million penalty and roughly £760,000 in consumer redress. A second fine followed shortly after. The CMA has been explicit that this is the start of an active enforcement programme, not a one-off.
Undisclosed Advertising Sits Squarely Within Scope
Hidden advertising, an influencer post that does not make clear it is a paid or gifted commercial arrangement, falls within the same unfair commercial practices regime that produced those fines. The CMA's own public commentary has specifically named influencer disclosure as a priority enforcement area since well before the DMCCA came into force.
The Fines Scale With Turnover, Not Campaign Value
Under the DMCCA, penalties for the most serious breaches can reach the greater of £300,000 or 10 percent of annual global turnover. Even lower-level breaches can attract fines of the greater of £30,000 or 1 percent of global turnover. For a brand running multiple influencer campaigns a year, a genuine compliance gap is no longer a marketing risk. It is a board-level financial one.
The ASA Is Automating Its Detection
The ASA's Active Ad Monitoring system uses AI to scan influencer content at scale, and it is scaling up further through 2026. In a review of advertorial content, the ASA found a significant share of influencer content failed to meet compliance standards outright, with fashion and travel campaigns performing particularly badly. Manual spot-checking your influencer roster is no longer a credible compliance strategy against automated detection running continuously.
What Every UK Brand-Influencer Contract Must Cover
Deliverables, Specified Precisely
"Three Instagram posts" is not an enforceable deliverable clause. Specify platform, format, caption and tag requirements, the approval process, revision limits, posting dates, and how long the content must remain live. Vague deliverables are the most common source of mid-campaign disputes, and they leave you with no clear legal position if a creator under-delivers.
Disclosure Requirements, By Platform, In Writing
Your contract must require disclosure, and it should specify the exact wording, placement, and format for each platform the content will appear on. A platform's own paid partnership tag supplements a disclosure, it does not replace one, and this distinction has been the basis of ASA rulings. Leaving disclosure format to the creator's discretion is a compliance gap you are creating on purpose.
Usage Rights, Explicitly Scoped
This is the clause most frequently drafted too loosely, and it is the one that determines your long-term return on the campaign. Specify which channels the content can be used on, organic and paid, for how long, in which territories, and whether you can edit, crop, or reformat it. Without a clear licence, UK copyright law defaults to the creator retaining ownership, with your usage limited to what was originally agreed.
Whitelisting as Its Own Clause
Running paid ads through a creator's handle is a separate, more valuable, and more intrusive service than standard usage rights. It needs its own price, its own duration, and its own approval terms, not an assumption that general usage rights cover it. Continuing whitelisted ads past an agreed expiry is copyright infringement, and creators are increasingly aware of their rights here.
Warranty and Indemnity for Compliance
Your contract should include an explicit warranty from the creator that content will comply with ASA and CMA requirements, and an indemnity protecting your business if they post something that does not. This is your primary evidence of active compliance oversight if a regulator ever asks what steps you took.
Payment Terms With Real Leverage
A staged structure, on signing, on approval, on posting, protects your budget far more than paying in full upfront. Include a kill fee for cancelled campaigns and, for larger engagements, a proportionate clawback provision tied to specific compliance or delivery failures.
Is your brand risking direct CMA fines over outdated influencer contracts?
Do not leave your compliance strategy to chance or rely on informal templates that fail to meet current UK advertising standards. Book a consultation with LegalLens today to audit your influencer agreements, enforce robust disclosure requirements, and protect your business from regulatory exposure.
Common Mistakes UK Brands Are Still Making
Assuming disclosure liability sits with the creator alone, when both parties are jointly exposed under ASA and CMA rules
Running the same generic contract template across every campaign, regardless of platform or content format
Treating a platform's own ad label as sufficient disclosure on its own
Approving content without actively checking disclosure wording and placement, which removes any claim to reasonable oversight later
Not auditing live campaign content periodically, when the ASA's automated monitoring is checking continuously
How LegalLens Supports UK Brands
LegalLens works exclusively in creator economy law for UK brands, agencies, and the influencers they work with. We help you:
Review and draft influencer contracts that meet current ASA and CMA requirements, with deliverables, disclosure, and usage rights specified precisely enough to actually hold up
Audit live campaign content against current disclosure standards, before the ASA's automated monitoring finds a gap first
Advise on the DMCCA's practical impact on your specific campaigns and roster
Build Master Service Agreement frameworks for brands managing multiple ongoing creator relationships, so you are not drafting from scratch for every campaign
Our fees are flat-rate, capped at 10 percent of contract value, with a 24-hour turnaround.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can our brand be fined even if the influencer created and posted the content themselves?
Yes. Both the ASA and the CMA treat the brand as jointly responsible for ensuring disclosure compliance, regardless of who physically created or posted the content, if the brand commissioned and benefited from it.
How large can a CMA fine actually be for our business?
Under the DMCCA, the most serious breaches can attract a fine of the greater of £300,000 or 10 percent of global annual turnover. Even minor breaches can reach the greater of £30,000 or 1 percent of turnover, and the CMA can now impose these directly without a court process.
Does a platform's built-in ad label, like Instagram's Paid Partnership tag, satisfy our disclosure obligations?
No, on its own it does not. ASA guidance treats platform tags as supplementary to a clear disclosure in the caption or content itself, not a replacement for one.
How often should we review our influencer contracts and live content for compliance?
At minimum, quarterly, and immediately whenever ASA or CMA guidance updates. Given the scale-up of the ASA's automated monitoring, content that was compliant when posted can be flagged later if standards shift or if your original approval process missed something.
Do these rules apply to campaigns that also reach EU or US audiences?
The ASA and CMA rules govern UK-facing content specifically. If your campaign reaches other markets, you also need to meet the FTC's requirements for US audiences and, where relevant, the EU's and France's frameworks, which differ in some material respects.
Influencer marketing in the UK moved from a lightly regulated growth channel to one with real, direct financial consequences in the space of about a year. The CMA's first fine under its new powers was not about influencer marketing specifically, but it demonstrated exactly how the regime now works: fast, direct, and without the delay a court process used to provide.
The brands managing this well are treating their influencer contracts as compliance infrastructure, not marketing paperwork, and reviewing them before the ASA's monitoring system or a CMA investigation does it for them.
This article does not constitute legal advice and is provided for general information purposes only. Always consult a qualified legal professional for advice tailored to your specific situation.