Instagram Announces New Crackdown on Influencers

Following a recent investigation by the UK Competition and Markets Authority, Instagram has vowed to do more to protect consumers by ensuring that influencers disclose commercial relationships within their posts.

Instagram plans to tackle the issue on two fronts:

• First, Instagram’s looking to add a new prompt which would require influencers to confirm whether they’ve received incentives to promote a product or service before they can publish their post
• Instagram’s also developing new algorithms to detect potential advertising content. It would then look to alert the relevant business, informing them of the platform rules around such

This has been a long-standing concern - Instagram's been working to address issues around proper disclosure in influencer marketing for years. Back in 2017, the platform added an option to tag a business partner in your post, in order to provide more clarity around such

A recent study found that more than three quarters of influencer promotions on Instagram hide the #ad or #sponsored disclosure beyond the main caption, meaning that users need to expand the text for the disclosure to be seen. According to regulations, influencer marketing labels need to be prominent enough that consumers will easily notice them, and hiding them lower down may actually still be in violation of official rules, and could also come under scrutiny.