We have already written about FTC disclosure and why #ad is on by default at Influous. But the FTC is an American regulator, and almost nobody in security has a purely American audience. If you publish in English, a large share of your readers sit in Europe, the UK, and beyond. The uncomfortable part: most regulators care about where your audience is, not where you are. A researcher in Austin with a big German readership is very much on German regulators’ radar.
This is not legal advice. It is a working map of the terrain, written for people who would rather read a protocol spec than a compliance memo.
The UK: the ASA wants the label upfront
In the UK, advertising is policed by the Advertising Standards Authority under the CAP Code, with the Competition and Markets Authority handling the consumer protection side. Their position on influencer content is blunt: if a brand paid you or gave you something of value and has any control over the content, it is an ad, and it must be obviously identifiable as an ad before anyone engages with it.
In practice that means a clear label like “Ad” at the start of the post or video, not a #sponsored buried in a wall of hashtags. The ASA has repeatedly said that platform tools alone, like a paid partnership tag, may not be enough on their own. And unlike some regulators, the ASA names names: it publicly lists influencers who repeatedly fail to disclose. For a security creator whose entire value is credibility, ending up on that list is a worse outcome than any fine.
The EU: one directive, many national flavors
The EU baseline is the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, which bans hidden marketing outright: presenting paid promotion as independent editorial content is a prohibited practice across all member states. The Digital Services Act adds transparency duties at the platform level, which is why the paid partnership toggles keep getting more prominent.
The catch is that a directive gets implemented country by country, and several countries have gone well beyond the baseline.
France and Germany: the strict end of the spectrum
France passed a dedicated influencer law in 2023. It requires commercial influencer relationships above modest thresholds to be in written contracts, mandates clear French-language labels on sponsored content, and backs it all with criminal penalties, including significant fines. It is one of the strictest regimes in the world, and it applies to creators outside France who target French audiences.
Germany has no single influencer statute, but German courts have litigated influencer labeling extensively, including cases about whether unpaid product tags need labels. The case law has settled into a workable rule: whenever there is a commercial relationship of any kind behind the content, label it clearly. German enforcement also has a quirk worth knowing: competitors can sue you for unfair competition over missing labels, so it is not only regulators watching.
What to actually do
You do not need a law degree to stay clean across all of this. The strict regimes and the FTC overlap heavily, so complying with the strictest interpretation costs almost nothing extra:
- Disclose based on your audience, not your passport. If your analytics show meaningful UK, French, or German readership, act like their rules apply to you.
- Put the label at the front. “Ad” or “Sponsored” in the first line, the video intro, and the thumbnail text where possible. Never only at the end.
- Use in-content labels plus platform tools, not one or the other. Platform tags disappear when content is screenshotted or embedded. Your spoken or written disclosure does not.
- Get every deal in writing. France requires it, and everywhere else it protects you anyway. Scope, payment terms, disclosure language, review rights.
- Keep records. Briefs, contracts, and the published disclosure. If a regulator ever asks, the creator who can produce paperwork in an afternoon has a very different conversation than the one who cannot.
Why we default to the strict end
On Influous, disclosure is on by default and written into how campaigns run, because a managed service for security audiences cannot work any other way. Security professionals are the most disclosure-sensitive audience on the internet. They do not merely dislike hidden ads, they treat them as an indicator of compromise for your entire feed. Clear labeling that satisfies the FTC, the ASA, and the French regulator at the same time is not a burden. It is the same honesty your audience already demanded.
If you are a brand planning a campaign with European reach, or a creator unsure how a specific deal should be labeled, we are happy to talk it through. Email us at info@influous.io, or apply as a creator and we will cover disclosure during onboarding.