It feels like every time you open a social media app you see at least one influencer on your feed.

Whether it’s an unboxing of merch from a new movie or an exclusive pop-up, influencers produce content often with the help of gifts from companies. In some cases, influencers have contracts with those brands, but other times it’s an informal arrangement. Despite the growing trend, the rules surrounding influencer gifting aren’t widely known and have recently had some important clarification.

  • Several PPAI Pyramid Award recipients, such as WHOOPLA, have been recognized for their influencer campaigns.


The Endorsement Guides were released by the Federal Trade Commission in 2023 to regulate how endorsement occurs and to ensure that the relationship between the influencer and brand they’re promoting is clearly stated in subsequent content. When influencers have contracts, they often receive more information and guidelines, but when companies send gifts to influencers without written agreements, the relationship can become ambiguous.

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Traditionally, there has been little enforcement of the guidelines, so many businesses don’t strictly adhere to them. However, it’s clearly stated in an FAQ for the Endorsement Guides that, “If a company sends influencers a free unsolicited product and nothing else, it should ask them to clearly and conspicuously disclose the gift in any resulting social media posts or other endorsements, tell them how it should be disclosed and ask them to tag the brand.”

  • The FAQ also adds that it’s the company’s responsibility to “monitor the resulting tagged posts.”


Tips For Influencer Gifting Compliance

On January 29, the National Advertising Division announced a decision based on an influencer gifting case involving Revolve Group that adds more information on how to remain in compliance while gifting influencers.

The key point of the decision is that the company is responsible for giving clear instructions to influencers on how to disclose their relationship with the company. In the recent NAD case, two online posts weren’t clear enough on the relationship disclosure. Rather than leaving things to chance, companies should be proactive and instruct influencers to explicitly define their relationship.

Influencers often rely on short captions with various hashtags for their social media posts. For endorsements, the opposite should be true. According to the NAD, companies should instruct influencers to disclose their relationship in a full sentence so there is less a chance of it getting misunderstood.

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Additionally, hashtags might be easily understood by digital audiences, but the NAD might not agree, as reported by Gonzalo Mon of Law360. It’s best to avoid relying on hashtags to disclose relationships and if you do use any, you should capitalize the first letter of each word, so it’s more understandable.

Companies should put their instructions in a place where it’s noticeable and make sure they’re easily understood.

  • Hiding disclosure instructions in a long email or document isn’t ideal.
  • Instead, try putting them within the gift package where influencers will see them or put them clearly at the top of any written communication you might send.
  • While disclosure is a legal issue, it’s best not to put the directions in legalese.


For influencers, it’s important that the disclosure is impossible to miss and in a prominent spot in their posts. Viewers should never have to search or follow a link to see the disclosure. The best place is in a caption or placing the text on top of the image/video.

It might not always be feasible, especially with a gifting campaign, but it’s prudent to approve influencer posts before they’re published. This allows companies to address any issues before the post goes live. If pre-approval isn’t possible, companies should have a monitoring program in place to watch for any posts missing the disclosure or where it isn’t clear.