The rule in one sentence
If there is a material connection between you and a brand — money, a free product, a discount, an affiliate cut, a contest entry, a trip — the audience must be told, upfront, in the post itself. That is the core of the ASCI Guidelines for Influencer Advertising in Digital Media, in force since 2021, and it applies whether or not the brand asked you to disclose.
This is backed by law, not just an industry code. Under the Consumer Protection Act and the 2022 guidelines on misleading advertisements, the Central Consumer Protection Authority can penalise endorsers of misleading ads and bar them from endorsement work. The cheap way to never think about any of that is to disclose every deal, every time, properly.
Labels that count
ASCI permits a specific set of disclosure labels. Use one of these, in English or in the language of the post itself, and don't improvise:
- "Advertisement" or "Ad"
- "Sponsored"
- "Collaboration" / "Collab"
- "Partnership"
- "Employee" — if you work for the brand
- "Free gift" — if product was all you received
"Thanks to X", "@brand made this possible", or a wink in the caption do not count. Neither does a label the viewer has to hunt for.
Upfront means upfront
Placement is where most disclosure fails. The label must be where a viewer sees it without any effort — before "see more", not after it; on the content, not only in the caption; never buried in a wall of hashtags.
- Captions: the label goes in the first two lines, above the fold.
- Image-only posts and Stories: the label is overlaid on the image itself, large enough to read.
- Video up to 15 seconds: the label stays on screen for at least 3 seconds.
- Video between 15 seconds and 2 minutes: the label stays up for a third of the video's length.
- Video over 2 minutes: the label stays up for the whole section where the brand is featured.
- Audio and podcasts: say the disclosure at the start and again at the end.
- Live streams: announce it at the start, at the end, and at intervals during the stream.
Use the platform tools — and the label
Instagram's and Facebook's paid-partnership tag, YouTube's "includes paid promotion" checkbox — turn them on for every paid deal. But treat them as additions, not substitutes: the platform toggle can be missed in embeds and reshares, so the ASCI-permitted label still goes in the content itself. Belt and braces, every post.
Two more obligations sit with you, not the brand: do your own due diligence on claims you repeat — if you say the product does something, you should have seen it do that — and skip filters or edits that exaggerate what the product achieves. For finance and health content, additional qualification rules apply; if a deal drifts into investment or medical claims, check them before accepting.
What gets a draft sent back on Orca
Every Orca brief states its disclosure requirements, and drafts are reviewed before publishing. These are the misses that cost a revision cycle:
- 1No label at all — the most common miss, and an automatic send-back.
- 2Label below the fold, or buried in the hashtag block at the end of the caption.
- 3A non-permitted label — "#sp", "#thanks", or a brand tag doing the work of a disclosure.
- 4Video label that flashes for a moment instead of meeting the duration rules above.
- 5Platform toggle on, label missing — or the reverse. It's both.
None of this hurts performance. Audiences do not punish honest disclosure — they punish content that feels like an ad while pretending not to be. A clean label plus content in your own voice is the combination that keeps both the audience and the regulator happy.