Brands, influencers still not disclosing partnerships despite new ethics code

Rakshnna Pattabiraman

14th Feb 2023

Despite investigations by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) last month, and an updated code of ethics, social media influencers are failing to disclose brand partnerships, according to a new report.

HypeAuditor, an AI analytics platform, assessed Instagram posts from Australian influencers to find out if they abided by the Australian Association of National Advertisers’ code of ethics.

Out of 521,000 posts by Australian influencers, only 1368 posts contained brand mentions from 855 influencers that were tagged #ad or #sponsored.

The top five brands with the highest number of mentions are Kmart, Woolworths, Coles, Big W and Myer.

No posts from Kmart featured clear disclosure despite 439 brand mentions from 222 influencers, while only 17 posts out of 365 brand mentions from 212 influencers for Woolworths were correctly tagged #ad and #sponsored.

Only seven posts for Coles out of 250 brand mentions from 127 influencers were tagged, 25 posts for Big W out of 139 brand mentions from 103 influencers, and just two posts out of 104 brand mentions from 58 influencers for Myer.

Alex Frolov, CEO and co-founder of HypeAuditor, said that although the updated code was released in February 2021, not much has changed in the way influencers and brands operate.

“It is surprising that the ACCC is conducting a crackdown only on influencers when brands are also not abiding by the rules and regulations in the way they work with influencers and how they tackle advertising for the protection of the consumers.”