ASA's Influencer Naming List Is the Small Stick; the CMA's New Fining Power Is the Big One

The UK's Advertising Standards Authority runs a standing enforcement page that names social media influencers who have refused to properly label paid promotions as ads. It works less like a news story and more like a rolling register: CAP's Compliance team privately approaches repeat offenders first and asks for a written assurance that they will add upfront ad labels going forward. Only those who refuse that assurance, or who sign it and then break the promise, get added to the public list.

The register launched in June 2021 with four names: Chloe Ferry, Chloe Khan, Jodie Marsh and Lucy Mecklenburgh, initially framed as a roughly three-month listing period. The ASA escalated in January 2022, buying Instagram ads that directly called out six more offenders, including Jodie Marsh again alongside Francesca Allen, Jess Gale, Eve Gale, Belle Hassan and Anna Vakili, rather than relying on the webpage alone. By 2024 the ASA said it had contacted more than 150 repeat offenders that year, a scale far beyond the original reality-TV cohort.

The bigger shift sits with a different regulator. The Competition and Markets Authority previously had to rely on court action or voluntary undertakings, the kind it secured from Rita Ora, Ellie Goulding and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley years ago. Under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, the CMA gained direct fining power over consumer-protection breaches from April 6, 2025, with a compliance grace period that ended July 6, 2025. Serious breaches can now draw fines up to the greater of £300,000 or 10% of global turnover, without a judge first weighing in.

The scale of the underlying problem keeps surfacing in the ASA and CMA's own research. Their joint Influencer Ad Disclosure report in May 2025 found 43% of reviewed Instagram and TikTok posts carried no disclosure at all, with some creators substituting vague terms like "gifted" or "PR trip" for a clear ad label. A desk-based sweep of roughly 400 Meta posts this spring found about 5%, fewer than 20 posts, clear enough to refer on for enforcement.