Nearly One in Five Creators Say Brands Asked Them to Hide Sponsorships
A new survey has put a number on one of the creator economy's most damaging pressures. Eighteen percent of 365 creators surveyed by influencer-marketing firm SheSpeaks for Business Insider said a brand had explicitly asked them not to disclose a paid partnership during the past year. Nearly one in five is not a marginal compliance problem. It suggests that hidden advertising is sometimes a deliberate campaign request, not simply a creator forgetting a hashtag.
The survey should be read carefully. A sample of 365 creators is a directional measure, not a census of every influencer, platform or product category. The published figures do not show how often creators complied, whether requests arrived in formal briefs or private messages, or how results varied by audience size. Those limitations matter, but they do not neutralize the central finding: a meaningful share of respondents reported direct pressure to conceal a commercial relationship.
Self-reported disclosure behavior also appears to have weakened. PostHype's review of the findings said 14% of respondents acknowledged that they did not always disclose deals, compared with 2% in a similar survey about a decade earlier. The share saying they disclosed always or almost always fell from 95% to 84%. Changes in platforms and samples complicate a perfect historical comparison, yet the direction is troubling.
The Federal Trade Commission's guidance is straightforward in principle. When a creator has a material connection to a brand—payment, free products, employment or another benefit—that relationship should be disclosed clearly and conspicuously. The disclosure must be difficult to miss and understandable to ordinary viewers. Burying it below a caption break, relying on vague language or assuming followers already know about the relationship can fail that standard.
The business incentive behind concealment is easy to understand and hard to defend. Brands and creators may fear that a visible “ad” label will reduce engagement because audiences treat sponsored content with more skepticism. But hiding the relationship converts a performance concern into a trust and legal risk. If a recommendation only works when the audience does not know it was paid for, the campaign is testing deception rather than creative persuasion.
Creators often carry the public cost even when the pressure begins with a brand. Their face, voice and relationship with followers are attached to the post, while the marketer can remain invisible until screenshots emerge. A creator who refuses may lose income; one who agrees can lose credibility that took years to build. Contracts should therefore state disclosure requirements, approval responsibilities and the right to reject instructions that conflict with law or platform policy.
TheiMedia has covered Patreon's latest push into creator discovery and Alexandra Leclerc's Rhode beauty collaboration. Those stories show two sides of monetization: platforms seeking sustainable revenue and creators turning personal style into product. Disclosure is the connective tissue that lets those systems function honestly. Audiences do not need creators to avoid sponsorships; they need enough information to judge a recommendation with the commercial context visible.
Brands also face more than reputational exposure. The FTC can hold advertisers responsible for deceptive endorsements, and platform tools are becoming more capable of identifying commercial content. Automated labels may reduce the perceived advantage of hiding a deal while increasing the embarrassment of being labeled after publication. A campaign that depends on evasion can quickly become a case study in poor governance.
The practical fix begins before content is created. A brief should specify the required wording, location and duration of the disclosure for each format. Legal or compliance reviewers should check the final post, not merely the concept. Agencies should preserve written approvals, and creators should keep copies of instructions and payment terms. None of these steps makes a campaign less authentic. They prevent authenticity from becoming a word used to disguise advertising.
The survey's most important message is not that creators cannot be trusted. It is that they are operating inside a market where some clients may reward opacity and punish refusal. Better enforcement, clearer contracts and stronger platform design can change those incentives. Creators still make the final publishing decision, but responsibility should follow the money and the instructions as well as the person on camera. Trust is the creator economy's most valuable asset; treating disclosure as optional spends it for a short-term metric.
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