Nearly One in Five Creators Say a Brand Asked Them to Skip Disclosure

A survey of 365 creators conducted for Business Insider by influencer-marketing firm SheSpeaks finds that nearly one in five (18%) say a brand explicitly asked them not to disclose a paid partnership in the past year.

That is not a soft ask about hashtag style. It is a request to hide the commercial relationship. Business Insider's Lucia Moses and Lara O'Reilly reported the numbers on 9 September, with on-record color from creators and agencies who say they push back — and, in at least one agency's case, walk away from six-figure deals rather than run undeclared posts.

The creator side of the ledger got worse on the same poll. Fourteen percent of respondents said they did not always disclose partnerships, up from 2% when SheSpeaks ran a comparable survey a decade earlier. Eighty-four percent said they "always or almost always" made brand partnerships clear, down from 95% in the earlier survey. SheSpeaks CEO Aliza Freud told BI the drop was unexpected: the firm "expected everyone to say, or at least know to say, yes."

Process gaps sit under the headline percentages. Just over half of those polled (57%) said the agency or brand provided clear disclosure instructions in the past year. Only 36% said the agency or brand reviewed their content for disclosure compliance. In other words, many briefs still treat the legal label as optional copy polish.

The FTC's Endorsement Guides FAQ is unambiguous on the underlying rule: if there is a connection between endorser and marketer that consumers would not expect and that would affect how they weigh the endorsement — including payment or free product — that connection should be disclosed clearly and conspicuously. The agency's social-media Q&A still points creators and advertisers at simple language ("ad," "sponsored," thanking a brand for a free product) and warns that platform tools alone are not a safe harbor if the label is easy to miss.

Platform enforcement is tightening on paper even as survey self-reports soften. YouTube's 3 September branded-content policy update — covered here last week — says systems may auto-apply a branded-content label when undeclared deals are detected, with automated detection framed for "the coming months" on new uploads. BI notes TikTok and Meta run similar systems. None of that substitutes for FTC compliance, and none of it explains why 18% of this sample still heard a brand ask them to skip the label.

What the survey does not publish: the share of those asks that came with a written brief versus a DM; category breakouts (supplements appear in the anecdotal lead, not as a measured slice); whether the 365-creator sample is weighted by follower tier or platform; or how often creators complied when asked. Until those cuts exist, treat 18% as a directional pressure gauge from a named trade poll, not a census of the market.

The commercial read is blunt. Undeclared posts are a reach hack that spends down the trust the brand is renting. Agencies that refuse those asks are pricing audience credibility as the asset. Brands that still request silence are betting the FTC stays quiet longer than the algorithm stays dumb.