Labelling influencer collaborations as advertising in Sweden: what the law requires and how it is done in practice

1. In short: a paid post must be recognisable as advertising at once, and the responsibility lies first with the company.

The Marketing Practices Act says that all marketing must be designed so that it is clearly marketing, and clear who is behind it [1]. For posts on social media the court has set the bar high. Whoever sees the post must understand that it is advertising at a fleeting glance, whatever order they read and look in [2]. It is not enough that a label exists somewhere in the post.

A post is advertising when it is published for compensation on behalf of a company and has a selling content. The compensation can be money, but also goods, trips, services or commission through affiliate links [3, 4]. Posts about the creator’s own brand are usually advertising too [3]. The company that hires the creator carries the main responsibility, but the creator and intermediaries can have a parallel responsibility [4].

The rules are only partly followed, according to the Consumer Agency (Konsumentverket) [5]. In April 2026 some 40 influencers and advertisers received supervision letters from the agency [6]. The agency writes that advertising posts should be labelled with the word “reklam” (advertising), and the industry recommendation says the label should open the text and that a label on screen can stay for the whole video [3, 7].

Section 2 goes through what the law requires and when a post is advertising. Section 3 covers wording and placement, with decisions that show where labels fall short. Section 4 shows how labelling is done on TikTok. Section 5 covers responsibility and sanctions, and section 6 the Swedish Agency for the Media and the EU.

2. The law requires advertising to be seen at once, not merely to be findable.

The basis is section 9 of the Marketing Practices Act: “All marketing shall be designed and presented so that it is clearly evident that it is marketing.” It must also be clear who is responsible for it. If this fails, the marketing is unfair if it affects or is likely to affect the recipient’s ability to make an informed commercial decision [1].

What the court means by a fleeting glance

The most important decision is the Patent and Market Court of Appeal’s judgment of December 2019 in case PMT 2054-18, on posts on a blog and an Instagram account. The court found that the average consumer often scrolls through text and images, and that the demands on advertising labels must therefore be set relatively high [2]. Consumers must be able to see that the post is advertising at a fleeting glance. Even a click through to the company’s website counts as a commercial decision, so it must be clear that it is advertising before the consumer clicks [2]. The Consumer Agency uses the same yardstick, and a breach is not undone if the post is changed afterwards [7].

When a post is advertising

The industry recommendation describes the usual case: the post is published for compensation on behalf of an advertiser and has a selling content linked to the advertiser’s products. The compensation can be something other than money, and affiliate links can be covered [3]. TikTok’s rules for paid content expressly include products the creator has been given, commission through a link or discount code, and ambassador deals [8].

Three cases are easy to miss. Posts about the creator’s own brand are covered by the law too [3, 4]. An assignment can cover more posts than the contract names: in one case the court counted extra posts about the advertiser’s products as the company’s marketing [7]. And posts about PR mailings have not been tried in court, but the Consumer Agency does not rule out that the law can apply to them too [7].

Law, self-regulation and platform rules

Three sets of rules apply at once. The law is enforced by the Consumer Ombudsman (KO), who can issue orders and bring cases before the Patent and Market Court [1]. The Advertising Ombudsman (RO) and its board (RON) are business self-regulation and assess reported advertising against the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) code [9]. The third level is the platforms’ terms, which section 4 goes through.

The industry recommendation of January 2026 comes from Komm, Sveriges Annonsörer and IAB Sweden and builds on the law, the ICC code and case law [3]. It updates the version of April 2025, and Sveriges Annonsörer has been called Brand Marketing Sweden since 25 May 2026 [10]. The Consumer Agency commented on the 2025 version of the recommendation, but the text is the industry’s own [11].

3. The word is not enough: the label must come first, stand out and follow every publication.

Which words work

The Consumer Agency writes that advertising posts should be labelled with the word “reklam” (advertising) [7]. The industry recommendation gives three examples: “Reklam från X” (Advertising from X), “Marknadsföring från X” (Marketing from X) and “Betalt samarbete med X” (Paid partnership with X) [3]. The wording “Reklam från X” therefore fits both sources [3, 7]. The word “paid” does not have to be included. What matters is that people understand it is marketing [3].

“I samarbete med” (in collaboration with) should not be used as a label, according to the recommendation. In 2019 the court found that the phrase does not show that payment has been made [2, 3]. In the same case neither “#samarbete” (#collaboration) nor “Länk till sidan finns i bion” (link to the site in bio) was enough [2]. English can work if the audience understands it, and in that case “sponsored post” was understood as marketing [3]. “AD” is not banned, but the word is short and can be hard to notice. Short words may need to be offset by extra prominent placement and design [3].

Where and how the label must show

The label should come early. If it is in a text, it should open the text, preferably in capitals and set apart by a punctuation mark [3]. It should not be hidden behind “more” buttons or other parts of the interface. The colour should stand out against the background, and the text should be large enough to read at once. A moving background makes the label even harder to see [3].

If the whole video is advertising, the recommendation suggests that a label stays on screen for the whole video. In formats such as TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels, text and the platform label often sit on top of the video, so the creator should make sure the post is clearly labelled [3]. Every new publication needs to be labelled too, for example when a post is shared again as a Story, and several Stories in a row should be labelled one by one [3].

Figure 1 gathers decisions that show where labels have fallen short. One of them was accepted: Instagram’s own label “Betalt samarbete med X” (Paid partnership with X) at the top of an ordinary post [12].

4. On TikTok the platform’s toggle is required, but it is not always enough on its own.

The EU Digital Services Act (DSA) requires platforms to let users declare that their content is commercial, so that other users can see it clearly and in real time [17]. That is why the large platforms have their own labelling functions [3]. TikTok’s rules require the toggle to be on for paid content, and under TikTok’s terms creators are themselves responsible for the content complying with the law [8].

How to turn on the label

In the TikTok app you choose Content disclosure and ads when you create the post, sometimes under More options, and turn on Disclose commercial content. Then you choose Your brand if you are promoting something of your own, or Branded content if you are promoting someone else, and can tag the brand as a partner. The toggle can also be turned on afterwards under Ad settings, and for LIVE [18]. The post then gets the label Commercial content, which shows Paid partnership when you are promoting a third party [18].

If TikTok flags the video

TikTok itself looks for unlabelled paid content, among other things through links, discount codes and hashtags. If a video is flagged, the creator gets a notification and 24 hours to respond. After that the video is no longer shown in the For You feed, and only the person who posted the video can appeal [19]. So the window concerns distribution. Removing the content is a separate step that TikTok reserves the right to take [8]. TikTok states that labelled videos do not perform worse, but the claim rests on an internal study from 2023, run in Indonesia and Pakistan [19].

Is the label enough?

The industry recommendation says that the platforms’ labels do not always meet the law’s demand for clarity, and that they usually cannot be changed in colour or size. At the slightest doubt it recommends a clear label of your own as a complement [3]. The Consumer Agency writes that anyone in doubt should rather label once too often than once too little [11]. The responsibility applies even when the technology fails: the fact that a platform’s labelling function had stopped working did not free a trader from responsibility [7].

On Instagram, RON accepted the platform’s label “Betalt samarbete med X” (Paid partnership with X) at the top of an ordinary post in 2021 [12]. The same has not been tried in court [3], and Instagram’s label in Stories had not been assessed by RON when the board ruled in January 2022 [16]. In the sources we have read, neither a court nor RON has assessed TikTok’s current label. Our reading is therefore that the cautious route is the toggle plus a label of your own, first in the caption and on screen. Figure 2 sums up the steps for both sides.

5. The company carries the main responsibility, but the creator can be held to account too.

Who is responsible

“The company that has hired an influencer has the main responsibility for the marketing the influencer publishes for the company,” the Consumer Agency writes. Influencers, intermediaries and others who have contributed can have a parallel responsibility [4]. According to the agency’s 2026 report, it must be considered clear that an influencer is as a rule jointly responsible for what is published on their own accounts [11]. The basis is in the law: a prohibition can also be directed at anyone who has contributed substantially to the marketing [1].

The company cannot contract the responsibility away, and it can cover parts the creator made on their own initiative [4]. In March 2026 KO prohibited two influencer posts for a health-food company. The case was mainly about unfair health claims, but KO also found that one of the posts did not make clear that it was advertising. The company had contracts requiring its partners to follow the law, but was still mainly responsible for how they marketed its products [20]. Where it is the creator’s own brand, the creator and the creator’s company can share the main responsibility [11].

Intermediaries are judged case by case. In the 2019 case the agency that had brokered the assignment was cleared, even though it had played an active part in the design, because it was not shown that it had contributed substantially to the unfair design [2]. At the same time, the Consumer Agency writes that intermediaries can have a parallel responsibility [4].

The demands are higher when advertising reaches children. The label must then be suitable and clear for a child, and companies may not address direct calls to buy to children under 18 [21]. If the creator is a minor, the ICC code says the collaboration should take place under a contract expressly approved by their guardian that protects the minor from undue exploitation (article 18.3) [22].

What can happen

In spring 2025 the Consumer Agency opened 52 targeted supervision cases against both advertisers and influencers [11]. Most corrected themselves voluntarily, but eight cases were handed over to KO [6]. KO can prohibit the marketing through an order, which should normally carry a conditional fine [1]. KO’s orders in labelling cases have carried conditional fines of SEK 750,000 and SEK 1,500,000, and in one case where an influencer broke an earlier prohibition the court ordered the fine to be paid [11].

The law also has a sanction fee, the market disruption fee (marknadsstörningsavgift). It can be imposed on a trader who intentionally or negligently breaks the Act’s provisions or contributes substantially to a breach. Where the breach concerns only the requirement of good marketing practice, it must also already be covered by a final prohibition or order. The fee is at least SEK 10,000 and at most four per cent of the previous financial year’s turnover, or at most the equivalent of two million euros if turnover is missing or has to be estimated. It is the court that decides on the fee, on an action brought by KO [1]. In the sources we have read, the sanctions in labelling cases so far have been prohibitions with conditional fines [11].

6. The Radio and Television Act is aimed mainly at the platforms, and the EU is looking ever closer at influencers.

The Media Agency and video-sharing platforms

The Radio and Television Act has its own chapter on video-sharing platforms, and there the duties lie with whoever provides the platform. The provider must for example state who sponsored a video when it has itself entered into or promoted the sponsorship deal, and take suitable measures to get users to follow the chapter’s rules. For identifying advertising, the chapter refers to section 9 of the Marketing Practices Act [23].

The Swedish Agency for the Media (Mediemyndigheten) writes that the Broadcasting Commission can supervise influencers under certain conditions, if they can be regarded as media service providers. Their content can then be assessed as, for example, on-demand TV, and rules on sponsorship and product placement, among others, apply [24].

The EU sweep of 2024

In February 2024 the European Commission and consumer authorities in 22 Member States plus Norway and Iceland published a sweep of posts from 576 influencers. Sweden took part. 97% had published commercial content, but only 20% consistently labelled it as advertising. 38% did not use the platforms’ labels and wrote words such as “collaboration” or “partnership” instead. 34% made the label visible at once, without the reader having to click “read more” or scroll. 358 influencers were singled out for further investigation [25].

What may come

The European Commission has announced a Digital Fairness Act for the fourth quarter of 2026. When the European Parliament’s overview was last updated, on 20 September 2026, the proposal had been announced but not tabled [26]. According to the Consumer Agency’s account of the Commission’s consultation, one of the measures being considered is to clarify influencers’ duty to label commercial content [11].

The neighbouring countries make their own assessments. In 2024 Denmark’s consumer ombudsman took the view that all content from an influencer who runs a business is covered by the Danish marketing act, and Finland’s consumer authority has its own guidance [11]. Danish and Finnish pages do not describe Swedish law, even when they are written in Swedish.

7. About this article: built on primary sources, but not legal advice.

The sources were chosen because they are primary: the law, the court, the authorities, self-regulation and the platform’s own rules. The statutes, the judgment, RON’s decisions, the industry recommendation, the authorities’ pages and reports and TikTok’s rules were read in their original text on 15 October 2026, and the quotes are taken from there. “Independent” marks laws, courts, authorities, self-regulation and trade bodies. The trade bodies represent advertisers and agencies, so they are not neutral. “TikTok” marks TikTok’s own rules and claims.

What is not covered

The article describes what the sources say and is not legal advice. Special rules for alcohol, gambling, nicotine, medicines, health claims and financial services are not covered, and neither is tax. People in the decisions are not named. Translations of quotes are our own.

Limitations

Instagram’s current label could not be checked, because Meta’s help pages could not be read. What is said about Instagram therefore rests on RON’s decisions and the industry recommendation. TikTok’s names for settings and labels come from TikTok’s Swedish help pages, not from the app. We have found no guidance from the Media Agency saying that ordinary creators count as on-demand TV providers. Search volume has not been measured.