The CMA Can Now Fine Creators Directly — One Year In

For years, the ASA's rulings against influencers carried reputational consequences but no fines. That changed when the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 came into force, giving the Competition and Markets Authority power to decide for itself whether consumer-protection law has been breached — and to impose fines directly, without first going to court.

One year on, the CMA has published its scorecard. Between April 2025 and April 2026 it opened investigations into 14 businesses, settled with 2, ordered £760,000 refunded to consumers, imposed fines totalling £4.7 million, issued 157 advisory and warning letters and sent 46 information notices.

The CMA can now impose fines of up to £300,000 or 10% of global annual turnover — whichever is higher — plus additional daily penalties for non-compliance with information requests. The first-year enforcement has focused on drip pricing and hidden charges, but the same consumer-protection framework covers unfair commercial practices, which is where undisclosed advertising sits.

Legal commentators describe the regime as enforcement 'at pace' — and expect year two to broaden. For creators and the brands that pay them, the message is that mislabelled advertising is no longer a naming-and-shaming risk. It is a finable consumer-law breach.

The compliance gap is wide: almost half of UK influencer content (43%) fails to meet ASA disclosure requirements, and one in three UK influencer ads carries no disclosure at all, according to analysis published by IAB UK.

The rules themselves are not new — paid partnerships, gifted products, affiliate links and loans are all commercial relationships that must be clearly labelled as ads, upfront and prominently. What is new is the enforcement machinery behind them: an ASA ruling, a public non-compliance list, and a regulator with direct fining powers that can be brought in behind it.

A disclosure breach is now three risks at once: a regulatory one (fines and enforcement), a contractual one (sponsors' brand-safety and morality clauses are written around exactly this), and an insurability one — the legal and reputational costs that follow.

The practical baseline is unchanged and simple: label every commercial relationship clearly, at the start of the caption, in every format. The GMG guides on disclosing paid promotions walk through it in detail — and the Creator Protection Score™ checks your exposure across ten categories, including Legal Readiness.