A brand posts a product to a creator with a note: "in exchange for an honest review". The creator films a two-minute video saying what they think, does not mention the parcel, and the brand pins the video to its product page under the heading "what our customers say", next to a five-star rating. Since 6 April 2025 that sequence contains three practices the law treats as unfair in all circumstances, and none of the three depends on whether the review was sincere.
The rules on labelling a paid video as an advertisement are covered in the guides to disclosure obligations for brands and ad labels from the creator's side. This guide is about a different object, the review, which the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 now defines and regulates on its own terms, and about the moment a creator video stops being one and becomes the other.
A paid video and a review are not the same object
A creator video commissioned for a fee is an advertisement: recognisable as one, with the brand answering for its claims, and nobody expects it to be the creator's unprompted opinion. A consumer review is the opposite promise. Schedule 20 to the 2024 Act defines it as a review of a product, a trader or any other matter relevant to a transactional decision, and defines a fake consumer review as one that purports to be, but is not, based on a person's genuine experience.
The CMA's guidance for businesses publishing reviews makes the format point that matters: a consumer review can be text under a listing, a star rating, or a verbal opinion expressed in a video on a sharing platform. A creator video presented to viewers as "my review" is therefore a consumer review in law, whatever the brand calls it in the contract. With an advertisement the brand buys a labelled message. With a review it buys nothing, because a review that was bought and presented as independent is the thing the schedule prohibits.
Commissioning includes incentivising
The provision that catches creator marketing is paragraph 13 of Schedule 20, in force since 6 April 2025. It prohibits submitting, or commissioning another person to submit or write, a fake consumer review or a consumer review that conceals the fact it has been incentivised. The schedule then defines its terms, and the definitions are wide on purpose. Commissioning includes incentivising by any means. A review conceals the fact it has been incentivised if a person has been commissioned to write it and that fact is not made apparent, whether through the contents of the review or otherwise.
Read together, a free product, a discount, a commission on sales and an invitation to a launch event are all incentives. A creator who receives any of them and publishes a video-review that does not make the incentive apparent has published a concealed incentivised review. The brand that sent the product has commissioned one. The regulator does not have to show that the opinion was false: the banned practice is the concealment, not the content. And because it is a banned practice, the Competition and Markets Authority can impose a penalty by notice under section 182 of the Act. That is the count from the opening: the creator submits a concealed incentivised review, the brand commissions one, and the brand then publishes it in a misleading way.
What makes the incentive apparent
The schedule says the fact must be made apparent through the contents of the review or otherwise. In a video, "otherwise" is a narrow space. A line in a written agreement between brand and creator is not apparent to a viewer. A tag the platform hides behind a tap is weak, and so is a line that is only spoken, because much of the audience watches without sound. What is reliably apparent is a sentence early in the video, spoken by the creator and shown on screen at the same time: the brand sent me this, or I was paid to test this, followed by the opinion. The advertising label and the incentive statement often coincide, and one clear sentence can do both jobs, but they answer to two different texts and a creator should check that the sentence satisfies each.
When the brand becomes the publisher
The second half of paragraph 13 is aimed at the brand rather than the creator. It prohibits publishing consumer reviews, or consumer review information, in a misleading way, and publishing them without taking such reasonable and proportionate steps as are necessary to prevent the publication of fake reviews, concealed incentivised reviews and false or misleading review information, and to remove them.
A brand that embeds creator videos on a product page under "what customers say", or feeds them into a carousel of testimonials, or lets its star rating be shaped by them, is publishing consumer reviews and consumer review information. The schedule gives examples of publishing in a misleading way, and the first one is failing to publish, or removing, negative reviews while publishing positive ones. A brand that commissions ten creator videos, publishes the eight favourable ones as reviews and quietly drops the two others has done exactly that. It has also published incentivised reviews, and unless each carries its incentive statement on the brand's page as well as on the creator's, it has published concealed ones.
The reasonable and proportionate steps the schedule requires are the brand's own procedures, and for creator content they come down to five:
- Publish a policy that prohibits fake reviews and states the brand's approach to incentivised ones, which is what the CMA's short guide puts first.
- Keep a list of which creator videos were incentivised, and how.
- Label each one where it is republished, on the brand's page as well as the creator's.
- Keep the negative ones in the set if the set is presented as reviews.
- Take a video down when its incentive statement is missing.
The guide to taking content down after a product change covers the mechanics of removal; here the trigger is a missing sentence rather than a recall.
Negative reviews you commissioned
A commissioned review that comes back critical belongs to the same set as the favourable ones, and if the brand presents the set as customer reviews, cherry-picking is publishing in a misleading way. A brand that does not want to publish critical content should not present the favourable content as reviews at all: label it as advertising and leave the word "review" out of the frame.
What the CAP Code asks on top
The advertising code mirrors the Act and applies to the creator's post and to the brand's republication of it. Rule 3.45 says marketing communications must make clear where consumer reviews have been incentivised. Rule 3.46 prohibits publishing reviews or review information in a misleading way, with the same examples as the schedule. Rule 3.47 adds something the Act does not: marketers must hold documentary evidence that a testimonial or endorsement used in a marketing communication is genuine, unless it is obviously fictitious, and must hold contact details for the person who gave it.
That last rule matters for the brand's archive: a creator video used as a testimonial in a later advertisement has to be traceable to a real person the brand can still reach, with a record that the words were theirs.
A testimonial is not evidence for the claim it contains
Two rules that predate the schedule also survive. Rule 3.49 says that claims which appear in a testimonial and are likely to be read as factual must not mislead, and rule 3.7 requires documentary evidence for any objective claim before it is published. A creator saying the serum cleared their skin in a week is a testimonial that contains a factual claim; the brand still needs the substantiation, because the viewer takes the sentence as a statement about the product, not only about the creator.
The four arrangements that go wrong
Each arrangement below is lawful in one framing and unlawful in another. Brands underestimate the last two rows, because nothing changes in the video itself; what changes is where the brand puts it.
| Arrangement | What it is in law | What must be apparent to the viewer | Who answers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paid video presented as an ad | Advertisement | The advertising label | Brand as advertiser, creator as publisher of the post |
| Gifted product, video presented as "my review" | Incentivised consumer review | The gift, stated in the review itself | Brand as commissioner, creator as submitter |
| Paid or gifted video republished on a product page as a customer review | Published consumer review, incentivised | The incentive, on the brand's page too, and the negative ones kept if the set is presented as reviews | Brand as publisher |
| A star rating or a "9 out of 10 recommend" figure on the brand's page, built from commissioned videos | Consumer review information | The incentivised origin of the underlying reviews | Brand as publisher |
The pattern across the four rows is that the same video can be an advertisement, a review and review information depending on how each party presents it, and the labelling obligation follows each presentation separately. A creator can label the post correctly and the brand can still breach the schedule by republishing it unlabelled.
What the creator keeps, and what the brand keeps
The schedule creates obligations that are checked after the fact, so both sides need a record. The creator should keep the message that offered the product or fee, which establishes that the review was commissioned, and the published video with its caption as it went live, because the question will be whether the incentive was apparent at the time. The advice in the guide to contract clauses UK creators should read about keeping a copy of what was agreed applies with one addition: keep a copy of what was said on screen.
The brand should keep the list of which videos were incentivised and how, the proof of the label on each republication, and the evidence and contact details rule 3.47 requires for anything used as a testimonial. Where a brand commissions many creators at once, that list is the reasonable and proportionate step the schedule asks for, and its absence is hard to explain to a regulator.
Sources
- Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, Schedule 20, commercial practices which are in all circumstances considered unfair
- Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, section 182, final infringement notices and monetary penalties
- Competition and Markets Authority, Short guide for businesses publishing consumer reviews
- Competition and Markets Authority, Reviews and social media endorsements: what businesses and content creators must know
- Competition and Markets Authority, Social media endorsements: guidance for brands
- Competition and Markets Authority, Social media endorsements: guidance for content creators
- CAP Code, section 3, misleading advertising, rules 3.44 to 3.47 on reviews, testimonials and endorsements
Checked on 19 September 2026. This guide is not legal advice. Where this guide and the official source disagree, the official source prevails.
