Save big on select digital products!

Do You Have to Say a Link Is an Affiliate Link?

Yes — if you get anything back from a link, UK rules say the post is an ad and must be labelled upfront. Here's how to do it.

Gizella Nagyne Palinkas

9/9/20266 min read

Yes. If you receive anything in return when someone clicks or buys through your link — a commission, a free product, a discount code, a gifted item — the post is advertising, and under the UK advertising rules it has to be labelled as advertising, upfront, before anyone engages with it. The label has to be obvious at a glance: "Ad" or "Advert" at the start of the caption, not buried in a hashtag pile at the bottom or hidden behind a "more" fold.

That is the whole answer. The rest of this article is the part people actually get wrong: where the label goes, what counts as a material connection, and why the platform's built-in toggle is not enough on its own.

What actually triggers the rule

The trigger is not money. The trigger is a connection the reader cannot see.

If a brand gave you the thing, paid you, sent you a code, or pays you when someone buys through your link, you and that brand have a commercial relationship. Your reader assumes they are getting your opinion. They are getting your opinion plus a relationship. The rule exists to close that gap.

So the following all count:

Affiliate links, of any kind, on any platform
A discount or referral code you get anything back from
Gifted products, even with no money and no obligation to post
A brand ambassadorship, even an unpaid one
Your own products (this one is different — see below)

Your own products are a special case: there is no hidden third party, so the reader can already see it is yours. The moment it is somebody else's product and you get something back, you are in advertising territory.

The rule is not "disclose", it is "disclose where they'll see it"

This is where most people lose. They do disclose. They disclose in a place nobody looks.

The UK regulator's published position is that the label has to be upfront — visible before the reader engages with the content, not after. In practice that means:

First line of the caption, not the last. Not after the "…more" cut.
On the image or video itself where the caption may not travel with it — pins, reposts, screenshots.
Not only in hashtags. A #ad sitting at the end of nineteen other hashtags is a hashtag, not a disclosure.
Not only via the platform's paid-partnership tool. Use it — it is good — but it renders differently across devices and does not survive a repost. Say it in words as well.
In the same language as the post. An English #ad on a Hungarian caption discloses nothing to the person reading.

The wording itself can be plain. "Ad", "Advert", "Advertisement" are the safe ones. Vaguer wording — "sp", "collab", "thanks to", "affiliate" alone, "in partnership with" alone — has repeatedly been found not to be clear enough on its own, because the reader has to already know what it means.

Most people are getting this wrong, and it is measurable

This is not a hypothetical risk. The UK's Advertising Standards Authority ran a large monitoring exercise between 2 July and 24 October 2024, capturing 52,239 pieces of content from 509 accounts belonging to 390 UK-based influencers, and manually assessing 5,259 of them.

Its finding: roughly 57% of influencer content on Instagram and TikTok in the UK would likely be adequately disclosed as advertising. Broken down by platform, 55% on Instagram and 60% on TikTok. Of the ads that were not adequately disclosed, 82% made no disclosure attempt at all.

Two things follow from that. The first is the obvious one: a large minority of the market is non-compliant, so being compliant is not the norm and you cannot copy what you see. The second is more useful: because 82% of the failures were people who did not try at all, the bar for being in the compliant group is genuinely low. Put the word "Ad" at the front. That is most of the work.

The same regulator's earlier sweep in September 2020 — 122 UK influencers, over 24,000 Instagram Stories — found nearly one in four Stories was advertising and only 35% of those were clearly labelled. Different method and different years, so the two figures are not a trend line. But both point the same way.

The practical version: a disclosure that takes four seconds

Here is the whole workflow. It costs nothing and adds one line.

Step 1 — Decide once per post, not per link. Ask: does anyone give me anything if this post works? If yes, the post is an ad. You do not label individual links; you label the post.

Step 2 — Put the label first. Literally the first two characters of the caption:

Ad | Three things I actually use for my Q4 planning…

Step 3 — Burn it into the visual too if the piece can travel without its caption. Small corner text, readable at thumbnail size.

Step 4 — Turn the platform tool on as well. Paid partnership label, TikTok's branded content toggle, YouTube's paid promotion checkbox. Belt and braces. The written label is the belt.

Step 5 — Say it once more in the body where the link actually sits, in plain words: "That's an affiliate link — I get a commission if you buy through it, at no extra cost to you."

Step 6 — Check it on a phone. Open your own post as a stranger would. If you have to tap "more" to see the word "Ad", the label has failed.

Does disclosing kill the click?

This article cannot tell you. No measurement of how disclosure affects click-through was made for this piece, and inventing one would be worse than leaving the question open.

What can be said without a number: disclosure is not optional, so "disclosed vs undisclosed" is not a real strategic choice. The choice is between a disclosure that reads as a legal disclaimer and one that reads as a courtesy — and "Ad" plus a sentence saying the reader's price is unchanged is the version that treats them as an adult.

Rules are national, so check your own

Everything specific here is UK guidance, because that is what was verified for this article. Disclosure is regulated country by country and the accepted wording differs. If your audience is largely outside the UK, look up your own regulator rather than assuming the UK position transfers.

The underlying principle travels, though: if the reader would behave differently knowing about your relationship with the brand, tell them before they act.

Take the quiz

Six questions on the places disclosure usually fails, and which one is most likely to be yours. Two minutes, no email, nothing stored.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Do I have to disclose an affiliate link if I bought the product myself? A: Yes. Buying the item yourself removes one connection but not the one that matters — you still earn something if a reader buys through your link, and the reader cannot see that. The disclosure is about the commission, not about who paid for the product. You can absolutely say both: that you bought it yourself and that the link is an affiliate link. That combination is more persuasive than either statement alone, because it tells the reader exactly where you stand.

Q: Is #ad at the end of my hashtags enough? A: No. UK guidance is that the label must be upfront and obvious before the reader engages with the content. An #ad sitting nineteenth in a hashtag block is neither. Move it to the very start of the caption, where it will be visible before the "…more" cut. Hashtags are a discovery tool; the disclosure needs to work for someone who reads only the first line, because most people read only the first line.

Q: What if the brand told me I don't need to label it? A: The obligation is yours, not the brand's. The regulator's compliance action lands on the person who published the post. A brand saying "no need to mention it" does not transfer that responsibility, and a brand asking you to leave it off is a reason to be careful about the partnership rather than a reason to comply. Put it in writing that you will be labelling the post, before you agree to anything.

Q: Does the platform's "paid partnership" toggle cover me? A: Use it, but do not rely on it alone. The toggle renders inconsistently across devices and app versions, and it does not survive a repost, a screenshot or a Pinterest save. A written "Ad" at the top of the caption travels with the content in a way the toggle does not. The safest setup is both: toggle on, and the word in the copy.

Q: What about a gifted product I was not paid for? A: If you received the product free and you are posting about it, that is a material connection and it needs disclosing, even with no money involved and no obligation to post. "Gifted" is commonly used and is clearer than silence, though pairing it with "Ad" is safer where the brand had any say in what you published. The test is simple: would a reader want to know the item arrived free before they read your opinion of it?

Q: Does this apply to blog posts and emails, or only social media? A: It applies wherever the recommendation appears — blog posts, newsletters, PDFs, video descriptions. On a blog, the standard practice is a clear line at the top of the post, above the first affiliate link, rather than a note in the footer. The principle is the same one Ella Wealth Community applies to every format: the reader should know about the relationship before they act on the recommendation, not after.

Get the free guide

If the reach side is what is actually holding your posts back — not the disclosure, but whether anyone sees them at all — start here.

Let's Crack the Code: Hashtags & Algorithms — actionable strategies for visibility, engagement and organic growth.

The whole thing, free. No upsell at the end → https://ellawealthcommunity.com/lets-crack-the-code-mastering-hashtags-and-algorithms?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=ew-f-hashtags&utm_content=blog-2026-09-09

When you want the whole system written down

Content Strategy 101 — a step-by-step guide for effective content: what to publish, in what order, and how the pieces feed each other.

Seven euros. The method, written down, in order → https://ellawealthcommunity.com/content-strategy-101?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=ew-e-content101&utm_content=blog-2026-09-09