The verdict is in: France’s influencer marketing law drives greater transparency from KOLs, ARPP analysis confirms

New laws combined with a robust education program are driving increased transparency and understanding of ethical responsibility in influencer marketing, according to France’s advertising self-regulator, the ARPP. 

Releasing the results of its annual Responsible Influence Observatory (Observatoire d’Influence Responsable) analysis, the ARPP (Authorité de Regulation Professionelle de Publicité) said an impressive 94% of KOL content in 2023 carried at least a partial mention of its commercial intent.

In addition, a comparison of content posted during the first half of 2023, before the French influencer marketing law was enacted, and the second half of 2023 (the law was enacted in June 2023) found a 12% increase in content that was fully compliant with transparency laws. The instance of non-compliant content was reduced from 9% to 4%.

“Across all types of creators combined, for fully compliant content for which there is an explicit and instant indication, we've gone from 59% to 71% between the first and second half of the year in terms of full compliance,” commented ARPP Deputy Director Mohamed Mansouri. 

“This is simply because the [law’s] text imposed conditions and the words “commercial collaboration” and “advertising” [that must be used to label content].”

The ARPP Responsible Influence Observatory used a combination of automated and manual analysis to ascertain the compliance rate of commercial content with transparency requirements in 2023.

In total, 33,166 contents published in 2023 by 7,737 influencers on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube were analysed. Of these, 11% were published by nano-influencers (<10K followers), 75% were published by micro and macro influencers (10K – 1M followers) and 11% were published by top influencers (1M+ followers).

Of the 19,315 contents that were found to be commercial collaboration content, 67% were completely compliant with transparency requirements, up from 53% in 2022. A further 27% carried at least a partial transparency label, and 6% (down from 11% in 2022) were non-compliant.

The analysis showed improvement in transparency compliance across all influencer types, although professional content creators — those with the largest followings — were more likely to comply with transparency laws for commercial content.

The rate of non-compliant commercial content published by nano influencers nonetheless decreased from 23% in 2022 to 15% in 2023.

“It is clear small content creators didn't necessarily have the support they needed, like an agent [to explain the legal requirements], and especially because they often had collaborations based on gifting,” explained the ARPP’s Mohamed Mansouri. “There was a bit of vagueness about whether receiving a low-value gift is a commercial collaboration or not. Today, the law is clear: even a low-value gift is a commercial collaboration, and this must be clearly and explicitly stated.”

‍Certificate of Responsible Influence goes from strength to strength

As an ARPP tech partner, Kolsquare’s contribution enabled the Responsible Influence Observatory for the first time to isolate and analyse the transparency compliance levels of creators who had successfully completed the organisation’s Certificate of Responsible Influence.

Using Kolsquare’s ARPP certification filter, the Observatory found 85% of commercial content published by certified creators in 2024 was fully compliant with transparency requirements, with a further 13% carrying at least a partial mention. This compared to 77% of fully compliant content, and 15% of partially compliant content amongst non-certified creators.

“Kolsquare is proud to have been partnering with the ARPP for several years on its important work of bringing higher levels of transparency and responsibility into the influencer marketing industry,” commented Kolsquare Founder and CEO Quentin Bordage. 

“The ARPP Certificate of Responsible Influence has been a boon for marketers in helping them identify creators who are aware of their responsibilities when creating commercial content. This leads to greater trust between the two parties, and inevitably, better content.”