ASCI Disclosure: What Counts as a Collaboration

If a brand gave you money, free product, a discount, a reimbursement, or anything else of value in connection with a post, you have a material connection — and ASCI requires you to disclose it. That is the whole test. It does not depend on whether you liked the product, whether you were told what to say, or whether you would have posted anyway.

Most disclosure failures in India are not people trying to hide a deal. They are people who disclosed in the wrong place, in the wrong format, or too late in the video. This post is about getting the mechanics right.

Written for both sides: creators who have to place the disclosure, and brands who are commissioning the work and carry the risk if it goes wrong. It is general information, not legal advice — the primary source is ASCI’s guidelines for influencer advertising in digital media, and you should read it directly. Where this post states a requirement, it quotes the guidelines verbatim, because there is a lot of confidently-worded nonsense about ASCI’s video rules in circulation.

What a “material connection” actually covers

This is the part people get wrong, so take it slowly. Under ASCI’s guidelines a material connection is any connection between the advertiser and the endorser that could affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement, and it is not limited to money:

“Material connection is not limited to monetary compensation. Disclosure is required if there is anything of value given to mention or talk about the advertiser’s product or service.”

— ASCI, Guidelines for Influencer Advertising in Digital Media

It includes:

• Cash payment or a fee.
• Free products or services, including unsolicited gifts you were sent and chose to post about.
• Discounts on a product.
• Barter arrangements.
• Trips, hotel stays, event access, tickets.
• Contest and sweepstakes entries.
• Family, employment or personal relationships with the brand.
• Any other benefit or incentive.

Two consequences catch people out constantly.

A free product is a material connection. “They didn’t pay me, they just sent it” is not an exemption — it is a description of one. The PR package you were sent for free and posted a story about needs disclosure.

A reimbursed purchase is a material connection. If you bought something with your own money and a brand is paying you back — with or without a bonus on top — the fact that the purchase was genuinely yours does not remove the connection. You are being compensated in relation to the post. It gets disclosed exactly like a paid partnership. This is directly relevant to how cashback and reimbursement campaigns work, including ours.

The test is not “did I pay for it”. The test is “would my audience view this differently if they knew what passed between me and the brand”.

Where the disclosure has to go

ASCI’s guidance is about being upfront and prominent. The label has to be somewhere the audience will actually see it, before or as they consume the content — not somewhere technically present. In the guidelines’ own words:

“Disclosure must be upfront and prominent so that it is not missed by an average consumer.”

“Disclosures are likely to be missed if they appear only on an ABOUT ME or profile page, or bios, at the end of posts or videos, or anywhere that requires a person to click MORE.”

“Disclosure should not be buried in a group of hashtags or links.”

— ASCI, Guidelines for Influencer Advertising in Digital Media

The general rules that follow from that:

• It must be prominent and hard to miss — not in a small font, not in a colour that blends into the background, not obscured by other elements.
• It must not require the viewer to click “more” or expand a caption to find it.
• It must be in the same language as the post. A Hindi reel with an English-only disclosure is doing less than it looks.
• It must not be buried in a hashtag block. A #ad sitting at the end of thirty other hashtags is the classic failure.
• Superimposed text should stay on screen long enough to be read and understood, not flashed. For video, ASCI puts a number on exactly how long — see below.

By format

Images and photo posts. The disclosure goes as a superimposed label on the image itself, so it survives when the picture is viewed without the caption. Caption-only disclosure is weaker, because the image travels on its own.

Video. This is where the one genuinely numeric requirement lives, and where most campaigns fail. The rule is not about when you say it out loud — it is about how long the disclosure label stays on screen, scaled to the length of the video:

“I. For videos that last 15 seconds or lesser, the disclosure label must stay for a minimum of 3 seconds.

II. For videos longer than 15 seconds, but less than 2 minutes, the disclosure label should stay for 1/3rd the length of the video.

III. For videos which are 2 minutes or longer, the disclosure label must stay for the entire duration of the section in which the promoted brand or its features, benefits etc., are mentioned.”

— ASCI, Guidelines for Influencer Advertising in Digital Media, clause 1.2.e

So a 12-second Reel needs the label up for at least 3 seconds; a 90-second video needs it for 30; a 10-minute video with a two-minute sponsored segment needs it for that whole segment. Work it out before the edit, not after.

To be clear about what ASCI does not say, because it is widely misreported: there is no rule in the guidelines requiring a spoken disclosure early in a video, and no ten-second benchmark of any kind. Saying it out loud as well is good practice — plenty of viewers are listening rather than watching — but it is our recommendation, not ASCI’s requirement. The requirement is the on-screen duration above. Verbal announcement is mandatory only for live streams and audio, covered next.

Live streams. Here a spoken announcement is required, at both ends of the broadcast:

“In live streams, the disclosure label should be announced at the beginning and the end of the broadcast. If the post continues to be visible after the live stream is over, appropriate disclosure must be added to the text/caption.”

Audio and podcasts. Same idea, plus every break:

“In the case of audio media, the disclosure must be clearly announced at the beginning and at the end of the audio, and before and after every break that is taken in between.”

Text-only posts. No ASCI clause specifies a line number or a word count, so ignore anyone quoting you one. The standard is the general one: upfront, prominent, not behind a “more” fold, and not buried in hashtags. In practice that means putting it at the top of the caption, because that is what satisfies the standard on most platforms — not because a rule names a position.

Stories and short-form. Treat each promotional frame as its own post. A single labelled frame in a six-frame sequence leaves the other five carrying promotional content with no disclosure attached, which fails the upfront-and-prominent standard for anyone who sees only those frames.

What words to use

ASCI names the labels it accepts, and the principle behind the list is that the label must be plain and immediately understood. The permitted labels are:

• Advertisement
• Ad
• Sponsored
• Collaboration
• Partnership
• Employee
• Free gift
• “Paid Partnership” tag on Instagram
• Affiliate
• “Includes Paid Promotion” tag on YouTube

What does not work: vague or insider-y shorthand that a normal viewer will not decode. #collab on its own, #sp, #thanks[brand], #partner used ambiguously, or an emoji. If a viewer has to already know the convention to understand that this is an ad, it is not doing the job.

Platform tools — Instagram’s paid-partnership label, YouTube’s paid-promotion disclosure — are good mechanisms and you should use them where available. But note what they are: a mechanism, not a substitute for the obligation. A platform label plus a clear in-content disclosure is the safe combination, particularly for video where the platform’s label is easy to miss.

Who carries the risk

Both parties, in different ways.

Creators are the ones placing the disclosure, and ASCI’s guidelines are addressed to them directly. Creators are also expected to do basic diligence — ASCI’s guidance is that an endorser should satisfy themselves that the advertiser can substantiate the claims they are being asked to make. Repeating a brand’s unsubstantiated claim about a product is a problem you share.

Brands commission the work and generally carry the larger reputational exposure. ASCI complaints are publicised, and an upheld complaint attaches to the advertiser. If you are a brand, the practical implication is that disclosure requirements belong in the brief — stated explicitly, in writing, before the creator shoots anything. Discovering after publication that the disclosure was in the wrong place means re-shooting or editing a live post.

A note on ASCI’s status, because it comes up: ASCI is a self-regulatory body, not a statutory regulator, so its guidelines are not themselves a statute. That is a thinner shield than sellers assume. ASCI publicises decisions, refers matters to the relevant statutory authority where warranted, and the underlying consumer-protection framework — the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, and guidance issued under it by the CCPA — addresses misleading advertising and endorsements independently. We cover how those layers stack in Amazon’s review rules for Indian sellers.

A short checklist

Before a collaboration post goes live:

1. Is there a material connection? Money, free product, discount, reimbursement, trip, relationship. If yes, disclose.
2. Is the label plain? “Sponsored”, “Paid partnership”, “Ad” — not #collab, not an emoji.
3. Is it upfront? Visible without clicking “more”, not at the bottom of a hashtag pile.
4. For video: does the label stay on screen long enough? Minimum 3 seconds under 15 seconds; a third of the running time up to 2 minutes; the whole promotional section beyond that.
5. For stories/carousels: is it on every promotional frame?
6. Is it in the language of the post?
7. Can the claims be substantiated? If the brief asks you to say something specific about the product, the brand should be able to back it up.

How this applies to a reimbursed-purchase campaign

Because this is exactly the case people find confusing: on Hypedrive a creator buys a product with their own money, posts about it on their own Instagram or YouTube, the brand reviews the post against the brief, and on approval the creator is reimbursed plus a bonus.

The purchase being real does not make the disclosure optional. Reimbursement plus a bonus is a material connection, and ASCI guidelines require the creator to disclose the collaboration on the post, in the placements and formats above.

To be straightforward about the division of responsibility: that is a statement about what ASCI asks of the creator. A brand can specify disclosure requirements in the brief — and should — but the disclosure is placed by the creator, on their own channel, and the obligation is theirs. Any brand or platform telling you that using their tool makes a campaign automatically compliant is overstating what a tool can do.

What a brand approves is whether the brief was met. A campaign should never be made conditional on the creator’s verdict being favourable — paying for a specific favourable opinion is what turns an endorsement into a misleading one, regardless of how well it is disclosed.

Primary sources

• ASCI — Guidelines for Influencer Advertising in Digital Media (PDF) — the actual guidelines, including the disclosure label list and the on-screen duration rules quoted above. Read this one in full; it is eight pages.
• Department of Consumer Affairs — for CCPA guidance issued under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, including the dark patterns guidelines of 30 November 2023.

Your next step

Disclosure is a solved problem once you have read the checklist above. It takes a line in the brief and a label on screen for a few seconds, and then it stops being something you think about.

If you are a brand, put the disclosure requirement into the brief in writing before anything is shot — that single habit removes most of the failure modes on this page. How brand campaigns run on Hypedrive shows where the brief sits in the flow, and what you are approving before a payout is released.

If you are a creator, the label goes on your post, on your channel, and it costs you nothing. How Hypedrive works for creators covers what you are agreeing to when you take a collaboration, and how a verified purchase actually works walks the mechanic from both sides.

If someone has pitched you something and you are trying to work out where it sits, paid reviews and Indian law draws the distinctions.

Not legal advice. ASCI’s guidelines are updated periodically — read the current version at the source, and take professional advice on your specific campaign.