Influencer marketing in the Netherlands: the legal rules for brands and creators

Influencer marketing in the Netherlands is regulated on three levels at once: the Mediawet, which brings professional video-uploaders under the supervision of the Commissariaat voor de Media; the rules on unfair commercial practices in the Dutch Civil Code, enforced by the Autoriteit Consument en Markt against anyone who advertises to consumers; and the Dutch Advertising Code, whose Advertising Code for Social Media and Influencer Marketing applies to every creator regardless of reach. Advertising must be recognisable as advertising, in every single post, and both the creator and the advertiser are responsible for that.

Who falls under the Dutch Media Act

Since 1 July 2022 the Commissariaat voor de Media has applied a policy rule under which certain video-uploaders qualify as a commercial on-demand media service within the meaning of the Mediawet 2008. Being classified in that way brings a professional creator within the same regime that applies to broadcasters, with a duty to notify the regulator, to contribute to the cost of supervision and to comply with the statutory rules on advertising, sponsorship and product placement.

Four criteria decide whether a creator is caught. The channel must be on YouTube, Instagram or TikTok; at least twenty-four videos must have been published in the preceding twelve months; the creator must obtain an economic benefit from the videos, in money, in goods or in any other form; and that benefit must accrue to an enterprise registered with the Chamber of Commerce. Editorial responsibility over what is published and a mass-media character are part of the underlying definition, which is why a private account without commercial activity falls outside it.

The most important development is one that many published guides still get wrong. Until the middle of 2025 the regulator applied a policy threshold of five hundred thousand followers, so only the largest accounts were actively supervised. That threshold was abandoned with effect from 16 June 2025. Creators well below the old cut-off can now qualify as a commercial on-demand media service and are expected to comply with the substantive rules. The regulator has retained a practical exemption at a much lower level: uploaders with fewer than one hundred thousand followers do not have to notify the Commissariaat or pay the annual supervision contribution, but they are still monitored and can still be held to the rules.

Registration is therefore the first question for any professional creator above that level. Notification is made to the Commissariaat, which enters the uploader in its register, and an annual contribution towards the cost of supervision is payable; the amount is set each year by the regulator and published on its website. Registered uploaders also affiliate to the Stichting Reclame Code, which means formally recognising the Dutch Advertising Code and accepting the jurisdiction of the Advertising Code Committee. Where videos contain material that may be harmful to minors, such as violence, substance use or coarse language, affiliation to NICAM is required as well, and the uploader classifies and labels the content through the Kijkwijzer system so that younger viewers are warned. The background to the statutory framework is set out in our articles on media law in the Netherlands and on understanding Dutch media law.

What supervision means in practice

For a registered uploader the Mediawet rules on commercial communication apply directly. Advertising must be recognisable and clearly distinguishable from the rest of the content, surreptitious advertising and subliminal techniques are prohibited outright, and sponsorship and product placement must be disclosed. Product placement carries additional restrictions: the product may not be given undue prominence, the content may not directly encourage the purchase of the product, and product placement is not permitted in content aimed at minors. Content directed at children is subject to stricter treatment across the board, which is the reason the rules on harmful material and on classification sit alongside the advertising rules rather than separately from them.

How a paid partnership has to be disclosed

The disclosure rule is simple to state and easy to breach. Advertising must be immediately recognisable as advertising to the average member of the audience, without any effort on their part. The Advertising Code for Social Media and Influencer Marketing, part of the Dutch Advertising Code, requires that the relevant relationship between the creator and the advertiser be made clear in or with the content itself.

Three practical rules follow from that standard. The disclosure has to be placed where it is seen before the content is consumed: at the start of the caption rather than after a truncation, in the opening seconds of a video rather than in the closing frame, and not buried in a block of hashtags. It has to be in language the audience understands, which for a Dutch-speaking audience means a term such as advertentie, reclame or betaalde samenwerking, with hashtags in English acceptable where the audience is international. And it has to be repeated on every individual item: a long-running ambassadorship does not excuse the absence of disclosure on a particular post, because a viewer who arrives at that post has no knowledge of the wider relationship.

The obligation is triggered by any benefit, not only by payment. Free products supplied on the understanding that they will be featured, discounts, commission on affiliate links, travel, tickets, experiences and services all count. A product sent unsolicited with no expectation of coverage does not create a relevant relationship, but the moment there is an agreement to post, the obligation arises. Affiliate links deserve particular care, because the commercial interest is not visible to the audience at all and must be made explicit.

The platform tools are useful but not sufficient on their own. The paid partnership label on Instagram, the branded content toggle on TikTok and the paid promotion setting on YouTube help, and they should be switched on, but they are small, easily missed and rendered differently across devices. The safe approach is to use the platform label and a clear statement in the caption or in the video, and to record in the campaign file which of the two was used.

Responsibility is shared. Under the Advertising Code both the advertiser and the creator can be addressed, and a brand cannot contract its way out of the obligation by putting the duty on the influencer. In practice that means the advertiser should specify the required wording, review content before publication where the campaign warrants it, and keep evidence of the instructions given. The contractual side is dealt with in our guides to business contracts and to disclosure agreements.

Unfair commercial practices: the rules that apply to everyone

Alongside the media rules and the advertising codes sits the law that catches every commercial message aimed at consumers. The Dutch Civil Code contains the rules on unfair commercial practices that implement the European directive of 2005, and they apply to any trader, which includes an influencer who publishes content for reward. A commercial practice is unfair if it is misleading or aggressive, and misleading includes both giving false information and omitting information the consumer needs in order to take an informed decision. Failing to disclose the commercial nature of a post is a textbook misleading omission.

Three further rules from the same body of law are regularly overlooked in influencer campaigns. Claims about a product must be capable of substantiation, and the trader carries the burden of proving them; this bites hardest on health, effectiveness and sustainability claims, where an unsupported statement in a video is treated in the same way as an unsupported statement in a television commercial. Reviews and recommendations that are presented as genuine consumer experiences may not be fabricated or bought, and stating that reviews are genuine without taking reasonable steps to check them is itself prohibited. And where a ranking or a recommendation is influenced by payment, that fact must be disclosed.

Enforcement runs through the Autoriteit Consument en Markt, which supervises consumer law in the Netherlands, publishes guidance for online traders and operates an information point for creators. The authority can impose orders subject to a penalty payment and administrative fines, and its powers extend to the advertiser as well as to the creator. Its guidance has been consistent on one point in particular: a vague nod to a collaboration, a thank-you to a brand or a discount code without explanation does not make the commercial nature of a post clear. Our article on unfair commercial practices explains the framework in more detail, and the specific risks around user feedback in our article on online reviews in the Netherlands.

Sector rules that override the general ones

Certain products carry their own regime, and it is stricter than the general advertising rules. Alcohol, tobacco and related products, food and drink aimed at children, gambling, medicines and health claims, and cosmetic procedures are each covered by specific codes within the Dutch Advertising Code or by separate legislation, and several of them restrict or prohibit promotion by influencers whose audience includes minors.

Financial content is the sharpest example. A creator who recommends investments, crypto-assets or credit is operating in a field supervised by the Autoriteit Financiële Markten, where advertising for investment services is regulated, investment recommendations must disclose the author's own position and conflicts of interest, and providing investment advice without a licence is prohibited. The threshold between an enthusiastic opinion and a regulated recommendation is lower than most creators assume, and the consequences of crossing it are not limited to advertising sanctions.

Copyright, music, images and who owns the content

Dutch copyright law protects a work from the moment it is created, without registration, and it belongs in principle to the maker. There is no doctrine of fair use in the Netherlands. The Auteurswet contains a closed list of exceptions, of which the quotation right is the most relevant, and it is narrow: a quotation must serve a purpose such as review or criticism, must be proportionate, must come from a work that has been lawfully made public and must credit the source and the author. Commercial promotional content very rarely satisfies those conditions, so the working assumption for a campaign should be that a licence is required.

Music is where most campaigns go wrong. The music libraries built into social platforms are licensed for personal use, and that licence does not extend to commercial or branded content; a track that is available to a private account may not be available for a sponsored post. The same applies to stock photography with a personal-use licence, to film and television clips, and to another creator's footage. Crediting the maker is not a substitute for permission. Our articles on copyright on photos and on when online content is public deal with these questions in more detail.

A second Dutch rule catches campaigns that would be unproblematic elsewhere. The portrait right in the Auteurswet gives a person who is recognisable in an image the ability to oppose publication where they have a reasonable interest in doing so, and for a commercially recognisable person that interest includes a financial one: their image has commercial value that may not be exploited without payment. In practice this means written consent, a model release, from everyone recognisable in campaign material, including bystanders in street footage and, where minors are involved, their parents. Our article on the portrait right in the Netherlands sets out when publication is permitted.

Ownership of the campaign material itself is a matter of contract. Because copyright vests in the creator, an advertiser that pays for a post acquires no more than what the agreement gives it. Without a written arrangement the brand may not reuse the content in its own advertising, on its website, in print or in paid media. A transfer of copyright requires a deed in writing; anything less is a licence. The agreement should therefore state whether rights are transferred or licensed, for which channels and territories, for how long, whether the licence is exclusive, whether the material may be edited, and what happens when the campaign ends. Trademark use runs the other way: the brand grants the creator a limited permission to use its name and logo for the campaign, and that permission should end when the campaign does. Disputes about either are dealt with in our article on intellectual property disputes in the Netherlands.

Personal data in influencer campaigns

Campaigns generate personal data at several points, and the General Data Protection Regulation applies to all of it. Giveaways and competitions collect entry details, audience insights and analytics can contain personal data, and retargeting an audience that engaged with a post is processing in its own right. Each of those requires a lawful basis, information to the people concerned and a retention period that ends.

Two points cause most of the trouble. The first is the allocation of roles between the brand, the agency and the creator, which has to be settled before the campaign runs rather than after a complaint: whoever determines the purpose and the means is a controller, a party acting solely on instructions is a processor, and where the brand and the creator decide together they are joint controllers and must record how the obligations are divided. A processing agreement or a joint controllership arrangement belongs in the campaign file. The second is competitions. Entry conditions must state who receives the data, for what purpose and for how long it is kept, consent to marketing must be a separate and unticked choice rather than a condition of entry, and entries must be deleted once the prize has been awarded and any legal retention period has expired. Individuals retain their rights throughout, including the right of access under Article 15, and the framework of the regulation is summarised in our overview of the General Data Protection Regulation. Breaches carry administrative fines of up to twenty million euros or four per cent of total worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher.

Two European rules deserve a separate mention because they apply directly to this kind of marketing. Tracking through cookies and similar technologies on a brand's own website requires consent under the Dutch Telecommunications Act, quite apart from the GDPR, as explained in our guide to cookies, analytics and online advertising. And the Digital Services Act prohibits advertising based on profiling directed at people whom the platform knows to be minors, and prohibits profiling for advertising purposes on the basis of special categories of data altogether. A campaign designed around a young audience therefore has to work without behavioural targeting.

What belongs in an influencer agreement

Most disputes in this field are not about the law but about the absence of a document. A workable agreement covers seven subjects, and it is short enough that creators actually read it.

• The deliverables and the schedule: what is produced, on which channels, when it is published and how long it stays online.
• The fee and the benefits in kind: the amount, the payment term, and an express statement that products, travel and discounts count as consideration and must be disclosed.
• The disclosure clause: the exact wording to be used, where it must appear, and the obligation to switch on the platform label as well.
• Rights in the content: whether copyright is transferred by deed or licensed, for which media, territories and period, whether the licence is exclusive and whether editing is permitted.
• Consents and clearances: confirmation that music, images and third-party material are licensed and that everyone recognisable in the material has given consent.
• Approval and correction: the right of the advertiser to review content before publication and the obligation of the creator to amend or remove a post at the advertiser's reasoned request, which is also what the Advertising Code Committee expects if a complaint succeeds.
• Exclusivity, termination and liability: which competitors are excluded and for how long, what happens on breach, and who bears the loss if a regulator or a rights holder intervenes.

Drafting these terms is dealt with in our guide to drafting Dutch agreements. Alongside the contract, a light monitoring process pays for itself: check the disclosure on the live post rather than on the draft, keep a copy of the published content with the date, and record any correction that was made. That file is what allows an advertiser to show that it took the compliance obligations seriously, which is relevant both to a regulator and to the allocation of loss between the parties. The wider compliance picture is set out in our overview of types of legal compliance.

Who enforces the rules and what the consequences are

Four routes run in parallel, and a single non-compliant post can trigger more than one of them.

The Commissariaat voor de Media supervises registered video-uploaders under the Mediawet and can act against a failure to notify as well as against breaches of the advertising, sponsorship and product placement rules; its instruments run from a formal warning to an order subject to a penalty payment and an administrative fine. The Stichting Reclame Code handles complaints about the Dutch Advertising Code through the Advertising Code Committee, which does not impose fines but publishes its decisions and asks the advertiser to stop the practice, a sanction whose effect is reputational and, for a brand, often more immediate than a financial one. The Autoriteit Consument en Markt enforces the rules on unfair commercial practices and can impose orders and fines on both the creator and the advertiser. And a competitor or a rights holder can go to the civil court, where the usual remedies are an injunction subject to a penalty payment, a rectification and damages.

The exposure is therefore not limited to the creator. An advertiser that commissions content is responsible for the advertising it puts into the market, and a campaign built on unlicensed music or unlabelled posts is a risk carried by the brand as much as by the person who pressed publish.

Frequently asked questions

The questions below come up most often from brands and creators working in the Dutch market. The short answer to nearly all of them is that advertising must be recognisable as advertising, and that the advertiser is responsible alongside the creator.

How Law and More can help

Law and More advises advertisers, agencies and content creators on influencer marketing in the Netherlands: assessing whether a channel falls under the Mediawet and has to notify the Commissariaat voor de Media, drafting influencer agreements and disclosure clauses, clearing rights in music, images and portraits, setting up the data protection side of competitions and audience data, and responding to complaints before the Advertising Code Committee or investigations by the Autoriteit Consument en Markt. If a campaign is being prepared or a complaint has already been filed, we are happy to review the file with you.