Opinion

A $40K fine is a rounding error — the damage done to the influencer market is untold

This week, the ACCC slapped online business Photobook Shop with a $40K fine for not disclosing a number of social media partnerships. Sharyn Smith, founder and CEO of Social Soup, feels that the fine doesn’t begin to make up for a damage done to a growing industry.

SHARYN SMITH

March 25, 2026 8:45

A $40K fine is a rounding error — the damage done to the influencer market is untold

Sharyn Smith, Social Soup

Yesterday, the ACCC fined Photobook Shop $39,600 for paying influencers with free products – on 107 separate occasions – and explicitly instructing them to hide it.

The company took it even further, editing an influencer’s review to strip out the honest bits where she described a product as “fiddly” and “confusing”. This is the first time a business has been penalised for this kind of conduct in Australia, and the fact that it took three years of sweeps, guidelines and public warnings before someone actually copped a fine tells you something about how complacent parts of this industry have become.

Now, the dollar figure is almost beside the point. Thirty-nine thousand dollars is a rounding error for most marketing budgets. The real question is how any brand in 2026 could look at the influencer landscape and conclude that deception was a viable strategy. The reason to be transparent has never been regulatory, it’s because transparency is audience-centric. Brands that hide the commercial nature of their influencer partnerships are undermining the only thing that makes those partnerships worth paying for in the first place.

In the more than 18 years that our business has been operating, we’ve known a core truth: influence works because people trust the person delivering the message. A creator’s audience has opted in. They’ve chosen to follow, to listen, and to take recommendations seriously. Those choices are built on a belief that the relationship is honest. The moment a brand engineers a fake organic endorsement, they’re borrowing credibility under false pretences. Of course, this happens a lot: it’s the internet. But audiences are clued in more than ever and they’re extraordinarily good at sensing when something feels off, even before the ACCC gets involved.

What makes the Photobook Shop case so intriguing is the editing. Removing a creator’s candid assessment of a product to manufacture a cleaner endorsement defeats the entire purpose of working with real people.

A review that says “it was a bit fiddly but I’m happy with my photo book” feels more persuasive than a sanitised version, because it sounds like a human being actually used the thing. Qualified, real opinions are what drive purchase decisions in a world where consumers have learned to tune out anything that looks polished to the point of performance. The brands who are seeing compounding returns from influence on platforms are the ones that use it as a vehicle to build community, rather than a tool to dictate to an audience.

Photobook Shop contract, supplied by the ACCC

Brands that get this right match products with people who are genuinely likely to connect with them. They let creators speak in their own voice, including the caveats. Disclosing the relationship upfront is table stakes now, plenty of research has proven this actually increases trust in a review. And trust is the entry fee for participation in a real community, which once activated, produces advocacy no paid placement can replicate.

Search algorithms, social platforms and AI recommendation engines increasingly prioritise signals from real human behaviour like reviews, shares and organic conversation. A single authentic post from a brand fan carries more weight in these systems than a dozen undisclosed placements. Brands investing in transparent, community-grounded influence are building a moat, brands gaming the system are building on sand.

The ACCC’s ruling is a floor. Meeting it requires nothing more than a hashtag and a basic understanding of the Australian Consumer Law. The ambition should be much higher than compliance. Every influencer brief should start with the question: would this person talk about our product even if we weren’t paying them? If the answer is no, the partnership is already compromised. Not because a regulator might notice, but because the audience most likely, definitely, will.

Photobook Shop’s fine will make headlines today and be forgotten by next week. The opportunity it represents shouldn’t be. Your brand needs to build trust within communities – openly, consistently, over time – because that will outperform those trying to manufacture it in secret. That was true before yesterday’s ruling and it will be true long after it.