Boffins have peered deep into the eyes of social media users and come to the conclusion that they're not great at spotting when an influencer is trying to sell them something.

Yet when they do, they're not exactly fond of the experience - and regulations requiring disclaimers on sponsored content don't seem to be helping, according to researchers.

"We wanted to understand how ads are really experienced in daily scrolling — beyond what people say they notice, to what they actually process," Maike Hübner, doctorate student and research assistant at the Ruhr West University of Applied Sciences, said in a prepared statement on her team's work.

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"It's not that people are worse at spotting ads. It's that platforms have made ads better at blending in. We scroll on autopilot, and that's when ads slip through. We may even engage with ads on purpose, because they're designed to reflect the trends or products our friends are talking about and of course we want to keep up. That's what makes them especially hard to resist."

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The researchers sat 152 Instagram users in front of mocked-up social media feeds made up of 29 posts, of which eight were adverts. An eye-tracking system measured their fixation and dwell time, the number of times a subject's gaze hit pause on different parts of a post and for how long, and then the subjects were interviewed on their experience.

The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) requires that all sponsored content on social media " [4]is clearly identifiable as an ad ," including "where you've been paid to post content, received a gift, or post content about your own business."

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The rules cover straight advertising, endorsements, sponsorship, competitions, the use of affiliate links and discount codes, business partnerships, own and third-party brand promotion, product placement, reviews, and any content "about gifts received for 'free,'" whether or not a formal relationship exists. As an agency spokesperson told us via email, "Our guidance is clear that social media companies and content creators must follow advertising rules - such as clearly labelling content which they've been paid to endorse - so consumers are clued up and can make informed decisions. We recognise that each platform is not the same and may develop different ways of complying. But the bottom line is that they must follow consumer law and make clear ads are ads."

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has similar requirements, mandating that messages "make it obvious when you have a relationship ('material connection') with the brand."

These disclosures, though, might not be doing the trick: the researchers' eye-tracking data showed participants paying more attention to calls-to-action, like a purchase or sign-up link, than disclaimers when it came to picking the ads out from the real content, and finding it easiest of all to spot advertising by the presence or absence of verification badges and overly-glossy visuals - the latter more likely to engender distrust than encourage purchasing.

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"People picked up on design details like logos, polished images, or 'shop now' buttons before they noticed an actual disclosure," Hübner explained.

[7]Meta used Flo menstruation app data to sell ads, jury finds

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"On brand posts, that label is right under the username at the top, while on influencer content or reels, it might be hidden in a hashtag or buried in the 'read more' section. Even in a neutral, non-personalised feed, participants struggled to tell ads apart from regular content. In their own feeds which are shaped around their interests, habits, and social circles it might be even harder to spot ads, because they feel more familiar and trustworthy."

Social media advertisers may be getting better at sneaking adverts into users' consciousness, and the researchers' discovery that less-polished and more informal posts were more likely to result in engagement than flash advertising may help with that, but it comes at a risk: the study found that so long as users didn't notice disclosures or calls to action the adverts were treated with the same engagement as truly organic posts, but as soon as users did cotton on they immediately moved on to the next post - providing, that is, they noticed at all.

"Many participants were shocked to learn how many ads they had missed. Some felt tricked, others didn't mind - and that last group might be the most worrying," Hübner opined in conclusion.

"When we stop noticing or caring that something is an ad, the boundary between persuasion and information becomes very thin."

The team's work has been [12]published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology under open-access terms.

A spokesperson for the Advertising Standards Agency, told The Register :

"Our rules are clear that advertising must be obviously identifiable as such. People should always be able to recognize when content is paid-for or controlled by an advertiser, so they're not misled into thinking it's organic.

"Sponsorship arrangements, where someone is paid but the brand has no control over the content, fall outside the CAP Code and aren't investigated by the ASA, though they remain subject to consumer protection laws enforced by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). We offer a wealth of free advice and guidance on our website to help advertisers, influencers and brands understand and follow the rules. And if anyone has a concern about an ad they've seen, we encourage them to get in touch." ®

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[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aJ2zs97OWsXPNMCfV7I3QgAAARE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[4] https://www.theregister.com/2016/07/06/digital_influencers_must_disclose_paidfor_content_says_new_guidance/

[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aJ2zs97OWsXPNMCfV7I3QgAAARE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aJ2zs97OWsXPNMCfV7I3QgAAARE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/05/meta_flo_data/

[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/01/meta_ai_investments/

[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/29/opinion_column_google_ai_ads/

[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/29/mow_w3c_cookie_complaint/

[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/25/meta_eu_political_ads/

[12] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1636910/full

[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/