What 1,000 tagged posts held
We pulled the 1,000 most recent Instagram posts that tagged Summer Fridays, in August 2026.
They came from 919 creators.
| What the post did | Posts |
|---|---|
| Tagged the brand and said nothing about it | 623 |
| Named it in the caption, with no disclosure and no code | 368 |
| Carried an ad or ambassador word | 9 |
We read those 9 by hand.
- 1 was a paid Summer Fridays post: one line about the body mist, marked #ad, from evameloche.
- 3 were gifts: two flat lays of products and a book sent with eye patches.
- 4 were for another brand: Space NK, Spectrum Collections, Medicube and an Amazon haul.
- 1 was unclear.
Beauty creators tag six to ten brands in one post, so an ad word in a caption does not tell you whose ad it is.
Meta’s paid partnership label never shows in a caption. Our pull of Meta’s library holds 16 paid Summer Fridays posts from 12 creators, December 2024 to August 2026.
A tag is not a deal
67 of 72 TikToks that named Tree Hut carried no partner disclosure.
Counted as deals, they would make its program 14 times bigger than it is.
On YouTube, Tree Hut booked zoeunlimited four separate times between December 2022 and November 2024, and no other creator twice.
What makes a box worth opening
Creators get box after box, most of them the same corporate box with the same product.
Yours has to stand out immensely before they open it.
“Most people say PR box, they don't understand the depth to which to go to.”
his notes on how influencer marketing has changed, September 2026
How we would run it
- Send boxes to creators who already post about you unpaid. For Summer Fridays, that list was 336 creators.
- Put a code of their own in each box, so a post that sells shows up.
- Count a post only when it is about your product, not a flat lay of ten brands.
- Pay the creators whose posts sold, and book them again.
Our brands page shows which beauty brands pay creators again and again.