New 'Flu Shot' for Brands Aims to Curb Influencer Lawsuit Risk

WASHINGTON – January 20, 2026 – As the legal risks surrounding influencer marketing escalate, a tech firm is offering what it calls a “flu shot” against liability. Disclosure Facts, a company specializing in advertising risk infrastructure, announced today it has received certification from the independent Validation Institute for its platform, which is designed to protect consumer brands from the costly fallout of advertising scrutiny.

The certification confirms that brands using the company's system can significantly reduce the chances that questions about an influencer's post will spiral into regulatory investigations, lawsuits, or platform-level penalties like payout freezes. Underscoring the claim, the validation is backed by the Validation Institute’s $100,000 credibility guarantee, a financial promise that the solution performs as advertised.

This development arrives as brands navigate an increasingly treacherous legal landscape. Once a nascent marketing channel, the creator economy has become a primary engine for growth, but its rapid expansion has attracted intense scrutiny from regulators and plaintiff’s attorneys, transforming a compliance checklist item into a material litigation risk.

The Rising Tide of Regulation and Litigation

The era of lax enforcement in influencer marketing is definitively over. A series of regulatory and legal actions have fundamentally altered the risk calculus for brands. In August 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enacted a final rule banning fake endorsements, reviews, and testimonials. The rule, which became effective in October 2024, armed the agency with the power to seek civil penalties exceeding $50,000 per violation, a dramatic increase in its enforcement capabilities.

The FTC’s updated guidelines require “clear and conspicuous” disclosure of any material connection between a brand and an endorser. For video content, this means disclosures must be made both visually and audibly, a standard that many current practices fail to meet. Critically, the liability falls not just on the creator but squarely on the brand to monitor its partners and ensure compliance.

This federal pressure was amplified throughout 2025 as a wave of class action lawsuits targeting influencer marketing practices began to survive early motions to dismiss. Plaintiffs have successfully leveraged state-level consumer protection laws, often called “Little FTC Acts,” to allege economic harm from endorsements where the commercial relationship was unclear or buried. These lawsuits, which have targeted major brands in apparel, supplements, and beverages, often seek damages in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.

States have also begun to act independently. In 2025, New York enacted a landmark law requiring the disclosure of AI-generated or synthetic influencers in advertising, adding another layer of complexity for brands utilizing cutting-edge marketing techniques. The common thread across these developments is clear: when the commercial context behind an ad is ambiguous, disputes no longer end with a simple warning. They escalate.

A New Approach to Managing Risk

In response to this high-stakes environment, Disclosure Facts is championing a different philosophy for risk management. The company's platform is built on the premise that scrutiny is an inevitable part of scaling an influencer program.

“Most approaches say, ‘If you just do the content right, you’ll be fine,’” said Kaeya Majmundar, Founder and CEO of Disclosure Facts, in a statement. “We do the opposite. We assume the content will be questioned, so brands can show the Disclosure Facts for any influencer post under scrutiny and move on.”

Rather than focusing on policing content ad by ad, the service establishes a standardized, verified system of record for the commercial context at the exact moment an advertisement goes live. This creates a single, credible, and verifiable record explaining the relationship behind the post. When a regulator, platform, or legal adversary raises a question, the brand can respond once with a comprehensive record designed to be sufficient across all venues. This preempts the back-and-forth that often leads to prolonged and expensive disputes.

The company describes its solution as “invisible infrastructure.” Once embedded into a brand’s workflow, it operates in the background, supporting new platforms, ad formats, and evolving regulations without requiring marketing teams to change how they create and scale campaigns.

The Stamp of Validation and Its Guarantee

The certification from the Validation Institute provides third-party confirmation of the platform's effectiveness. The institute, known for its rigorous evaluation of performance claims primarily in the healthcare sector, applied a mixed-methods evaluation combining behavioral research with modeled escalation scenarios based on real-world disclosure failures.

Its findings are striking. Compared to prevailing disclosure practices, brands using the system have a 47-times lower likelihood that advertising scrutiny escalates into prolonged disputes or legal action. They also have a 25% higher likelihood of resolving scrutiny with a single response and require 47-times less executive-level time to manage such incidents.

The institute’s $100,000 credibility guarantee adds a layer of financial assurance. If a customer finds the service does not achieve its validated claims under similar circumstances, they can file a claim for a potential payout.

“For brands, the risk isn't influencer marketing itself. It's what happens when scrutiny starts and there's no clear, credible record to point to,” noted Peter Prosol, CEO of the Validation Institute. “Our validation shows that Disclosure Facts gives brands something most disclosure approaches don't: a single, verifiable response that holds up across platforms, regulators, and legal review. That materially reduces escalation risk and the internal time required to manage it.”

An Industry at a Crossroads

The emergence of such robust risk management tools reflects the maturation of the influencer marketing industry, which was valued at $24 billion in 2024 and is projected to exceed $37 billion in the U.S. alone in 2025. With over 80% of marketers affirming the channel’s effectiveness, the investment is undeniable. However, so are the pain points.

Brands are tasked with navigating a labyrinth of advertising standards while protecting their reputation in a transparent, digital-first world. The rise of solutions focused on creating verifiable, systemic records of compliance signals a crucial shift. The industry is moving beyond simple disclosure hashtags and towards building institutional-grade infrastructure to manage legal and financial exposure.

As brands continue to pour billions into the creator economy, the demand for tools that provide not just marketing ROI but also legal and financial peace of mind is becoming a fundamental requirement for operating at scale.