Norway fined an influencer 500,000 kroner for hidden ads for her own clothing brand

Sara Emilie Tandberg is a Norwegian influencer with 180,000 Snapchat followers and the founder of the clothing brand Careless. Her Snapchat mixed personal content with posts about her own products. Forbrukertilsynet, Norway's consumer authority, judged that these own-brand posts did not appear clearly as advertising — neither from their context nor from labelling — and that they failed to say on whose behalf the marketing was carried out.

The case came from a control action run in autumn 2025 on influencers marketing their own brands alongside personal content. The authority said Tandberg's company Saraaemiliee AS had already received guidance on self-advertising and should have known the disclosure rules; in the same sweep, influencer Tonje Frigstad was notified of a 120,000-kroner fine over her brand Teze. On 19 May 2026 Tandberg received a preliminary notice of a 500,000-kroner fine.

Tandberg said she had contacted the authority several times herself to get things right and found the line hard to see — she had even made a custom Snapchat filter to label content as advertising — and called the fine unfairly high. Careless AS grew its revenue from 82.9 million to 135.9 million kroner in 2024. She can submit a statement before a final decision.