Spain's National Commission of Markets and Competition has just imposed the first fines for undisclosed advertising on social media, and the names come as no surprise: Ibai Llanos, Jordi Wild and Nachter are the chosen ones to inaugurate a new phase of oversight. The sanctions, already with discounts applied, total just €2,877.91 between the three. A figure that reveals more about how digital control works in Spain than it might initially appear.

Toy fines for real earnings

Nachter promoted over-the-counter cold remedies directly to millions of followers without identifying the content as an advertisement. Ibai Llanos and Jordi Wild incurred similar violations. But here comes what matters: Jordi Wild already invoices over two million euros annually through his production company, with net profits hovering around one and a half million. That means his fine represents barely a minor operational detail.

To put the disproportion in perspective, it is enough to look at what happens in other sectors. Spain's Supreme Court confirmed in March 2025 a fine of €90,001 to a pharmaceutical laboratory that omitted the price of a medicine in a communication directed only to doctors. Months earlier, Madrid's High Court of Justice had upheld another sanction of €90,000 against a pharmaceutical company for advertising a prescription drug in the press. Nachter promoted medications to the general public on social media and paid, according to xataka.com, eighty times less than those companies.

A new oversight system just launched

The CNMC has hired a Portuguese company to track undisclosed advertising on social media. It is a new mechanism, but concern over these practices is not. In 2022, the CNMC was already proposing to equate streamers with traditional television. A year later, Spain approved its own content creator registry. In 2024 came a specific law on influencers that, according to estimates, would only affect 5% of active creators.

The problem is that real compliance never materialized. A consumer study detected that 77.75% of the profiles analysed failed to meet the obligation to identify their advertisements. Platforms are not helping either: Twitch, where Ibai concentrates much of his audience, lacks significant parental control systems beyond closing accounts for those under 13.

Oversight or legalized impunity?

Here lies the real question. Fines so symbolic could be interpreted in two opposite ways: as the first firm step towards serious regulation, or as an officialized declaration of impunity. If for someone invoicing millions the sanction represents less than 0.3% of annual profit, where is the deterrent effect?

The CNMC opted for requirements instead of fines in previous cases because they were published before the body set its new interpretative criteria in June 2025. In the case of Lola Lolita an important precedent was established: content can be considered advertising even without direct payment. But unequal application across sectors suggests much remains to be defined about how this oversight should actually work.

The unanswered question is whether this new oversight will have enough teeth or whether it will simply serve to create the appearance that someone is watching while the numbers remain the same as always.