Budgets Grow While Brand Safety Falters in Influencer Marketing

Marketers are fueling a surge in influencer marketing, but new research warns that brand safety is being left behind.

A new eMarketer and Viral Nation survey of 117 U.S. marketers finds influencer spend jumped 15 percent in 2025 to $10.52 billion, with 86 percent of marketers now using creators. Yet while budgets expand, safeguards to vet influencer partners remain underdeveloped.

The findings expose a paradox: brands see influencer partnerships as “somewhat safe,” but they admit their vetting process is inconsistent, manual, and often insufficient. Only 11 percent of marketers said adherence to brand safety standards was their top metric for success, well behind ROI and engagement.

Key insights for communicators

• ROI pressures are eclipsing safety. Marketers rank conversions, engagement, and content quality ahead of safety, signaling a short-term focus that overlooks reputational risks. For communicators, this creates exposure if creators’ past content or communities harbor controversies.

• Vetting is shallow and unscalable. More than half of marketers spend 30 minutes or less reviewing an influencer, covering on average just 0.01 percent of their history. Agencies are not filling the gap—only 21.8 percent of brands believe their agency partners offer a standardized vetting process.

• No shared definition of brand safety. Standards differ widely across brands, agencies, and platforms. Nearly all marketers (96.6 percent) want documentation of vetting, yet only one in four consistently receive it. This trust gap weakens accountability.

• Values matter most. Alignment with brand values (55.6 percent) and follower authenticity (44.4 percent) top the list of vetting criteria. Communicators should remember that consumers also judge creators based on shared values, making qualitative alignment as important as quantitative reach.

The report concludes that influencer marketing needs scalable, transparent frameworks, with technology playing a critical role. AI-powered brand safety tools can help automate monitoring while allowing communicators to apply brand-specific judgment.

For communicators, the lesson is clear: the speed of creator campaigns must not override safeguards. Stronger vetting and transparency are now essential to protect brand reputation, particularly as influencer budgets become central to marketing strategy.