EMARKETER recently published, “Influencer Marketing Budgets Are Growing, But Brand Safety Measures Are Falling Behind.” The report, created in partnership with Viral Nation, analyzes survey responses from 117 US marketers and reveals gaps between influencer marketing investment and brand safety practices. This FAQ explores some key questions addressed by the report.
Q: How are marketers investing in influencer marketing right now?
A: EMARKETER’s own forecasts show 86% of US marketers are using influencer marketing. Among survey respondents, 70.9% plan to increase their investment over the next three years. Despite this growth, 77.8% of marketers say brand safety concerns influence their willingness to invest in the channel.
Q: Do marketers believe influencer marketing is brand safe?
A: The survey reveals marketers display overconfidence about influencer safety. While 56.4% consider influencer marketing "somewhat safe" and 25.6% call it "very safe," over 50% spend 30 minutes or less vetting each influencer. Viral Nation estimates that only 0.01% of a creator's content history is vetted on average in a 30-minute time period. This creates a dangerous gap between perception and practice.
Q: Do marketers always prioritize brand safety?
A: Marketers often focus more on immediate performance metrics than safety standards. When evaluating campaigns, they prioritize the influencer's performance (27.4%), engagement rate (23.1%), and content quality (15.4%) over brand safety. Only 11.1% rank adherence to brand safety standards as their top success indicator.
Q: How are marketers actually conducting influencer vetting?
A: The vetting process remains manual and inconsistent. According to the survey, 81.2% of marketers include manual review of social content in their process, while only 9.4% fully outsource vetting to vendors or agencies. Marketers identify their biggest challenges as vetting being too time-consuming (38.5%), difficulty maintaining ongoing monitoring (34.2%), and lacking automation tools (28.2%). Only 9.1% describe their current vetting process as "very scalable."
Q: What percentage of an influencer's content actually gets reviewed during vetting?
A: There's no industry consensus on content review standards. The survey shows 18.0% of marketers don't know what percentage of content gets reviewed, and the estimates among those who think they know vary greatly. Additionally, 21.4% of respondents are unsure how long it takes to vet a single influencer. This lack of standardization means brands have no shared understanding of what thorough vetting requires.
Q: Do brands rely on agencies to conduct influencer vetting?
A: Yes, but the trust gap between brands and agencies is significant. Only 21.8% of brands believe their agency partners have a well-defined and transparent vetting process. Just 29.0% of agencies report actually offering standardized vetting protocols, while 30.9% of brands describe their agency's approach as ad hoc or inconsistent. While 96.6% of brands want documentation on how influencers were vetted before campaigns, only 25.6% always receive it.
Q: How do marketers actually define brand safety?
A: Alignment with brand values dominates vetting criteria at 55.6%, followed by follower authenticity at 44.4%. Marketers prioritize these subjective factors over concrete measures like history of controversial content (23.9%), past collaborations with competitors (22.2%), or history of platform violations (11.1%). Among those increasing investment over the next three years, 60.2% put brand values alignment in their top two criteria.
Q: What role does brand awareness play in the safety risk equation?
A: The survey identifies awareness (49.6%) as the top objective for marketers in influencer marketing, making creator partnerships often a consumer's first impression of a brand. A 2025 impact.com and EMARKETER survey found 52.0% of US consumers have discovered a product through a creator or influencer in the last six months, amplifying the reputational stakes of poor vetting.
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