Influencer marketing continues to expand rapidly, but according to a new report from eMarketer in partnership with Viral Nation, this growth is not always accompanied by robust brand safety practices. By 2025, budgets for the influencer sector will have increased by 15%, reaching US$10.52 billion, with 86% of marketers already using this channel. Despite this, 77.8% of respondents report that concerns about brand safety influence their willingness to invest.
Although most companies are increasing investments — 70.9% of respondents plan to increase spending on influencers in the next three years — only 30.1% consider influencer marketing “very safe” and 55.4% see it as “somewhat safe, but with reservations.” In practice, performance and immediate results continue to take precedence over safety concerns: when evaluating campaigns, brands prioritize performance (27.4%), engagement rate (23.1%), content quality (15.4%), and demographic reach (12.8%), while brand safety appears with only 11.1% priority.
The report points to concrete gaps in verification processes: only 9.4% of brands fully outsource creator verification, and 81.2% still perform some type of manual content review. More worryingly, over 50% of professionals spend 30 minutes or less analyzing an influencer—an effort that, according to Viral Nation, covers on average 0.01% of the creator's content history, insufficient to comprehensively analyze reputational risks. The biggest pain points cited are: excessive verification time (38.5%), difficulty with continuous monitoring (34.2%), and lack of automation tools (28.2%). Only 9.1% describe their current process as "very scalable".
“ Brand safety has become reactive rather than proactive,” says Nicolas Spiro, Chief Commercial Officer of Viral Nation, quoted in the report. “Instead of building comprehensive protection systems, many teams end up relying on good faith.”
For Fabio Gonçalves, director of Brazilian and North American talent at Viral Nation, the numbers make it clear that prioritizing only immediate results without protection processes is a short-term strategy: “There is a race for results that often overlooks fundamental aspects such as safety and reputation. Brands want to appear where the audience is, but ignoring brand safety protocols can lead to greater losses in the long run. The influencer is not just a channel: they carry values, communities, and narratives, and this needs to be filtered.”
He recommends practical and realistic measures (without turning agencies into clinical providers): “The market needs consistent processes: verification that analyzes photos, videos, and partnership history; continuous monitoring; clear documentation delivered to clients; and a combined use of technology and human review to signal risks. It's not just about rejecting creators, it's about aligning expectations, establishing contractual clauses that protect reputation, and creating mitigation plans. This protects brands and also preserves the careers of creators.”
According to the report, the way forward includes continuous monitoring, AI-powered security verification tools, and greater transparency between parties—recommendations that Viral Nation itself has already adopted. Executive Nicolas Spiro suggests that AI be used to identify large-scale risk signals, leaving the final decision to humans; Gonçalves complements this with the agency's operational approach:
“At Viral Nation, we are investing in technology that allows us to map large volumes of content quickly, but also in human processes to contextualize signals. We offer verification documentation when brands require it, apply reputation filters, advise creators on positioning risks, and include contractual clauses that protect both parties. Our goal is to ensure that campaigns perform without exposing the brand to unwanted associations,” he says.
He further emphasizes that market education is essential: “We need to standardize language and expectations: what 'brand safe' means for one brand may be different for another. The industry needs a common vocabulary and shared KPIs so that brands, agencies, and platforms speak the same language.”
METHODOLOGY
The EMARKETER + Viral Nation report was compiled from a survey of 117 US marketing professionals and analysis of spending trends and verification practices in the creator ecosystem. Images and data from the study are available at the following link : https://cloud.insight.insiderintelligence.com/20250909-ViralNation-CustomReport_RegPageProgPro?utm_source=1P-HTML-Personal&j=236718&sfmc_sub=8654010&l=826_HTML&u=7306189&mid=534006916&jb=6003&jid=236718&sid=8654010
