The Association of National Advertisers published a 78-page examination of waste in influencer marketing today, drawing on a survey of client-side marketers and 15 months of sessions with 10 outside experts. Measurement was rated the most difficult step in the process by 67 percent of respondents. Negotiation and contracting drew the largest share of marketers naming it a place where money could be recovered, at 60 percent.

The report, titled Influencer Marketing: Reducing Waste and Optimizing Investment, breaks the discipline into 13 discrete steps and attaches 37 recommendations to them. Its origin was a question put to the ANA board of directors about which media issues deserved attention beyond cross-media measurement, media sustainability, principal media, programmatic media and retail media. According to the report, a board member answered by asking the association to do for influencer marketing what it had done for programmatic: name the waste, then name the remedies.

That earlier programmatic work, published in December 2023, had a budget for outside consultants. This one did not. Instead the ANA assembled a working group of client-side marketers from companies including AT&T, General Motors, Chipotle, Walmart, Prudential, T-Mobile and Brown-Forman, and brought in subject matter experts to brief them. Between February 2025 and May 2026 the group met with 10 organisations in sequence: risk advisory firm Kroll, media advisors mediasense, production consultancy APR, law firm Reed Smith, creator economy company Whalar Group, technology platform CreatorIQ, Publicis-owned agency Influential, creator economy media company Scalable, research firm EMARKETER, and the creators known as the Virzi Triplets.

What the member survey measured

The survey ran between June 23 and July 27, 2026 among ANA client-side marketer members. Of 102 people who started it, 90 cleared two screener questions and 78 went on to answer the primary questions. Every percentage in the report rests on that base, which means a figure of 60 percent describes roughly 47 individuals. The sample is small, self-selected and drawn from a membership that skews toward large United States advertisers.

Respondents rated each step on three dimensions: importance, difficulty, and the opportunity to eliminate waste. Selecting influencers took the top importance score, with a top-two-box rating of 100 percent and 86 percent choosing the highest point on the scale. Vetting influencers followed at 97 percent. Creative briefing reached 91 percent, measurement 85 percent, and governance and compliance 79 percent. Agency compensation came last at 37 percent.

On difficulty, measurement led by a wide margin at 67 percent, with 32 percent calling it very difficult. Vetting followed at 45 percent, then negotiation and contracting and selecting influencers, both at 41 percent. Paid media amplification was rated least difficult, at 15 percent.

The third question inverted the picture. Asked where waste could be eliminated, respondents put negotiation and contracting first at 60 percent, then vetting at 54 percent. Selecting influencers, agency compensation and selecting an agency model tied at 49 percent, with measurement at 48 percent. Governance and compliance ranked last as a waste opportunity, at 24 percent, despite its high importance score.

Three steps appear near the top of all three lists: selecting influencers, vetting influencers and measurement. The ranking that stands out is agency compensation, which marketers rated least important of the 11 steps yet placed fourth for waste recovery.

Measurement remains the unresolved problem

The report is direct about the state of accountability. It describes influencer marketing as historically criticised for relying on likes, comments and shares, and states that this remains largely true. The ANA's own February 2026 study on influencer marketing agency compensation found engagement at the top of the KPI list, followed by impressions and reach, with purchase intent and conversion or sales near the bottom.

Jasmine Enberg, co-founder and co-chief executive of Scalable, framed the underlying issue in cost terms. "You can't calculate ROI if you don't understand the costs," she told the working group. The report attributes much of the measurement difficulty to objectives that were never defined, which leaves KPI selection arbitrary and performance evaluation inconsistent across campaigns and business units.

Fragmentation compounds it. Different brands, business units, agencies, creator platforms and social platforms use different KPIs, reporting methods and attribution models, according to the report, which describes marketers spending significant time reconciling data from multiple sources rather than analysing it.

That 67 percent difficulty score is consistent with outside data. Linqia's State of Influencer Marketing 2026, cited in VAB research published this month, found determining return on investment was the top challenge for 71 percent of more than 200 enterprise marketers. A TransUnion and EMARKETER survey found influencer marketing carried the lowest measurement confidence score of any channel at 44.4 percent, below in-store activity and social platforms.

The remedies the report lists are modest rather than novel: URL tagging for private actions such as clicks and sales, hashtags for public visibility, integration of creator investment into marketing mix modeling frameworks, and paid amplification as a measurement instrument in its own right.

Contracting is where the money sits

The step marketers flagged most often for waste recovery is not the most visible one. Contracts determine deliverables, timelines, content ownership, usage rights, compliance obligations, approval processes and compensation structures, and the report traces many downstream inefficiencies back to how they are written.

The failure named most frequently is content rights secured too late. If a brand anticipates using creator content for paid amplification, website placement, retail media activation or email marketing, those rights have to be negotiated before launch. Waiting until content has proven successful shifts bargaining power to the creator and raises the price. In some cases, according to the report, organisations lose the ability to use their strongest-performing content at all.

Keri Bruce, a partner at Reed Smith, located a source of delay on the advertiser side. "Very often it's the brand side that starts changing the deal terms mid-negotiation, because they've decided they want something else or somebody else," she said.

Exclusivity provisions receive similar treatment. The report describes marketers requesting broad category exclusivity without evaluating whether the restriction serves the campaign, then paying a premium for protection of limited value. Allowlisting and boosting rights, which let a brand run paid media under a creator's handle or put budget behind an organic post, are described as terms most creators require to be stated expressly, with some creators refusing them outright.

A separate sidebar addresses SAG-AFTRA, the union representing more than 160,000 performers. Two instruments issued in 2021 govern union creator work: the Agreement for Influencer-Produced Sponsored Content, used by non-signatory brands, and the Waiver for Influencer-Produced Sponsored Content, available to signatories of the Commercials Contracts. Under the Agreement, the fee is freely bargained but a 20 percent allocation applies for pension and health contributions, at a contribution rate of 23.5 percent through March 31, 2028. On a 10,000 dollar fee, that arithmetic produces 470 dollars payable on top of the fee.

One in four vetted creators draws attention

Kroll told the working group that approximately one-quarter of influencers reviewed through professional vetting services contain content or behaviour significant enough to warrant client attention. Most of those issues do not disqualify a creator. The number instead describes how often systematic review surfaces something a brand had not seen.

Kroll described the objective as an attempt to "mitigate risk before there's a need to claw back money after someone has already been hired, or worse, to repair reputational damage." Vetting typically happens before a creator knows a brand is interested, and combines automated visual screening for weapons, violence, nudity and extremist material with text analysis for discriminatory or aggressive language, plus brand-specific categories that can include competitors.

Audience fraud runs alongside it. The report cites mediasense on the importance of detecting fake followers, and states that according to one study, 15 percent of all spending on influencer marketing was lost directly to fraud. That study is not named anywhere in the document, and no methodology or date is attached to the figure. It stands as the single largest waste number in the report and also its least sourced.

The vetting section draws an explicit parallel to programmatic advertising, comparing independent creator vetting to the use of third-party verification vendors rather than allowing an agency to grade its own homework. PPC Land has documented the same structural argument in the display market, where TAG and ANA analysis of AI-generated inventoryfound low-quality supply passing conventional quality checks.

The agency compensation parallel to principal media

The most pointed section addresses money that never reaches a creator. Drawing on the ANA's February 2026 compensation study, the report states that only half of respondents have full visibility into the exact amounts paid to influencers, and that many also lack visibility into agency compensation. Among those with transparency, the split averaged 30 percent for agency services and 70 percent for talent, with wide variation.

Asked whether their agency uses non-transparent compensation methods for creator services, 39 percent said no, 31 percent said yes and 30 percent did not know. The report treats that last group as likely to be working with non-transparent arrangements. One quarter of respondents were very satisfied with their current agency compensation agreements and 48 percent somewhat satisfied, leaving 27 percent not very or not at all satisfied. More than half said they were likely to change their compensation approach within 12 months, citing transparency and, in some cases, a move to bring influencer work in-house.

The report draws the comparison to principal media without hedging. Where an agency once acted as agent and disclosed media costs, principal buying lets it acquire inventory with its own funds and resell it without revealing the purchase price. In influencer marketing, the report argues, bundled talent and agency fees produce the same result: the client cannot see the markup.

mediasense described the duplication that layered ecosystems create. "The traditional agency, specialist agency, and sometimes the tech partner may all bring you influencer ideas, which means you are probably paying multiple times for someone to bring you an influencer strategy," the firm said. An unnamed expert put the platform-fee version more bluntly: "You'd be surprised at how often we see the same fee for the same thing that the clients already paid for."

One survey respondent, quoted anonymously, wrote that influencer marketing agencies need to be more transparent about their operating costs and what amount goes directly to the creators.

The report cites a February 2026 EMARKETER forecast projecting that United States social network amplified content ad spending will match creator sponsored content revenues at 14.15 billion dollars in 2027, and surpass them in 2028. The gap is expected to keep widening after that.

The stated reason is measurement rather than reach. Paid distribution gives marketers reporting infrastructure they already understand, which is why CreatorIQ data cited in the report places boosting creator posts at the top of activities driving return on investment. Ryan Detert, chief executive of Influential, said that "creator marketing wasn't always measurable, but the amplification of creator content through paid media has enabled marketers to apply more rigorous measurement approaches." Influential's suggested split runs 30 percent paid and 70 percent native for awareness objectives, inverting to 70 percent paid for conversion.

That trajectory matches reporting on how creator output is being reclassified as a paid media asset, with brands funding distribution of posts that perform organically first. It also explains why the contracting failure described earlier carries a compounding cost: content rights that were never secured cannot be amplified.

Fit over fame

On selection, the report argues against follower count as the organising variable. Kaya Yurieff, co-founder and co-chief executive of Scalable, told the group that "the million-follower era is coming to an end," pointing to algorithmic feeds that surface content rather than creators. EMARKETER data cited in the report projects that nearly half of influencer marketing spending will go to nano and micro creators in 2026. Tiers are defined as celebrity above one million followers, macro between 100,000 and one million, micro between 10,000 and 100,000, and nano below 10,000.

The phrase the report uses is fit over fame, taken from the Virzi Triplets: "Selecting the right influencer should be about fit over fame. Don't force a partnership that doesn't feel organic." Three case studies illustrate the principle. Kraft Heinz paired Heinz Mustard with DJ Mustard around a shared name and existing fandom, a campaign that took Gold at the ANA 2025 Multicultural Excellence Awards. Lenovo Yoga reported 23 percent global sales growth and a 16-point brand lift from a creator-led platform. Mack Trucks recorded a 28 percent year-on-year market share gain, its largest in more than 20 years, from an activation amplified by a single trucking creator with more than 948,000 followers.

Overlapping audiences are named as a distinct waste source. Organisations engage multiple creators whose audiences substantially overlap, paying repeatedly to reach the same consumers, while separate teams inside the same company pursue the same creators independently and reduce their own bargaining power.

Disclosure exposure is moving to the brand

The governance section restates the position that liability travels upstream. "If an influencer fails to make the required disclosures, it's the brand, not the influencer, that is likely to be the first one facing scrutiny," Bruce said, adding that non-compliance can produce financial penalties, class action lawsuits and damage to consumer trust.

The report notes that in 2025 ALO Yoga and its influencer partners faced a 150 million dollar lawsuit alleging consumers were misled by undisclosed paid partnerships, and that class actions have targeted Celsius Energy Drinks, Revolve and Shein. Increasingly, it states, such cases are brought by consumers under state consumer protection laws rather than by the FTC alone.

Enforcement has been running in the same direction internationally. Australia's competition regulator fined PhotobookShop 39,600 dollars for instructing influencers to conceal paid partnerships in March 2026, then penalised Hismile 138,600 dollars in June. Sweden's Konsumentverket has pursued disclosure failures with fines reaching 1.5 million kronor. The report also profiles the Institute for Responsible Influence, a certification programme run by BBB National Programs' Center for Industry Self-Regulation and backed by the ANA, the 4As and the IAB, alongside a new Alliance for Audited Media certification for creator marketplace operators covering onboarding, engagement quality, analytics and disclosure controls.

BBB National Programs research quoted in the report found that 5 percent of consumers who purchased on a creator recommendation say they fully trust creator content, 30 percent actively distrust it, 71 percent say clear sponsorship disclosure increases trust and 70 percent report feeling misled when partnerships were hidden.

What the report does not settle

Several figures in the document arrive without the sourcing that would let a media buyer test them. The 15 percent fraud loss is the clearest case. The one-quarter vetting figure is attributed to Kroll in the detailed findings but appears unattributed in the executive summary. The creator spend chart is credited to Advertiser Perceptions estimates inside the IAB's report, and the ANA text describes 18 percent growth for 2026 while the chart values of 37.1 billion and 43.9 billion dollars imply 18.3 percent. IAB's own published figures have been reported at roughly 18.6 percent growth from a 37 billion dollar 2025 base.

The Lenovo, Mack Trucks and Kraft Heinz results are supplied by the brands and their agencies as award submissions. None carries an independent methodology.

Why this matters for marketers

The economics behind the report are not in dispute. United States creator economy ad spend reached 37 billion dollars in 2025 and is projected at 43.9 billion for 2026. Mediaocean's H1 2026 outlook found influencer and creator marketing was the category most marketers planned to increase spending on, at 53 percent, ahead of search advertising. A Google and Boston Consulting Group deck circulated in August 2026 put the category at 55 percent among marketers naming growth briefs, while holding company agencies ranked last across all four growth areas surveyed.

What the ANA has done is apply the vocabulary of media transparency to a channel that has so far escaped it. The specific claim, that bundled creator and agency fees function like principal media, converts a procurement irritation into a governance question with an established precedent. Marketers who spent the last three years pressing agencies for log-level programmatic data now have a structurally identical argument to make about talent fees.

The timing matters for a second reason. Paid amplification is on course to exceed direct creator payments within two years, which pulls creator content into the same measurement and verification apparatus that governs programmatic buying. Contracts written today without amplification rights will constrain that budget. The report frames vetting as an investment rather than a cost using the same reasoning that produced the verification vendor market in display.

For agencies, the pressure point is stated plainly: more than half of surveyed marketers expect to change their compensation approach within a year, and some are considering moving the work in-house. For platforms and creator marketplaces, the AAM certification and the IRI programme signal that independent audit is arriving in a category that has operated on self-reported metrics. The ANA's next public gathering on the subject, the Creator Marketing Conference, is scheduled for March 1 to 3, 2027 in Las Vegas.

Timeline

Summary

Who: The Association of National Advertisers, working with a group of client-side marketers from AT&T, General Motors, Chipotle, Walmart, Prudential, T-Mobile, Brown-Forman and others, briefed by 10 subject matter experts including Kroll, mediasense, APR, Reed Smith, Whalar Group, CreatorIQ, Influential, Scalable, EMARKETER and the Virzi Triplets.

What: A 78-page report identifying waste across 13 steps of the influencer marketing process and attaching 37 recommendations. Survey findings place measurement as the most difficult step at 67 percent, negotiation and contracting as the largest waste-reduction opportunity at 60 percent, and vetting second at 54 percent. Selecting influencers scored 100 percent on importance. The report compares bundled agency and talent fees to principal media, cites a Kroll finding that around one quarter of vetted creators surface content warranting client attention, and repeats an unsourced claim that 15 percent of influencer spending is lost to fraud.

When: Published today, August 27, 2026. The underlying survey ran from June 23 to July 27, 2026, and expert sessions ran from February 2025 to May 2026.

Where: The research covers United States client-side marketers who are ANA members, with findings applicable to global creator programmes run by large advertisers.

Why: United States creator economy ad spend reached 37 billion dollars in 2025 and is projected at 43.9 billion for 2026, while paid amplification of creator content is forecast to overtake direct creator payments by 2028. The report argues that transparency practices developed for programmatic media now apply to creator budgets, at a point when more than half of surveyed marketers expect to change how they compensate influencer agencies within 12 months.