ISBA and the Influencer Marketing Trade Body have formalised a partnership intended to strengthen measurement, transparency, responsible practice, and skills across the UK creator marketing market.
The collaboration will focus on four areas: effectiveness and trust, responsible influencer marketing in an environment shaped by AI influencers and social harms, transparency around procurement and payment, and future-facing knowledge and skills for members of both organisations.
The partnership will be carried forward through ISBA’s Creator Marketing Forum and IMTB’s member forums. The two bodies already co-own the government-backed Influencer Marketing Code of Conduct, which has brand signatories including HSBC, John Lewis, and Asda.
ISBA director general Simon Michaelides said the formalisation reflected the “growing importance to brands of creator marketing”. IMTB director general Scott Guthrie said rapid growth in influencer marketing “demands robust scaffolding”.
The UK influencer marketing sector has been reported as growing at 28% year on year. The channel is no longer confined to experimental social posts or discretionary activity; it is being used for brand building, product launches, community engagement, performance marketing, employer branding, and commerce.
With that growth comes governance pressure. Brands are increasingly working with creators, talent agencies, affiliate networks, social platforms, production partners, media agencies, and data providers. Without common standards, marketers can struggle to compare campaign effectiveness, confirm disclosure compliance, manage payment terms, and evaluate risk.
The pressure also connects with recent brand analysis showing how brand strength now depends on more than paid media. Social commerce, reviews, retail media, AI search, creator content, and customer experience are reshaping how audiences discover and assess brands. Control is more distributed and measurement is harder.
Creator marketing has particular complexity because the person delivering the message is part of the media channel, the creative asset, and the trust mechanism. That can make it powerful, but it also makes it harder to govern than conventional advertising. A brand may brief a creator, while tone, format, audience relationship, comment response, disclosure, and platform context all influence the final effect.
AI-generated creators add another layer. Brands will need to decide when virtual influencers should be used, how they are disclosed, who owns the creative and data rights, and what responsibility sits with the brand if a synthetic personality misleads, harms, or manipulates audiences. The partnership’s focus on responsible influencer marketing reflects that emerging risk.
Measurement remains one of the sector’s most persistent problems. Reach, engagement, impressions, conversions, discount codes, affiliate revenue, sentiment, brand lift, and share of voice can each tell part of the story, but they do not always provide a consistent view of value. A standardised framework would help marketers compare creator campaigns with other channels and defend investment internally.
Payment and procurement transparency are also becoming more important as the sector professionalises. Creators and agencies have raised concerns about late payment, unclear contracts, usage rights, exclusivity, and scope creep. Brands, meanwhile, need confidence that creators are properly briefed, compliant, and able to provide evidence of performance.
There is a commercial reason for tighter standards. As budgets scale, finance and procurement teams will expect clearer evaluation. Creator marketing may lose credibility if it is seen as personality-led spending without comparable metrics or risk controls. A common framework could support growth by making the channel easier to buy, measure, and govern.
The partnership does not solve those issues on its own. Adoption across brands, agencies, creators, and platforms will determine whether standards become meaningful. Creator marketing is becoming a managed discipline, and influence is increasingly being treated as a strategic channel rather than an informal extension of social media.
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