New research from Kolsquare reveals the commercial cost of unvetted creator partnerships and the structural gap holding most influencer programmes back from scaling safely.
55% of young consumers have stopped buying from brands they don’t trust, yet only 5% of marketers see it as a problem.
These findings form part of a new report from Kolsquare, Europe’s leading influencer marketing platform. “The Trust Dividend: Brand Safety as a Performance Strategy for Influencer Marketing in 2026,” analysed sponsored content across five European markets and found that transparent, compliant influencer partnerships consistently matched or outperformed non-compliant campaigns on engagement and earned media value.
More than half (55%) of consumers aged 18-34 have stopped shopping with a brand because its values conflicted with their own, yet just 4.97% of influencer marketers see brand safety as a major challenge.
This suggests many brands are underestimating the commercial impact of trust at a time when consumers are becoming increasingly selective about who they support.
“Consumers are becoming far more selective about who they trust, and where trust goes, spending follows,” says Quentin Bordage, CEO and founder of Kolsaure. “ The brands that will win in influencer marketing are not necessarily the ones working with the biggest creators, but those building the most credible and transparent partnerships. Trust has become a performance metric in its own right.”
The report argues that brand safety should no longer be viewed as a compliance exercise, but as a revenue driver at a time when 75% of European marketers plan to work with more creators in 2026, but only 50% of teams spend just 30 minutes vetting a creator and reviewing a fraction of their content history. Time and effort alone are not enough to close this gap as teams scale their campaigns, but better infrastructure can.
“The correct perspective is not about safety at all. It’s about choosing to adopt a transparent relationship with your audience. Trust will, without question, drive better performance.” Raffaella Pierpaoli, Head of Content & Social, Intarget
Key findings in the report include:
- Original compliance-performance data across five European markets, comparing engagement rate and EMV for compliant versus non-compliant sponsored content at every creator tier
- Why creator selection is a brand decision, not a media buy… and how values alignment predicts campaign performance
- A practical Brand Safety Playbook for influencer marketing programmes at every stage of maturity
- The compounding commercial advantage of long-term, values-aligned creator partnerships over one-off activations
