ISBA gives brands three ways to run creator marketing. Only 9% treat it as core

ISBA, the body for UK advertisers, published a framework on 30 September for how brands should organise creator marketing. It wrote the document with the consultancy Responsible Marketing Advisory. Their survey found that 48% of brands still run creator work ad hoc, and only 9% treat it as a core part of marketing.

ISBA members surveyed spend £1.75bn a year on UK advertising

The survey covered members of ISBA’s Creator Marketing Forum and its Media Leaders group. Only 59% said they could judge the return on creator spend, and then only “somewhat confidently”. In about a quarter of companies, responsibility for creators is split across several departments.

Bobi Carley, a director at ISBA, told Marketing Week that creator marketing “now commands serious budgets”, but the structures around it have not kept up. Creator revenue in the UK is expected to reach £1.217bn in 2026, up 26%.

Responsible Marketing Advisory names three models: bolt-on, channel and core

The framework describes three ways of working. Bolt-on means hiring creators around a single campaign or moment. Channel means an always-on creator presence, usually run by a retained agency. The paper notes this raises questions about who owns the data. Core means a large, in-house operation, with creator results reported next to other channels.

Alice Brady, chief strategy officer at Responsible Marketing Advisory, said there is no single model every business should adopt. The authors advise companies to choose a model on purpose, instead of letting creator work spread across teams by default.

Creator fees and margins remain hard to read

Earlier work points the same way. Marketers have said creator fees are guesswork. TrinityP3 found that up to 65% of a creator budget can stop before it reaches the creator.

UK creator revenue is heading for £1.217bn this year. For the 48% of brands still working ad hoc, a growing share of that money is being spent without one team in charge of it.