Influencer Marketing generates 22% of all complaints against online ads across Europe, with at least half relating to disclosure issues or the legality of the advertising. The agencies running those campaigns know it. In July 2026, they decided to do something about it together.
The European Association of Communications Agencies (EACA) launched its Influencer Marketing Council last month, assembling senior leaders from Publicis, Dentsu, McCann, Innocean and a cohort of specialist independents, each required to operate across at least two or three European markets. Thomas Angerer, co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Paris-based BeInfluence Europe, was named chair. Charley Stoney, who became EACA chief executive in February 2025, designed the Council’s institutional architecture from Brussels, where EACA represents more than 2,500 agencies across nearly 30 European countries and engages directly with EU policymakers on advertising standards.
“Influencer Marketing has fallen under a lot of scrutiny with politicians and policymakers in Europe because it’s seen as being a little bit like the Wild West,” Charley says. For her, who previously ran the Irish advertising industry body and spent years working with EU institutions on advertising policy, the Council is the next stage in a long project of bringing creator marketing inside the same governance structures as every other advertising discipline.
“EACA brings the institutional machinery,” Thomas says. “The Council brings the scar tissue.” BeInfluence Europe, which Thomas co-founded in 2019, has run more than 900 campaigns across 25-plus countries for clients including Amazon, Carrefour, Nestlé, Warner Bros. and the European Commission. That operational exposure, across markets with different national rules and different creator cultures, is the credential the chair position is designed to draw on.
Disclosure Is a Choice, Not a Deficiency
The European Advertising Standards Alliance, which spans 28 national advertising standards bodies, produced the headline disclosure figure. Thomas frames its significance in terms of channel trust rather than individual agency reputation. “When a creator campaign blows up for non-disclosure, clients don’t lose trust in one agency,” he says. “They lose trust in the channel.” That shared risk, he argues, is what makes getting competitors around the same table tractable.
Charley attributes the compliance problem to choice rather than capability. “I don’t think they struggle,” she says of agencies and creators who fail to label paid content. “I think they choose to ignore.” She draws a parallel to alcohol advertising, where responsible-drinking messaging has been a standard requirement for decades and still generates first drafts without it: “It’s just getting into the habit of it time and time again.” The UK Advertising Standards Authority found separately that only 32% of adults exposed to influencer advertising could confidently identify the content as an ad.
Thomas expects the Council’s standards to create real operational work inside his own agency. “Our vetting is rigorous, but parts of it live in senior people’s judgment and in Slack threads rather than in a documented, auditable process,” he says. The Council’s guidelines will push every member toward documented brand-safety audits for every creator, certification proof before contracts are signed, and systematic post-publication compliance checks across every market.
“Standards that only require what everyone already does,” Thomas says, “aren’t standards. They’re marketing.”
A Campaign Is Four to Eight Weeks of Work, Two Days of Shooting
Brands consistently misread where time goes inside an influencer campaign. “On a typical campaign, the creator is shooting for a day or two,” Thomas says. “The other four to eight weeks are strategy, casting, contracting and alignment.”
He adds that casting alone requires auditing months of a creator’s past content, checking audience quality, brand-safety history, previous partnerships and exclusivity conflicts. Contracting works through usage rights, paid amplification rights, exclusivity windows and disclosure obligations. “This is the part brands most consistently underestimate,” Thomas says, “because they think it’s paperwork when it’s actually where most future problems are either prevented or created.”
Thomas believes the creative brief belongs inside that same timeline. “Long gone are the days where full creative liberty given to creators yielded actual results,” he says. Campaigns require a defined angle calibrated to the specific creators being activated and the audiences they reach. The standard is no different from any other advertising channel. “Brands who understand this brief once, well, and approve fast,” he says.
Source: eaca.eu
A Shared Threat Brings Competitors to the Same Table
Placing agency leaders who compete for the same clients in the same room requires an operating principle. “No clients, no pitches, no rates, no commercial anything,” Thomas stresses. “We’re not aligning on how to win. We’re aligning on the floor of the market.”
National Influencer Marketing associations already exist across France, Belgium, and other European countries. What the Council adds is the pan-European vantage: people who have personally experienced how the same campaign can be legal in one country and a compliance incident in the neighboring one.
According to Thomas, the Nordics and Central and Eastern Europe are underrepresented on the Council, despite having some of Europe’s most sophisticated regulatory environments and fastest-growing creator markets. “I’d also love to have more independent creator agencies join us,” he says, “as well as talent management agencies who have an even more direct contact with creators.”
‘Certified’ Must Become a Standard Line in Every Campaign Brief
EACA published its practitioner’s guide in July 2026, consolidating EU legislation, national requirements, and country-specific developments in a single reference document.
“What I’d like to see next is creator certification with a number attached,” Thomas says. The target includes not just creators and agencies, but advertisers. “An ugly truth is that today, a good amount of legally grey practices coming from the creators are actually asked by the brands,” Thomas says. “That needs to change.”
The “AdEthics” training program from the European Advertising Standards Alliance takes 90 minutes and has trained more than 10,000 creators across 12 countries. A Dutch study tracking more than 2,000 influencers before and after certification found compliance with national advertising rules rose from 25% to 60% after training.
A pan-European research report is the second deliverable Thomas is pushing for within 18 months. “This industry runs on national anecdotes,” he says. “Nobody has a rigorous cross-market picture of practices, benchmarks, creative excellence, pricing structures and compliance.” The success condition he names is behavioral rather than institutional. “The day ‘certified’ becomes a standard line in a European campaign brief, accepted by all parties, then the Council has changed behaviour, not just published a document,” Thomas says.
Europe’s Creator Market Is a Regulatory Test Case
Europe is not the biggest influencer market by brand spending, and Charley says so directly. “I don’t think Europe’s ahead in this market, as in it’s not the biggest spending by brand,” she says. “I think where Europe always leads is in policy.” Her five-year ambition is regulatory legitimacy, with European policymakers and national governments reassured that the industry is compliant and not misleading consumers.
Thomas has a more specific target alongside that institutional goal: a vocabulary shift from “Influencer Marketing” to “Creator Marketing.” “Influencer describes a follower count,” he says. “Creator describes a craft.” Treating creator marketing as a professional discipline, rather than a media channel defined primarily by reach and disclosure problems, changes how regulators engage with it and, in his view, makes the governance project considerably more tractable.
His personal measure of success as chair is concrete enough to be falsifiable. “I want the certification to show up in contracts I never see, briefs from brands we don’t work with, in markets we’re not in,” Thomas says. “That’s the difference between influence and administration.”
Tamara is a writer, editor, and project manager passionate about using storytelling to inspire awareness, connection, and positive change. With years of experience leading creative teams, developing global campaigns, and producing award-winning visual and written stories.
As Impact Storytelling Manager at Photographers Without Borders, Tamara managed an international team of writers, designers, and photographers, coordinating content creation, editing, workshops, and grant programs focused on social and environmental impact. Her work as a freelance travel writer for Static Media's Islands further sharpened her research and editorial skills while deepening her understanding of global tourism, culture, and sustainability.
Influencer Marketing generates 22% of all complaints against online ads across Europe, with at least half relating to disclosure issues or the legality of the advertising. The agencies running those campaigns know it. In July 2026, they decided to do something about it together.
The European Association of Communications Agencies (EACA) launched its Influencer Marketing Council last month, assembling senior leaders from Publicis, Dentsu, McCann, Innocean and a cohort of specialist independents, each required to operate across at least two or three European markets. Thomas Angerer, co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Paris-based BeInfluence Europe, was named chair. Charley Stoney, who became EACA chief executive in February 2025, designed the Council’s institutional architecture from Brussels, where EACA represents more than 2,500 agencies across nearly 30 European countries and engages directly with EU policymakers on advertising standards.
“Influencer Marketing has fallen under a lot of scrutiny with politicians and policymakers in Europe because it’s seen as being a little bit like the Wild West,” Charley says. For her, who previously ran the Irish advertising industry body and spent years working with EU institutions on advertising policy, the Council is the next stage in a long project of bringing creator marketing inside the same governance structures as every other advertising discipline.
“EACA brings the institutional machinery,” Thomas says. “The Council brings the scar tissue.” BeInfluence Europe, which Thomas co-founded in 2019, has run more than 900 campaigns across 25-plus countries for clients including Amazon, Carrefour, Nestlé, Warner Bros. and the European Commission. That operational exposure, across markets with different national rules and different creator cultures, is the credential the chair position is designed to draw on.
Disclosure Is a Choice, Not a Deficiency
The European Advertising Standards Alliance, which spans 28 national advertising standards bodies, produced the headline disclosure figure. Thomas frames its significance in terms of channel trust rather than individual agency reputation. “When a creator campaign blows up for non-disclosure, clients don’t lose trust in one agency,” he says. “They lose trust in the channel.” That shared risk, he argues, is what makes getting competitors around the same table tractable.
Charley attributes the compliance problem to choice rather than capability. “I don’t think they struggle,” she says of agencies and creators who fail to label paid content. “I think they choose to ignore.” She draws a parallel to alcohol advertising, where responsible-drinking messaging has been a standard requirement for decades and still generates first drafts without it: “It’s just getting into the habit of it time and time again.” The UK Advertising Standards Authority found separately that only 32% of adults exposed to influencer advertising could confidently identify the content as an ad.
Thomas expects the Council’s standards to create real operational work inside his own agency. “Our vetting is rigorous, but parts of it live in senior people’s judgment and in Slack threads rather than in a documented, auditable process,” he says. The Council’s guidelines will push every member toward documented brand-safety audits for every creator, certification proof before contracts are signed, and systematic post-publication compliance checks across every market.
“Standards that only require what everyone already does,” Thomas says, “aren’t standards. They’re marketing.”
A Campaign Is Four to Eight Weeks of Work, Two Days of Shooting
Brands consistently misread where time goes inside an influencer campaign. “On a typical campaign, the creator is shooting for a day or two,” Thomas says. “The other four to eight weeks are strategy, casting, contracting and alignment.”
He adds that casting alone requires auditing months of a creator’s past content, checking audience quality, brand-safety history, previous partnerships and exclusivity conflicts. Contracting works through usage rights, paid amplification rights, exclusivity windows and disclosure obligations. “This is the part brands most consistently underestimate,” Thomas says, “because they think it’s paperwork when it’s actually where most future problems are either prevented or created.”
Thomas believes the creative brief belongs inside that same timeline. “Long gone are the days where full creative liberty given to creators yielded actual results,” he says. Campaigns require a defined angle calibrated to the specific creators being activated and the audiences they reach. The standard is no different from any other advertising channel. “Brands who understand this brief once, well, and approve fast,” he says.
Source: eaca.eu
A Shared Threat Brings Competitors to the Same Table
Placing agency leaders who compete for the same clients in the same room requires an operating principle. “No clients, no pitches, no rates, no commercial anything,” Thomas stresses. “We’re not aligning on how to win. We’re aligning on the floor of the market.”
National Influencer Marketing associations already exist across France, Belgium, and other European countries. What the Council adds is the pan-European vantage: people who have personally experienced how the same campaign can be legal in one country and a compliance incident in the neighboring one.
According to Thomas, the Nordics and Central and Eastern Europe are underrepresented on the Council, despite having some of Europe’s most sophisticated regulatory environments and fastest-growing creator markets. “I’d also love to have more independent creator agencies join us,” he says, “as well as talent management agencies who have an even more direct contact with creators.”
‘Certified’ Must Become a Standard Line in Every Campaign Brief
EACA published its practitioner’s guide in July 2026, consolidating EU legislation, national requirements, and country-specific developments in a single reference document.
“What I’d like to see next is creator certification with a number attached,” Thomas says. The target includes not just creators and agencies, but advertisers. “An ugly truth is that today, a good amount of legally grey practices coming from the creators are actually asked by the brands,” Thomas says. “That needs to change.”
The “AdEthics” training program from the European Advertising Standards Alliance takes 90 minutes and has trained more than 10,000 creators across 12 countries. A Dutch study tracking more than 2,000 influencers before and after certification found compliance with national advertising rules rose from 25% to 60% after training.
A pan-European research report is the second deliverable Thomas is pushing for within 18 months. “This industry runs on national anecdotes,” he says. “Nobody has a rigorous cross-market picture of practices, benchmarks, creative excellence, pricing structures and compliance.” The success condition he names is behavioral rather than institutional. “The day ‘certified’ becomes a standard line in a European campaign brief, accepted by all parties, then the Council has changed behaviour, not just published a document,” Thomas says.
Europe’s Creator Market Is a Regulatory Test Case
Europe is not the biggest influencer market by brand spending, and Charley says so directly. “I don’t think Europe’s ahead in this market, as in it’s not the biggest spending by brand,” she says. “I think where Europe always leads is in policy.” Her five-year ambition is regulatory legitimacy, with European policymakers and national governments reassured that the industry is compliant and not misleading consumers.
Thomas has a more specific target alongside that institutional goal: a vocabulary shift from “Influencer Marketing” to “Creator Marketing.” “Influencer describes a follower count,” he says. “Creator describes a craft.” Treating creator marketing as a professional discipline, rather than a media channel defined primarily by reach and disclosure problems, changes how regulators engage with it and, in his view, makes the governance project considerably more tractable.
His personal measure of success as chair is concrete enough to be falsifiable. “I want the certification to show up in contracts I never see, briefs from brands we don’t work with, in markets we’re not in,” Thomas says. “That’s the difference between influence and administration.”
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