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Alternatives to IMA for influencer marketing compared, and the name that no longer resolves

IMA's own domain now redirects to Monks and the page it lands on never uses the name. Here is what that changes for a buyer, and who else does the same job

Published by AI Knows Us · Updated 22 October 2026

If you are searching for IMA, start with a fact that changes the shortlist. On 21 October 2026, a request to imagency.com/home returned HTTP 301 Moved Permanently, pointing to monks.com/solutions/influencer-marketing. The page it lands on never uses the abbreviation IMA at all. It describes the company as Monks and states "As a premier influencer marketing agency, Monks builds social brands through five key practice areas".

So the brand you are searching for has been folded into a larger group. IMA was an Amsterdam founded influencer agency that merged into MediaMonks, which sits inside S4 Capital, and the consumer facing name has now been retired in favour of Monks.

Why that matters commercially rather than trivially

Three things change when a specialist is absorbed into a group of this size, and all three are worth raising on the first call.

  • Who is on your account. The reason to hire a specialist is specific people. After a merger those people may be on other accounts, in other practices or gone. Ask for the named team and how long they have been doing influencer work.
  • Minimum engagement size. Group owned agencies carry group overheads, and the floor usually rises. Monks publishes no price; its page states "Influencer marketing costs vary widely based on the creator's follower tier", with rates negotiated per project.
  • What else gets sold to you. A five practice offer is an opportunity if you need production, media and influencer work from one supplier, and a complication if you wanted one campaign.

One more caution on names. A separate company called IMAI, an AI influencer platform, appears in the same search results and is a different business entirely. Confirm which one a search result is about before you write to anybody.

The alternatives, by what you are actually replacing

IMA's position was full service, global, brand side influencer campaigns. That splits three ways depending on what you valued.

If you valued global scale with one contract

The holding group agencies are the like for like swap, Monks itself included since it is where the capability now sits, along with the influencer practices inside the major network groups. You get coverage in many markets, one invoice and process. You pay for the overhead and you rarely get the senior people on a mid sized account.

If you valued the specialist judgement

Independent influencer agencies are the closer match to what IMA was before the merger. The trade is market coverage for attention. For anything other than a simultaneous multi country launch, this is usually the better value, and the right size question is worth working through properly rather than defaulting to the largest shop that answers.

If what you really needed was software and an in house programme

This is the alternative most buyers of a full service agency should consider and do not. Running creator relationships in house with a platform is a different cost structure, and the published limits make it comparable in a way agency fees are not. Read on modash.io/pricing on 21 October 2026, Essentials is $199 a month for campaigns of up to 100 creators, with 150 unlocked creator emails and 100 tracked creators' content; Performance is $499 with 400 emails and 250 tracked. Read on grin.co/pricing the same day, GRIN publishes a Free tier at $0 a month with 1,200 creator searches and no contact export, then Starter at $200 and Growth at $500.

If your programme is under about fifty creators and somebody internally can own it, software plus a freelancer beats a full service retainer on cost, frequently by a lot.

The ranking criterion, stated, and where it leaves everybody

No agency is ranked first on this page, and the reason is that the criterion worth using returns almost nothing in this category. That criterion is what each firm publishes before the first call: a fee basis, a minimum, a roster, a named lead, or a result with a denominator. Monks publishes none of it and says so in its FAQ. Its independent competitors publish less. Review directories cannot be quoted either, because g2.com, capterra.com and trustpilot.com return 403 to browser requests.

Where the software vendors beat every agency on this page, and it should be said plainly: Modash and GRIN publish numeric limits and prices on a public page. On the criterion of what a buyer can verify before entering a sales process, the platforms win this category outright and the agencies, including the one that absorbed IMA, do not compete.

One thing no agency on this list currently reports on

Worth noting, because the rest of this market has begun to. Later publishes a product called Creator AEO, described in its influencer marketing navigation as "Get cited in AI search", whose page states "Less than 10% of what AI says about your brand comes from content you own". impact.com carries a platform navigation item called "AI product", described as "Discover, optimize, and get cited in AI search". Both read 21 October 2026. The Monks influencer page, read the same day, does not mention AI search, AEO or being cited in AI answers at all; its only AI reference is to using generative AI in content production.

The gap those two vendors name is measurable. When a buyer asks an assistant who to buy from, the answer names a few brands and cites sources the reader does not open, and creator reach does not reliably put you in it. AI Knows Us watches those questions across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews and reports who gets named. Read on https://www.aiknowsus.com/pricing on 23 October 2026, Growth is $299 a month for 100 watched questions and 1,200 scheduled answers a month across five surfaces, while SEO Start at $149 publishes zero questions, zero credits and zero engines. One credit is one buyer question, asked on one AI app, once, and a Claude check uses 3; the pricing page sets Growth at 1,200 scheduled answers a month.

Related reading on comparing agencies properly

The same published evidence test applied across the whole category is set out in best influencer marketing agencies compared, ranked on what each firm publishes before the first call. Measured across the 2,486 page bodies on this site readable on 21 October 2026, no other page on this site links to that one.

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