Creators are now a top three buy, but the ecosystem is nowhere near ready

This concern ran through the IAB’s new Creator Economy Ad Spend and Strategy Report and a roundtable that brought together leaders from WPP, CAA, Creator Vision and IAB, along with long time gaming and creator investor Michael Sepso.

“We are at an interesting point where the desire to spend is real but the strain on the system is showing,” said Jamie Gutfreund, founder of Creator Vision. “Buyers are more sophisticated but the industry still isn’t set up to run creator the way a business should.”

Creators have evolved from niche content to a core media channel

Creators have become a distinct channel reshaping how brands reach, influence and convert audiences. The report makes that evolution obvious. Awareness and reach still sit at the top of the list but online sales follow close behind in fourth place. With 40% of buyers naming ROI as their main KPI, it is clear that brands now expect creators to spark interest and drive sales in the same breath.

The way brands allocate creator dollars reinforces this change. Only about a fourth of spend goes to direct sponsored posts, while the rest goes toward amplification and adjacency. That broader mix puts creators at the center of a larger media system rather than a one-off tactic.

“Creators make people believe a message is for people like me,” said JiYoung Kim, chief operating officer for WPP’s North America media group. “That level of intimacy is hard to match.”

Kim noted that discovery and planning remain difficult because creator budgets sit across social, digital, creative production and PR. Each group measures success differently, which slows scale and complicates planning.

Much of the discussion kept returning to control. Creators treat audience trust as their core asset, while brands rely on process and those approaches naturally clash. “The creator’s audience is their distribution,” said David Freeman, founder of Kinetic and former global head of digital at CAA. “Creators will not give up authenticity. They know their own audience better than anyone.”

Traditional campaigns move through layers of approvals while creator integrations require collaboration. Brands that force creators into rigid templates often see the work fall flat because the audience can tell when the tone is off. Freeman said the evolution is already visible across Hollywood, where stars and musicians now treat social as their most important long-term asset and build media businesses the way creators always have.

Fragmented systems and rising expectations are slowing the channel down

The report outlined three challenges that dominated the conversation. First is discovery. A third of buyers say identifying the right creators is their biggest hurdle. The ecosystem is scattered across agencies, talent firms, platforms and measurement vendors with no shared system.

Second is proving ROI. Platform metrics still outweigh sales data, even though less than half of brands use their own figures to measure outcomes. That creates a gap between intent and evaluation.

Third is operational friction. One estimate referenced in the conversation suggested it can take more than 60 people to get a creator campaign from brief to publish. Every handoff adds time and risk.

“All of these complexities make discovery and measurement more art than science,” said Zoe Soon, vice-president of the Experience Center at IAB. “Brands want better tools to evaluate fit, credibility and performance.”

AI entered the conversation as both an efficiency layer and a new source of tension. Three out of four brands are already using or planning to use it for creator tasks, most often for editing, personalization and workflow gains, while a smaller share is beginning to explore synthetic content. Gutfreund emphasized that the real limiter is not the technology but the data behind it. “AI is only useful if the data behind it is clean and structured,” she said. “Most brands are not collecting their creator data in a way AI can analyze.”

Sepso noted that creators are using new tools to expand their production quality and output rather than replace themselves. “Creators are not spending money on Lamborghinis and mansions,” said Michael Sepso, creator economy investor and co-founder of Major League Gaming. “They are spending it on better cameras, better sets and more content. You never see that in any other corner of entertainment.”

Freeman added that younger audiences already expect creators to experiment with new forms of digital identity, including digital twins.

To address the structural gaps, the IAB has launched a cross-industry task force to map the creator supply chain and recommend standards for discovery, reporting, measurement and deal structure. Early guidance is expected by next September.

“I would love to see a metric that truly captures what creators deliver,” Kim said. “Something grounded in engagement that buyers can plan against with confidence.”

Until those standards materialize, the creator economy will continue to grow faster than the infrastructure around it. Brands want scale. Creators want long-term partnerships. The market wants clarity across platforms and formats.

Freeman summed up the stakes with a simple point. “Creators are not the future of advertising,” he said. “They are the future of media.”