Creators are the new touchpoint, but we need to link arms

Advertising is expected to be the key driver of this growth with brand direct deals accounting for the largest source of income for creators. According to the latest IAB/PwC Internet Advertising Report, social media advertising revenues totaled $88.8bn in 2024, up $23.8bn since 2023, with 36.7% YoY growth since 2024.

We recently surveyed 200 brands on their ad spend in this category and found:

• 18% have annual budgets of $1m+ to spend on creator marketing
• 16% spend $50,000 or more on a single influencer campaign
• 65% anticipate increasing that spend in the next 12 months.

Why are brands leaning into creators?

Indeed, the benefits of working with creators have become impossible for brands to ignore, with one of the most significant being the ‘halo effect’ they bring. Creators often build highly engaged communities that trust their insights and recommendations, establishing credibility over time.

This bond gives creator endorsements an authenticity that traditional ads often lack and this authenticity translates into real business results. Creator-led campaigns can lift sales by an average of 20-30% and, in industries like fashion and beauty, the impact can be even greater. 

In addition to enhancing authenticity, creators allow brands to reach niche audiences – a valuable asset given the decline in third-party identifiers. Furthermore, creator partnerships provide brands with immediate, actionable feedback from active audiences. Social platforms offer detailed analytics on engagement and conversion rates, allowing brands to fine-tune their strategies to align with audience preferences. With more consumers using ad-blockers or tuning out traditional ads, brands are shifting their efforts to creator-driven platforms where audiences are highly active.

But maybe one of the biggest advantages for brands is that creators are adept at producing high-quality, innovative content that resonates with their followers, which helps brands save on production costs and keep their marketing fresh. This agility also lets brands respond quickly to trending topics and cultural moments, ensuring their messaging stays relevant and engaging in real time.

In short, investing in the creator economy lets brands tap into authentic storytelling, reach targeted audiences and achieve higher engagement, all while benefiting from the flexibility and cost savings of working with influencers.

So why are there still growing pains?

Despite this aggressive growth trajectory, activating in the creator economy is often regarded as the wild west for brands. There are currently no universal industry standards for brands and creators trading in the creator economy (brands with their advertising dollars and creators with their time and intellectual property) and the relationship is far from frictionless.

On the brand side, there are no universally accepted pricing structures or benchmarks, making it difficult to standardize budgets and expectations. The decentralized nature of the creator economy has made it difficult for brands to find reliable, brand-safe creators and execute at scale. In addition, a lack of standardized measurement (eg, the definition of a view is different platform to platform) and attribution metrics makes it difficult for brands to optimize for performance and outcomes across creator activations in the same way they would across traditional digital buys. 

On the creator side, the lack of understanding of advertising and media makes it difficult for them to connect with brands and scale deals. When creators do connect with brands, the lack of transparency in pricing and feedback/data makes it difficult to price their work fairly and a lack of standard contract terms means creators also often struggle to get paid in a timely manner. What’s needed is for all parts of the creator ecosystem to come together. 

As with any paradigm shift, there is a period of tension where existing systems must blend with challenger systems before a new order emerges. The advertising industry was built on newspapers, magazines, radio, television, direct mail, billboards, posters and the internet. We need to translate the creator economy into terms brands can understand, quantify and compare against other media without reducing it or devaluing it. We cannot shoehorn new media into existing systems for the sake of convenience, so at the same time, we need to educate brands on how to work with creators in their economy.

How do we professionalize media buying?

There is widespread agreement among industry experts that we need to professionalize the relationship between brands and creators and establish marketplace conditions more like media buying. As eMarketer’s Jasmine Enberg notes: “2024 was the year of legitimacy. 2025 is the year of professionalization.” 

For sustainable and positive growth, we need regulation, transparency, best practices, benchmarks and standards that serve all parts of the ecosystem. But above all, we need to link arms, break down the silos and foster a symbiotic relationship that benefits both brands and creators in this exciting new era of media.

Our aspiration for next year is to define a measurement framework for creator activations and visualize the end-to-end process of how a creator brief comes to life so we can identify the best practice.

If brands are already investing so heavily in creators without the infrastructure and systems to activate at scale, just imagine the growth that awaits when we start rowing in the same direction.

Some useful resources from the IAB to check out:

• Creator economy ecosystem map
• Creator economy taxonomy and definitions