Fifty percent of consumers' attention goes towards creators' content, yet only 2% of ad spend goes towards creator marketing. This is the biggest gap today. And while the world's top brands know that creators matter, it's not a coincidence that Unilever's CEO recently said 50% of their budget will move to creators.
Danessa Myricks Beauty is the big story here," said Assayag, adding that the brand has nearly doubled its year-over-year VIT and maintains a notably high creator retention rate, with creators posting about the brands nearly six times a year on average. One of the most impactful posts in recent months was an August TikTok video by @april.byjoiles showcasing a seamless client shade match using the deepest shade of Danessa Myricks' Blurring Balm powder. The post garnered nearly 12 million views and 600,000 likes.
Of the $43.9 billion that advertisers in the U.S. are expected to spend on creator marketing in 2026, most of that money - 55% - will go towards ads amplifying the creators' content, not to the actual creation and posting of content by the creators themselves. And that spend is only increasing as creator content becomes a more popular choice for ad creative and paid amplification provides brands with the analytics to be able to more effectively gauge the impact of creators' content.
At this morning's IPA Effectiveness Conference, WPP's Jane Christian dropped the most important digital marketing finding in the past decade: creators are digital's first true brand-building channel. Not via the usual they're authentic guff we've been fed for years. But in hard econometric terms that should make any CFO weak at the knees. We finally know how to use creators Analysis led by the IPA has combined 220 econometric studies across 133m of creator spend, covering 28 markets, 36 categories, and 144 brands.
Steph Ross, vp of social and influencer for the social media agency Born Social, said that influencer rates had "doubled" from 2024, but that her clients were largely unconcerned about the increases because they have also ramped up their influencer marketing spend. She said that influencers' increased rates were simply a result of that growing demand.
