The State of Creator Marketing: Learnings From Our Biggest Report Ever (HBBIP #104)

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Hello and welcome to How to Build Brands and Influence People, your research and insights repository for the creator economy. I’m Alex Rawitz, Director of Research & Insights at CreatorIQ, and if those last two sentences seem redundant, or if this strikes you as the lamest iteration yet of this running gag, I don’t necessarily disagree. But there’s a reason it’s lame. Let me explain.

See, usually I introduce the newsletter by making a reference to the brand that we’ll be covering that week. But this week, we’re not covering just one brand, or even one subset of brands: we’re covering the whole dang creator economy. After all, that’s what we do in our annual State of Creator Marketing Report, so that’s what we’re gonna do here in HBBIP.

That’s right: it’s the most wonderful time of the year at CIQ marketing headquarters, because SCM is back, bigger and better than ever. Spearheaded by the phenomenal Cherline Bazile, the report comes chock full of goodies about all things creator marketing. It’s chock so full of goodies, in fact, that I can’t possibly hope to get to everything in the space of a wee little blog post, which is why I highly recommend that you check out the full report for yourself, which you can do here.

You’re gonna want to click that link if you’re interested in any of the following topics:

• How industry leaders are shifting (i.e. increasing) their creator marketing investment
• Whether brands are seeing ROI from their creator marketing programs (hint: and how!)
• Why creator marketing drives such impressive ROI (hint: marketing budgets aren’t expanding, but they are changing)
• What challenges brands face, and how these challenges have transformed over time
• What creators want from brands (which has also transformed over time!)
• How brands and creators utilize different social media platforms for different purposes
• How brands and creators use AI in their creator marketing efforts, and which of those efforts they don’t want to use AI for
• The all-important question: what’s coming next

Did I not promise that it’s got everything? Seriously: read, and I cannot stress this enough, the full report. It’s well worth your time, and I couldn’t be prouder of or more impressed by the effort that’s gone into it. 

But hey, since you’re already here, I guess I might as well state a few things that stood out to me.

The Top Report of All Time (of the Week): State of Creator Marketing

Let’s start from the top: when we say that this report is bigger and better than ever, it’s not hyperbole. We really did interview more brands, creators, and agencies than we did in any previous year. Check it out:

Respondent Breakdown

We cast a wide net just for you, folks: not just 9 regions—9+ regions!

That wide net confirmed, more rigorously than ever, that creator marketing is on the move. Over six years of this survey, we’ve seen a steady increase in organizations’ investment in creators, but even so, little prepared us for the biggest jump yet:

Standout Stat

The surge we saw for creator marketing budgets between 2024 and 2025 exceeded the progress we saw from 2021 to 2024. Not only is the space continuing to grow—that growth is accelerating. You can tell, since we put a money icon up there in the top right corner.

But that’s not the only way that we can gauge the expanding power of creator marketing. Another method we have of quantifying that impact is by comparing creators’ impact to brands’ owned media. That’s why, for the second year in a row, we looked at the performance metrics for creators’ posts on behalf of top Fortune 100 brands, and measured that against the performance of posts from those brands’ official social media accounts. No points for guessing that creators won:

Comparing creators’ impact to brands’ owned media

The results speak for themselves, but this being my newsletter, I’m gonna do a little more speaking for them. What stands out to me isn’t just that creators have an advantage—we expect as much. But the size of that advantage, the sheer discrepancy between what the most powerful companies in the world can do on their own versus what creators can do for them, really underscores the necessity of creator marketing in a way that few other stats do.

So we’ve seen that creator marketing investment is increasing, and that creators are fueling more exposure for brands. All of that sounds pretty expensive. That’s when we factor in one of the most undersung aspects of creator marketing, IMO: investing in a successful creator strategy isn’t about adding to underlying marketing budgets, especially in this economy—it’s about reallocating resources toward what’s working.

Where did the increase in influencer marketing budget come from? 

That’s why we’re seeing brands utilize a range of strategies to fuel their creator marketing budgets. After seeing how much more effective creators are than owned social, it’s no surprise that we’re seeing a reallocation there. Meanwhile, since winning brands go where the money is (that’s what, you know, keeps them winning), it makes sense that many organizations are eschewing digital or paid advertising, given that for the first time ever, creators have overtaken those channels in revenue. (Best believe I have that link on speed-dial.) As for AI, it’s cool that we’re already seeing cost-saving measures in action. This is just one of the many AI-related takeaways in the report, and in this blog post, so stay tuned for more!

With creator marketing taking an increasingly central role in the marketing mix, it’s only natural that the challenges creator marketers face have evolved in tandem. Gone are the days of scrapping for budget and personnel; now, the name of the game is proving out and validating the success of your creator marketing campaigns.

Historical progression of creator marketers' challenges

This nifty little chart maps the historical progression of creator marketers’ greatest challenges across six years of our survey data. It also serves as a fitting encapsulation of the industry’s progress at large. First, organizations didn’t have the requisite staff to carry out effective creator programs. Then brands realized they had to solve the problem, either in-house or via agencies (or both), but budget remained a challenge. Finally, right around last year, inadequate budget and staff dropped off the map entirely. Now, 2025’s list of concerns reflect a more sophisticated industry, with a correspondingly nuanced set of challenges. Fortunately, CreatorIQ has you covered for all things measurement, and for any other challenges that might arise.

Top Roadblocks for Brands 2025

Here’s a more detailed look at those challenges, with a percentage breakdown. There’s AI again! In fact, let’s wade into that topic now. (Just what you need—another blog post about AI.)

While there are many insightful learnings about AI throughout the report—I could write a whole blog post on it, but again, I won’t—I want to focus on what creator marketers said they would keep analogue for the time being. Creators themselves also gave a fascinating response to this question, but I can’t give away the game, now can I? You do still have to download the report after this, you know.

What AI shouldn't replace

I love this chart for several reasons. First, shoutout to the 32% of respondents who still want to do their own writing. There are dozens of us!

But beyond that, these responses reinforce something that’s been true throughout my decade in the industry (and not a lot of things have been consistently true about creator marketing over the last ten years): this is a space built around relationships. Whether that’s the relationship between a brand and its creators or between creators and their audiences—or, ultimately, those audiences and brands—this ineffably human quality is something that you can’t just automate away. 

I’m so excited to see where that spirit of human connection, and the industry at large, go from here over the next decade and more. And I’m so excited for you, reader, to download this report, and see how much more it has to offer.

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