The creator landscape saw remarkable momentum throughout 2025. We’re now in the “Era of Efficacy,” as investment in creator marketing increased 171% in the past year and brands face increased pressure to prove ROI, according to the 2025-2026 State of Creator Marketing Report. More brands invested in creator-first strategies, more creators produced content across more platforms, and more of that activity translated into real, measurable business outcomes. Across the board, creator marketing continued to mature, and CreatorIQ customers played a central role in that evolution.
We’re grateful to support over 1,300 of you as you pushed the industry forward this year. Together, you built global creator communities, experimented with new content formats, and delivered results at a scale we have never tracked before. And on a personal note, after spending the year sharing updates through our monthly newsletter, social channels, and What’s New Hub, it’s incredibly rewarding to see what you’ve harnessed CreatorIQ to achieve.
I’m so excited to share the highlights and learnings from your work this year, gathered from data across our entire customer base. Here it is: this year’s CreatorIQ Wrapped.
You reached new levels of scale and performance
Creator marketing continued its upward trajectory this year, and you were the driving force behind it. CreatorIQ customers launched 44K campaigns in 2025, a 70% increase year over year. The number of unique creators posting within campaigns also grew dramatically, reaching 641.7K creators, a 183% increase. These numbers reflect how central creators have become to your content, commerce, and community strategies.
Your investment in that growth:
- Payments to creators increased 79%
- Affiliate revenue generated through CreatorIQ increased 84% YoY
- Product links created and tracked increased 93% YoY
Creator-driven content made a significant impact across platforms:
- 39.2 billion views
- 8.4 billion engagements
These results demonstrate the trust you’ve placed in creators and the power of creator content to drive both reach and performance across the customer journey.
Instagram remained a cornerstone, while the platform mix became more dynamic
Instagram continued to anchor your creator strategies this year. It ranked first across total posts, creator participation, and campaign inclusion, and represented 71% of all campaign posts tracked in 2025. The platform’s scale, reliability, and breadth of formats continued to make it essential for most programs.
However, Instagram’s leadership was only part of the story. This year brought meaningful shifts across the wider social landscape. Organizations activated creators on an average of five platforms per campaign, reflecting the increasing importance of meeting audiences across diverse channels.
Several platforms stood out:
- YouTube moved into the top three platforms by post volume, up 56% year over year.
- Snapchat and Pinterest both rose in rank as emerging players, increasing 294% and 1,420% respectively.
- Campaigns featuring Snap increased 160%.
While channel strategy evolved, short-form content remained a core driver across these platforms. Stories were the top post type for the year, and short-form video formats on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube continued to grow at a rapid pace. Instagram Reels and TikTok videos, in particular, tracked nearly equal volumes (2.8M and 2.5M total posts respectively), illustrating how competitive the short-form space has become.
Repeat collaborations were a core growth driver
Long-term creator partnerships played a significant role in this year’s results. Across CreatorIQ, 40% of creators participated in multiple campaigns, highlighting the value you place on ongoing collaboration with creators and true partnerships.
Within Community, a solution in CreatorIQ designed to help you nurture long-term creator partnerships and harness their content, you tracked 9.6 million unique creators this year. The result? 21.2M sponsored and organic posts that delivered sustained engagement and broad social reach. That’s the power of investing in your creator community and tracking every piece of content they produce for your brand, well beyond any single activation.
Advanced search and safety practices helped teams scale confidently
As creator activity grew, so did the need for efficient search, thoughtful vetting, and strong brand safety processes. In Discovery, you most frequently used filters related to creator attributes such as location, age, and gender. These signals were prioritized over follower demographics, signaling a continued shift away from a focus on followers as creators increasingly reach audiences through algorithmic feeds.
Brand safety monitoring also remained a core priority. The categories customers tracked most included:
- Politics
- Religion
- Violence, harm, or illegal activity
- Illicit substances
- Hate speech
These categories across sensitive issues and traditional NSFW content reflect the evolving needs of creator programs and the importance of responsible oversight as content becomes more prolific.
A year of growth and innovation for the CreatorIQ platform
In parallel with industry growth, CreatorIQ continued to invest in the technology that supports customers at scale. This year marked the official launch of the new CreatorIQ platform, the AI-native operation system for creator-led growth, and customers spent more than 2.7 million hours within the new experience, an average of 3.9K hours per customer.
The new platform delivers global scale and unmatched depth of insights.
The Creator Graph, our industry-leading intelligence system powered by AI, processes:
- 123 million posts daily
- 19K brands
These insights, paired with the infrastructure for executing creator-led marketing strategy across global teams, give CreatorIQ customers a competitive edge in the current landscape.
Looking ahead to 2026
This year’s progress showed just how much creator marketing has evolved, and how essential your programs have become. Creator marketing is now a consistent, measurable, and essential part of modern marketing strategies. The growth in content, the rise of multi-platform activation, and the expansion of creator communities all point to an even more dynamic year ahead.
To our customers, thank you for your partnership throughout 2025. Your innovation and leadership continue to push the industry forward, and we are honored to support your work. We look forward to building on this momentum together in 2026.
To learn more about what we’re building at CreatorIQ to help teams meet the moment, check out our What’s New Hub for more details on the new operating system.