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I know everybody says this at the end of every year, but did 2025 fly by or what? Maybe it’s just the inexorable march of time causing us to perceive reality as constantly accelerating and our own lives as already half over, but gee, I could swear that it was January just a day or two ago, and I was pumping out a blog post about how TikTok was getting banned.
But here we are in December, where time is indeed marching on, our lives remain mysterious, and TikTok is very much unbanned. It’s hard to believe that the period of uncertainty surrounding Gen Z’s favorite app was part of the same year we’re still in, but it’s true.
No single newsletter can track all the changes in the creator economy that occurred throughout 2025. (Well, it could, but the email would be too big to load properly.) Nor could I offer a summary of the 50+ editions of HBBIP we’ve sent throughout the year. (Well, I could, but I don’t feel like it.) But I’m not just being lazy—I’m looking out for you! After all, this late into 2025, you’ve already seen plenty of Year-in-Review newsletters, thinkpieces, and app wrap-ups. The last thing you need is another one of those.
What I can do is trace broad changes in the creator economy throughout 2025, recapping how HBBIP covered each key theme and offering a few predictions of what’s in store for us in 2026.
So how about we just do that?
Apologies for possibly the most mangled title gag of all time (not just of the year), but hey, 2025 was a pretty confusing time.
Thankfully for both of us, I’m not here to remind you of the news—I’m here to talk about creator marketing! And in that respect, 2025 was indeed the biggest year of all time.
‘Inflection point’ sounds buzzwordy, but that’s really what we saw. As explained by a mid-year WPP analysis, 2025 marked the point when “User-generated material—videos, podcasts and posts put together by individual creators—eclipsed the ad revenue attracted by professional media produced by TV networks, cinemas and news companies.” That’s a pretty big deal.
To tell the story of 2025’s inflection point, and what’s sure to be an even more inflected point in 2026, let’s run through the year in HBBIP images, and the big-picture headlines that all this data supported.
In 2025, HBBIP…
Not to brag, but here at HBBIP we’re in the habit of picking winners. Some of that is a self-fulfilling prophecy; after all, in order to be chosen for a feature, the brand has to have already achieved significant growth. Still, I was heartened by the fact that after they appeared in HBBIP this year, many of our featured brands went on to even bigger and better things.
We kicked off this trend with one of the very first brands we featured this year, via a January writeup of the UFC.
UFC Engagement, 2018 - 2024
That staggering growth in engagements was probably why, come August, the UFC signed a seven-year, multibillion-dollar media rights deal with Paramount. Oh, and by the way, we featured Paramount this year too—in fact, in the very next edition of HBBIP following our UFC spotlight.
Paramount Engagement, 2018 - 2024
Coincidence? I think not! Clearly, I’m something of a brand matchmaker, and this deal doesn’t get done without HBBIP. In which case, if anyone from the UFC or Paramount is listening, do you think I can get a cut?
Of course, I can’t talk about HBBIP calling its shots in 2025 without…
A screenshot of Hailey Bieber's Instagram Story displaying CreatorIQ data
Oh, right: that time Hailey Bieber shared data I pulled about RHODE Skin with her millions of followers on social media. I’m still pinching myself! That landmark moment in my career and life at large occurred in April 2025, which was surely the last time that anyone heard about RHODE Skin this year.
Jk: about one month later, RHODE Skin made the quickest return to HBBIP we’ve ever seen, by virtue of being acquired by E.L.F in a blockbuster $1B deal. It was a validation of creator-led marketing strategies, proof that creators are building billion-dollar brands, and once again, if you think this could have happened without HBBIP, you’re living in fantasyland.
You’re welcome, Hailey! To thank me, feel free to make a guest appearance on HBBIP Live sometime. Then we’ll call it even.
But HBBIP wasn’t just out here predicting earth-shattering deals: we were also on the cutting edge of some of the most important stories in the creator economy, including platform expansion. Plenty of other ‘2026 predictions for creator marketing’ newsletters are talking about the increasingly central role that Substack is playing in creator-led campaigns—I see you, Lindsey Gamble!—but we were talking about Substack all the way back in March, because it’s hard to ignore growth like this:
Substack creator count, 2018 - 2024
Will 2026 be the year I implement a paywall? No, I love you guys too much. But maybe, in keeping with the general theme of our prescient 2025 coverage, I’ll start a Patreon.
But our achievements this year went beyond the HBBIP Bump. Because 2025 was also the year that HBBIP…
Truthfully, we were a little behind the times on this one. Creator marketing has been a global endeavor for a long time, but that breadth wasn’t reflected in HBBIP’s coverage.
As was the case for creator marketing more broadly, 2025 was the year when all that changed.
This was the year I discovered the power of Dove’s Brazilian TikTokers, and learned that TikTok wasn’t just a stateside phenomenon anymore—the rest of the world is catching up:
Share of Dove's Impressions by channel, June 2024 to May 2025
I learned about what creators have done for Heineken (a lot), and European beauty (a lot a lot), but most importantly, I learned what they’ve done for European sports.
This entailed learning more about the other football, which was fun:
Top Premier League clubs by Impressions, 2022 - 2024
I now know enough, for example, to make a joke about how Arsenal just missed these standings (this is your year guys, for sure, this time we mean it), or how unhappy United fans are in general (less of a joke and more of a comment). Ahead of an all-out media blitz that will encompass the 2026 World Cup, look out for even more creator marketing/sports crossover moments, and continued coverage from HBBIP.
In fact, we’ve got even more sports coverage coming right now, because 2025 was also the year that CreatorIQ…
Presented here, without comment, are just a few of the industries that CreatorIQ covered in 2025:
One takeaway is that I have the coolest job in the world, because where else but the creator economy could I have the chance to write about such a wide array of amazing brands? But another takeaway, just to connect the dots a little more and humblebrag a little less, is that creator marketing is everywhere.
Take grocery. Though it might not stand out on the above list, I learned this year that grocery is one of the creator economy’s hottest sectors. When I look back on the passion, enthusiasm, and creativity that characterized my first exposure to creator marketing around 2016, I can still see that groundswell alive and well in the grocery industry.
In retrospect, I should have seen this coming. After all, who doesn’t love Costco?
Costco Impressions, 2018 - 2024
I also want to zoom back in on professional sports for a second—another high-passion space that inspired some of the most impressive, exciting creator marketing campaigns I saw in 2025. Between the aforementioned World Cup, the Super Bowl (stay tuned for some special content there), and more, bigger things are afoot for the promising bond between sports and creators in 2026.
Plus, 2025 was when we discovered that our metrics predict World Series results, so that was pretty neat. It also predicted the Super Bowl, as seen below:
Kansas City Chiefs vs. Philadelphia Eagles Engagements, September 2024 - January 2025
2025 continued to go smoothly for both the Chiefs and the Eagles, and they all lived happily ever after.
I just threw a lot of information at you. What does it mean?
Well, first of all, creators are everywhere, and they’re only going to get even more omnipresent, because brands are spending more on their programs than ever.
Influencer marketing investment is up 171% YoY
Why all this spending? Because more brands are recognizing that creators can do things that those brands’ social programs can’t:
A chart showing the difference in impact between owned content and creator content
Creators’ unparalleled ability to shape culture was most obvious to me during one of the watershed moments of 2025: Gap’s instantly iconic campaign with Katseye. As soon as I saw this graph, I knew that I’d be including it in my 2025 recap, because it’s truly one of the craziest images I’ve ever published in HBBIP:
Gap Engagements, January 2020 to August 2025
But creators aren’t just shaping a new culture: the infrastructure of the creator economy is reforming longstanding institutions. Look no further than the recent announcement that the Oscars are jumping to YouTube. Given how heavily invested the NFL has been in YouTube, it’s only a matter of time before the Super Bowl joins suit.
Beyond culture (if such a thing is possible), the creator economy is changing our entire understanding of the world at large. That came through to me in our most recent edition covering the New York Times, where I featured this eye-opening research from Pew:
Share of social media users getting news from various platforms, Pew Research 2025
So for those keeping score at home:
In fact, while I might have already had the newsletter, my TikTok presence meant that 2025 was also the year when I too became a creator. I can even prove my creator bona fides, because after years of begging, 2025 was also the year when I was finally gifted free merch:
A very generous gift from the folks at LSKD
Thank you again to my good friends at LSKD—no 2025 highlight reel would be complete without your kindness.
And thank you to all my readers for your support through key milestones during 2025, including my 100th issue! As far as 2025 highlights go, I’d be remiss not to include this old gem:
2025 in a nutshell
See? 2025 really was okay for the Chiefs after all.
But truly: if 2025 was the year we all became creators, 2026 will be the year when more cultural institutions get with the future and join the unstoppable rocketship that is the creator economy. As per usual, I’ll be strapped to the side of that rocketship, reporting on it all. And I hope that you’ll be right there with me, reading along.
Thank you for your support this year and next year, for the next 100 issues and beyond. Have a happy new year, and a wonderful 2026!
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