How NVIDIA Took the Creator Playbook to the Next Level (HBBIP #117)

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Last week I told you that here at HBBIP, we’re going to be doing things bigger and better than ever in 2026. But what does that mean in practice?

Well, one way of going big is a good old fashioned splurge: something flashy, fancy, or just plain indulgent. That might explain why I started out the year by covering Cadillac.

But there are many ways of going big, and sometimes the best way is also the most obvious. That’s why this week, I figured I might as well take my own advice and cover one of the biggest brands in the world. I mean that both literally—i.e., by value—and pejoratively: what’s hot right now? What’s capturing attention? Because if a contemporary brand is capturing attention, creators probably have something to do with it. 

I took a look at what Google gave me when I searched for ‘world’s biggest brands,’ which just so happened to include Google itself—a little suspicious, no? Regardless, the data gave me what I needed, and I made my pick.

While this week’s subject isn’t the absolute biggest fish in the pond, I wouldn’t want to tussle with it. But more important than the size of the fish is, uh, what that fish is doing with the size that it has (this is where the analogy starts to fall apart, so please bear with me). In this case, the fish just so happens to be at the forefront of an industry that’s changing the world.

So yeah: pretty notable fish. Now let’s get to the analysis before I drag out this analogy any further.

The Top Brand  of All Time (of the Week): NVIDIA

You might have heard about this week’s subject before. While NVIDIA has been around since 1993, manufacturing ware of both the hard and soft variety, the tech giant took the next step and became a full-blown tech titan more recently, thanks to the global clamor for all things AI. You know how we need devices—supercomputers, chips, and the like—capable of running sophisticated AI programs? Well, NVIDIA makes those devices. Sounds pretty lucrative!

I’m not going to pretend to understand exactly what the good folks at NVIDIA are getting up in a technical sense, but as a newsletter writer, I know this: whatever form the future takes, NVIDIA is playing an essential role in getting us there. In my book, that’s as good a standard for HBBIP inclusion as any.

But what role have creators played amid NVIDIA’s crazy growth? What does an NVIDIA creator even look like, anyway? Are they just your local supercomputer fan who decided to take up vlogging?

We’ll answer those questions soon, but first, let’s take a look at some of the tech industry’s most impressive growth of the last five years, as seen through our performance metrics.

NVIDIA Creator Count, 2020 - 2025

With the rise of all things AI over the last two years, it’s no surprise that 2024 and 2025 stand out as banner years for NVIDIA’s global creator count. Normally I have to do the whole caveat of “keep in mind this graph is missing December 2025, so the brand might still pull ahead when all is said and done.” Well, all is said and done, and NVIDIA’s 2025 total has already surpassed its 2024 mark by a fair margin.

NVIDIA Post Count, 2020 - 2025

It’s a similar story for post count. We’ll see how many people are buying microprocessors for the holidays, in case that December total ends up putting NVIDIA even further over the top. And as for whether these are creators or news outlets fueling this surge in mentions, it’s a bit of both, but obviously we’ll be focusing on our friends the creators.

NVIDIA Impressions, 2020 - 2025

Another exponentially upward trend here for impressions, which swelled roughly 7x from 2020 to 2025. This proved greater than NVIDIA’s increase in engagements…

NVIDIA Engagements, 2020 - 2025

This engagements growth was by no means unimpressive, at a roughly 3.5x improvement, but there are a few things that make engagements a bit of an outlier compared to other metrics, including that flat period in 2020, 2021, and 2022. 

In general, I’ve been seeing lower rates of engagements improvements relative to other performance metrics, even among top brands, so some of this is just the name of the game. Still, it’s something I’ll be keeping an eye on as the year progresses, with a special focus on finding brands that buck the trend.

Now, having quantified this growth a bit, let’s look into what’s causing it: who exactly are those NVIDIA creators we’ve been hearing so much about?

On the platform side, one particular social channel distinguished itself when it came to impressions:

NVIDIA Share of Impressions by Platform, January - November 2025

• Instagram: 71%
• YouTube: 68%
• Facebook: 68%
• TikTok: 27%

NVIDIA Share of Engagements by Platform, January - November 2025

Well, not exactly—at least if this chart of the brand’s Jan-Nov 2025 share of impressions by platform is to be believed. With nearly 60% of Cadillac’s impressions coming from Instagram versus 20% from TikTok, the results are pretty lopsided. Plus, Cadillac’s Instagram impressions increased by 77% YoY, compared to a 40% change for its TikTok impressions.

Cadillac Share of Engagements by Platform, January - November 2025

On the surface, we see a similar picture: a little less for YouTube, a little more for Instagram. But peep NVIDIA’s YoY engagements growth by channel, Jan-Nov 2025:

• Facebook: 129%
• TikTok: 91%
• YouTube: 44%
• Instagram: 19%

So more people are seeing NVIDIA on Instagram and YouTube, but more people are engaging with content about the brand on Facebook and TikTok. That’s a unique platform composition, and shows that NVIDIA is well-covered across multiple channels. What does it look like in practice?

With a 117% retention rate through the first 11 months of 2025, NVIDIA has managed to find creators who post about the brand consistently. This roster includes:

• Tech and gaming creators like TikToker Cryptocita, who marveled at the size of NVIDIA’s latest GPUs (I guess I can’t call them microchips anymore).
• Video journalists like Cleo Abram, who touted an hour-long YouTube interview with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang.
• Comedy-centric tech creators like Maddy Deee, who showed off the new graphics card in a funny (and hopefully fake) video.

In fact, that (intact) graphics card was front-and-center throughout creator content about NVIDIA, implying a coordinated gifting campaign that borrowed a page or two from leading beauty brands. In video after video, creators reacted to NVIDIA’s latest drop like Selena fans during a Rare Beauty launch. What does it mean?

Simply put: the creator playbook has been adopted by the world’s leading brands. It’s not some niche strategy for a minor industry—it’s a serious revenue driver for the companies that are driving more revenue than anyone else. And no, that last sentence, with its “it’s not...it’s” structure and em dash, wasn’t written by AI, but the fact that I wrote it that way and barely thought twice about it shows that AI has already won. Thanks, NVIDIA!

While the creator playbook might vary slightly by brand and industry, its underlying principles are as consistent as the posting habits of NVIDIA’s biggest fans. Look no further than Jensen Huang, CEO of one of the world’s leading companies with a net worth of $165 BILLION, sitting down for an hour-long interview with a YouTuber: you’re not going to find a greater validation of the creator economy’s importance than that. 

With great resources comes great things for creators, and I couldn’t be more excited to see how buy-in from the world’s top brands lifts creator marketing to even greater heights. 

See? It’s like I told you: 2026 really is going to be bigger and better than ever.

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