Creator marketing has moved from the side of the media plan to the middle of it. Unilever now works with around 300,000 creators, UK spend on creator partnerships is forecast to pass £1bn for the first time this year, and the platforms are rebuilding their ad products around creator content. Yet most brands still treat creators as a line item in a launch plan rather than a channel they own.
This report sets out what creator marketing actually is, how it differs from the influencer marketing most brands bought in the last decade, which models are working in 2026, where the evidence is strong and where it is mostly platform marketing. It finishes with the playbook we use at Advertain when brands ask us where to start.
The short version
- Creator marketing is a channel, not a campaign. The brands winning in 2026 run creators always on, across paid, owned and earned, instead of buying one off posts around a launch.
- Big money is moving. Unilever is shifting about half of its media to social and building a network of around 300,000 creators. CreatorIQ found nearly two thirds of brands raising creator budgets took the money directly from paid media.
- The trust gap is generational. Around half of Gen Z feel closer to creators than to TV stars, and 41% of US Gen Z discover products through creators, level with search engines.
- Performance claims are strong but mostly self reported. Meta, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn all report double or triple digit uplifts for creator ads. Treat them as hypotheses to test, not facts to budget against.
- The long term play is owned. The most valuable model is a brand channel or series hosted by creators, because the audience compounds instead of resetting with every campaign.
What is creator marketing?
Creator marketing is the practice of brands partnering with independent video and social creators to make content that reaches the creator’s audience, and increasingly the brand’s own audience too. The creator brings a trusted voice, a format their viewers already choose to watch and production skills tuned to the platform. The brand brings a product, a story and, crucially, a budget to distribute the work.
The money behind it is large. Goldman Sachs sized the global creator economy at about $250 billion and projected it could approach $480 billion by 2027, with brand deals making up about 70% of creator revenue. Only about 4% of the roughly 50 million creators it counted earned more than $100,000 a year, which tells you how concentrated the professional end of the market is (Goldman Sachs).
What is creator led marketing?
Creator led marketing goes a step further. Instead of renting a creator’s audience for a post, the brand lets creators lead the idea, the format and often the on screen presence of its own marketing. That can mean creators fronting the brand’s ads, hosting a series on the brand’s YouTube channel or co designing products. Unilever’s chief executive Fernando Fernandez described the shift bluntly at CAGNY in February 2026.
“I’m absolutely convinced that the times of big corporate big brand messages are gone.” Fernando Fernandez, CEO, Unilever, via Marketing Week
Creator marketing vs influencer marketing: what is the difference?
The terms overlap and many reports use them interchangeably. The useful distinction is in how the work is bought. Influencer marketing usually means paying for reach: a post, a story, a discount code, judged on impressions and clicks. Creator marketing treats the creator as a creative partner and the content as an asset that can run in paid media, live on the brand’s own channels and keep earning after the campaign ends. We covered the state of the influencer market in detail in Is Influencer Marketing Dead?; this report looks at what has replaced the one off sponsored post.
Why creator marketing is taking budget from brand advertising
The clearest signal is where large advertisers are moving money. In March 2025 Fernandez said Unilever would take social from about 30% to 50% of its media spend and wanted “one influencer in each” of India’s 19,000 postcodes and Brazil’s 5,764 municipalities (The Drum). By February 2026 the company was working with about 300,000 creators, with its beauty and wellbeing division alone growing from 75,000 to 180,000 and producing seven times more content assets (Marketing Week). For the 2026 FIFA World Cup it activated 50,000 creators with a combined audience of more than 600 million people (Digiday).
Unilever is the loudest example but not an outlier. Kantar’s Media Reactions study of around 1,000 senior marketers found a net 61% planned to increase spend on influencer content (Kantar). CreatorIQ’s survey of 1,723 marketers, agencies and creators found average budgets up 171% year on year, and nearly two thirds of brands increasing spend said they pulled the money directly from paid media (CreatorIQ). In the UK, IAB UK and IRM forecast creator partnership spend will reach £1.217bn in 2026, up 26%, more than double the growth rate of the rest of digital advertising (IAB UK via InPublishing).
Volume on YouTube tells the same story. Tubefilter’s tracking of English language channels counted 65,759 sponsored videos in the first half of 2025, up 54% year on year, drawing 19.1 billion views (Axios).
YouTube’s creative ecosystem: contribution to UK GDP
The same 2025 Oxford Economics study puts the jobs supported at more than 60,000 full time equivalents and found over 80% of watch time on UK produced channels comes from outside the UK. British creators are an export industry, which matters for any brand with international ambitions.
The five models of creator marketing
“Working with creators” covers very different deals. Most brand teams we speak to are only running the first model below and wondering why results reset every quarter. Here is how the options compare.
| Model | What it is | Real example | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Sponsored integration | A paid segment or dedicated video on the creator’s channel | The 65,759 sponsored YouTube videos tracked in H1 2025 | Fast reach into a defined niche |
| 2. Creator content in paid media | Creator made ads run from the creator’s or brand’s handle with paid budget | Meta partnership ads, YouTube creator partnerships boost, TikTok creator ads | Performance and scale |
| 3. Ambassador programme | Year long paid partnerships with a cohort of creators | Sephora Squad: 68 creators chosen from 16,000+ applications in 2023 | Consistency and community |
| 4. Creator hosted brand media | Creators front a series or channel the brand owns | Red Bull Media House; HubSpot buying The Hustle and My First Million | Compounding owned audience |
| 5. Creator owned brands | The creator builds or co owns the product brand | Feastables, Rhode (e.l.f. deal up to $1bn), Prime | Category disruption, high risk |
Sources linked in the text below. Model labels are Advertain’s framework.
Creator marketing examples worth studying
Vaseline Verified. Unilever’s skincare brand lab tested viral creator hacks, awarded a seal to the ones that worked and called out unsafe ones in out of home ads, including in the UK. Ogilvy says the brand recognised more than 6,000 organic posts, and the work won the Social and Creator Grand Prix at Cannes Lions 2025 (Contagious). The insight: the brand did not pay creators to talk about it, it built a reason for creators to want to.
Sephora Squad. A year long paid programme with coaching and mentorship. Sephora says the 2022 cohort’s combined following grew 99% over the year, a company figure rather than an audited one (Sephora).
HubSpot and The Hustle. In 2021 HubSpot bought a creator led media company including a newsletter with more than 1.5 million readers and the My First Million podcast (HubSpot). The podcast’s YouTube channel had about 960,000 subscribers when we checked today. This is model four in its purest form: buy or build the creator media rather than renting it.
Feastables and Rhode. Creators are now building consumer brands at a scale that rivals incumbents. An investor deck reported by Bloomberg put Feastables at $250m in 2024 sales and $20m profit (Tubefilter), and e.l.f. Beauty agreed to buy Hailey Bieber’s Rhode for up to $1bn after it reached $212m in net sales in the year to March 2025 (exchange4media).
Why creators work: trust, attention and the Gen Z effect
The case for creators rests on a shift in who audiences trust. Deloitte’s 2025 Digital Media Trends survey of 3,595 US consumers found 52% of Gen Z and 45% of millennials feel a stronger personal connection to social media creators than to TV personalities or actors, and that social ads and product reviews are the most influential factor in purchase decisions for 63% of Gen Z, against 28% for streaming video ads (Deloitte).
Gen Z and millennials: creators vs traditional media
Discovery follows trust. YouGov Profiles data shows 27% of US consumers discover products through influencers or bloggers, rising to 41% of Gen Z, almost level with search engines at 42% (YouGov). Google’s own research with Kantar found 79% of US Gen Z trust recommendations from creators on YouTube and 89% intentionally seek out videos from specific creators, though the Gen Z sample was 344 people and the study was commissioned by the platform (Think with Google). We unpacked how younger audiences find brands in How Gen Z Discovers Brands.
There is a counterweight worth noting. The same Deloitte study found 30% of consumers believe creators lose their authenticity when they appear on traditional TV. Creators are trusted because they feel independent; a brand that over scripts them spends that trust on its own behalf.
Does creator marketing work? What the performance data says
Every major platform now publishes headline numbers for creator ads. They are useful, but every one of them comes from the platform selling the product, and they measure different things.
Platform reported uplift from creator ads vs standard ads
Independent and buyer side data points the same way, with more caution. CreatorIQ’s June 2026 survey of 100 US and UK marketing leaders found creator content now makes up 44% of brands’ paid media creative on average, and 77% said it outperforms traditional branded ad creative (CreatorIQ). Google’s meta analysis of marketing mix models for 20 consumer goods brands found YouTube drove 2.3 times higher long term return on ad spend than paid social (Think with Google).
Two findings matter most for planning. First, creator content has a long tail: data from the creator ad marketplace Agentio, cited by Google, shows about 40% of views and 30% of clicks on sponsored YouTube videos arrive more than 30 days after publication. Second, repetition pays: the same source found advertisers doubled conversion rates between their first and sixth integration with the same creator. Both argue for fewer, longer partnerships.
The best creator partnerships behave like media you own: they keep earning long after the invoice is paid.
Measurement is still the weak point. Linqia’s 2026 survey found 79% of marketers struggle to measure influencer ROI and 48% call attribution the biggest gap (Linqia). If you run creator ads, run them as head to head experiments against your standard creative, which is what Google itself recommends for its creator partnerships boost (Google Ads Help). For the wider picture on how creator video compares with TV for long term profit, see Is TV Advertising Still Worth It?
Where creator marketing breaks: the risks brands underestimate
Creator owned brands can fall as fast as they rise
Prime, the drinks brand founded by Logan Paul and KSI, is the cautionary tale. Its UK subsidiary’s revenue fell from £112.2m in 2023 to £32.8m in 2024, according to accounts filed at Companies House, with the company saying “consumer interest has moderated” (City AM). Hype from creators can open a category; it does not guarantee repeat purchase.
Prime Hydration UK subsidiary revenue
Costs are rising and talent is concentrated
Demand from large advertisers is pushing up prices. One UK agency told The Drum it had seen micro influencer rates rise by around 30% in a year after Unilever’s pivot, an anecdote rather than a benchmark (The Drum). Earnings are also highly concentrated: on CreatorIQ’s platform the top 10% of creators receive 62% of payments, while the median creator earns about $3,000 a year from brand work (CreatorIQ). The creators most brands want are the most expensive and the most booked.
Governance is improving, slowly
The World Federation of Advertisers’ survey of multinational brands found more now have influencer policies and contracts than in 2019, but only 42% monitor creator compliance (WFA). In the UK, disclosure rules apply to every paid partnership, and platforms are tightening their own labelling.
Multinational brands: influencer governance, 2019 vs 2025
B2B creator marketing is no longer a niche
Creator marketing is not just for beauty and snacks. LinkedIn’s 2026 B2B Marketing Outlook, run by YouGov with 1,299 B2B marketers across the US, UK, France, Germany and India, found 82% of B2B marketers who work with creators say influencer campaigns are essential, and 81% say pulling back would leave revenue on the table. It also reports that 56% of B2B buyers rely on input from creators in the final stage of a purchase (LinkedIn).
Adoption has moved quickly. TopRank Marketing, an agency that specialises in the area, reports 85% of B2B marketers now use influencers, up from 34% in 2020 (TopRank Marketing). LinkedIn has built products around it: its BrandLink programme places video ads next to shows from creators and publishers, and the company claims a 130% higher completion rate than standard video ads (Social Samosa).
The B2B lesson is the same as consumer: the experts your buyers already follow are the shortcut to trust. The HubSpot move shows the end state, a software company that owns a creator media business.
Creator marketing tools: YouTube, Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn
Each major platform now offers a native way to find creators, manage deals and put paid budget behind creator content. These are the official descriptions as of today.
| Platform | Tool | What it does (official description) |
|---|---|---|
| YouTube | Creator partnerships in Google Ads | Find YouTube creators for sponsored content and manage partnerships; organic and paid metrics for linked videos; no minimum spend (Google) |
| YouTube | Creator partnerships boost | Use creator videos in Demand Gen, Performance Max and video campaigns across the funnel (Google) |
| Instagram and Facebook | Creator marketplace and partnership ads | Discover creators, view portfolios and run ads from a creator’s handle; marketplace expanded to the UK in February 2024 (Meta) |
| TikTok | TikTok One | All in one creative platform with access to millions of creators; replaced Creator Marketplace in 2025 (TikTok) |
| BrandLink | Video ads alongside content from selected creators and publishers (Social Samosa) |
Checked 5 October 2026. Platform tools change often; confirm availability in your market.
YouTube announced further creator tools at Made on YouTube this year; our breakdown of YouTube’s new features for brands covers what changed.
A creator marketing strategy for 2026: our playbook
This is the sequence we recommend to brands at Advertain. It is our guidance, built from the evidence above and from running creator and YouTube programmes for brands including L’Oréal, Formula E and Sony.
- Decide the job. Reach, conversion and owned audience need different models. Write down which one you are buying before you brief anyone.
- Pick fewer creators for longer. The evidence on repeat integrations and long tail views favours six month or year long deals over one off posts.
- Choose on audience fit, not follower count. CreatorIQ found brand suitability is now the top selection factor at 22%, against 8% for follower count.
- Brief the outcome, not the script. Give creators the message, the mandatory claims and the boundaries, then let them make it in their format.
- Secure usage rights for paid media. The content is worth most when you can run it as ads, so agree paid usage, duration and platforms upfront.
- Test against your own creative. Run creator ads head to head with standard ads and judge on cost per result and brand lift, not engagement alone.
- Build something you own. Bring your best creators onto your own channel as hosts of a recurring series, so every partnership adds to an audience you keep.
That last step is where the economics change. When we helped Paul Ribot grow from 0 to 30,000 YouTube subscribers in 75 days, and when our work for Formula E reached more than 7 million views across YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, the value came from building a format audiences returned to, not a single post. You can see more in our work, and if you are starting from zero, our guide on how to start a YouTube channel for business covers the setup.
Frequently asked questions
What is an example of creator marketing?
Vaseline Verified is one of the strongest recent examples. Unilever tested viral creator skincare hacks in a lab, endorsed the ones that worked and won the Social and Creator Grand Prix at Cannes Lions 2025. Others include Sephora Squad’s year long creator programme and HubSpot’s acquisition of The Hustle and the My First Million podcast.
Is creator marketing the same as influencer marketing?
They overlap, but creator marketing usually means treating creators as creative partners whose content runs across paid, owned and earned channels, while influencer marketing often means buying reach through individual sponsored posts. Most brands now need both, with the balance shifting towards longer creator partnerships.
How much should brands spend on creator marketing?
There is no single benchmark. Unilever is moving about half of its media to social, and CreatorIQ found enterprise brands spend between $5.6m and $8.1m a year on creators. A practical starting point is to fund a small number of long term partnerships plus paid budget to amplify the best content, then scale what beats your standard creative in tests.
How do you measure creator marketing ROI?
Use the same framework as the rest of your paid media. Run creator ads as experiments against standard ads, track brand lift and branded search alongside cost per result, and allow at least 30 days because a large share of views and clicks on sponsored YouTube videos arrive after the first month.
What are the creator marketing trends for 2026?
Budgets moving from paid media into creators, creator content becoming standard paid creative, platform tools such as YouTube creator partnerships and TikTok One maturing, rapid growth in B2B creator marketing and more brands building creator hosted channels of their own. Talk to us via our contact page if you want help planning yours.
