The IAB says brands will spend $37 billion on creators in 2025. That’s a 26% jump from last year and far outpaces the rest of the media industry. Brands are shifting spend because creators reach audiences that traditional channels no longer do.
Creators Took the Distribution Power While Media Was Still Arguing About It
Legacy media treated creators like a side category while creators built direct, durable distribution. They earned audience trust, they maintained consistent reach, and they continued to grow while traditional impressions declined.
Nearly half of ad buyers now call creators a must-buy. That puts creators in the same planning tier as search and social.
Mid-Tier Creators Are Carrying the Load
Brands are concentrating spend on mid-tier creators. Not celebrity accounts. Not mega influencers. Mid-tier. The 50k to 500k follower band. This tier is big enough to deliver real reach and small enough that engagement doesn’t collapse under scale. Their audiences behave more like communities than crowds, which is why brands get reliable performance at a reasonable cost.
This group delivers steady engagement and measurable influence. They convert, they hold attention, and their audiences respond. If you’re building products or strategy around creators and you aren’t optimizing for this tier, you’re skipping the segment that consistently outperforms the rest.
AI Is Everywhere, But It’s Not the Selling Point
Advertisers are using AI to speed up production and reduce friction. Editing, personalization, briefs, analysis. All the mechanical steps that slow campaigns down.
None of this replaces the creator. The audience response is tied to the person producing the content. AI improves workflow. It doesn’t improve influence.
The Money Arrived Before the Infrastructure
Demand is outpacing the systems that support the creator economy. Marketers still struggle to identify the right creators. Reporting varies by platform. Attribution is incomplete. Audience verification is inconsistent.
The biggest opportunities sit in discovery and measurement. Brands can’t reliably find creators at scale, and they still can’t measure performance with consistency.
Whoever solves those two problems will control the next phase of the market.
The Streaming Wars Take
Creator advertising is rising because creators drive attention and engagement at levels legacy media can’t match. Any company that relies on audience reach should be treating creators as a core part of their distribution and monetization strategy.
Streaming platforms should be building creator-driven formats that fit their ecosystems. Networks should be integrating creator talent into their lineups. Ad tech companies should be prioritizing measurement and verification. The operational gaps are the same ones Skip flagged this week in his column on what a real creator strategy actually requires.
Creators already have the audience. The budgets are catching up. The companies that adjust to that reality will stay competitive. The ones that don’t will keep losing share to the channels that actually move people.
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