A brand director dividing up an advertising budget today faces a new question: how much to give to creators, and how to prove afterwards that the money paid off. According to a report by the IAB, US brands will spend around $44 billion on creator advertising in 2026. The channel has become a line item that gets counted.
From a marginal item to a core channel
The pace of growth is what sets creator advertising apart from the rest of the media. According to the IAB, spending rose from $13.9 billion in 2021 to $29.5 billion in 2024, more than doubling. For 2025 the report expects $37 billion, up 26 per cent year on year and almost four times faster than the media industry as a whole is growing. The moves of the platforms point the same way, as when Meta launched its Creator Marketing Hub globally this year.
The shift is also reflected in how buyers think about creators. Almost half of them, 48 per cent, put creators among their “must buy” channels, right after paid search and social media. What used to be an add-on at the end of the plan is becoming a “full-fledged channel”, one that is counted on from the start.
Brands are no longer paying for reach
Volume is only part of the story. The logic by which money flows is changing. Budgets are moving from one-off campaigns to performance-based models, where the creator is paid according to results. The platform Noise, which pays creators for views and raised $5.5 million, shows that this is a real shift in the business. A creator's value grows where they can connect brand awareness with a measurable transaction.
This changes the creator's position relative to the brand. They move from the end of the marketing funnel to its foundations, closer to how the company measures business results.
A bigger budget means tougher demands on measurement
Bigger budgets have brought tougher demands. Advertisers cite the difficulty of finding the right creators as the main obstacle, and as investment grows, so does the pressure to measure business impact. A channel that buyers value this highly has to be able to show what it delivered, or it will be the first to take a budget cut. The IAB also pointed to the same gap between money and measurement at September's Global Creator Week, where it for the first time put the creator, podcast and gaming markets side by side.
Automation is entering the equation too. Three in four brands, according to the report, already use AI in creator marketing or plan to, from finding creators to evaluating campaigns. A tool meant to speed up measurement does not, however, answer on its own the question of whether the collaboration actually sold anything.
Europe's turn is next
For the European market, the American figures are a preview. The logic the IAB describes will reach the plans of a Prague brand director too. A creator who is counted as a separate business partner, with their own economics of reach, conversion and audience, behaves like a company. A brand that grasps this sooner will stop buying posts and start buying results.
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