The brand director of a European brand splits the creator budget into three boxes. An influencer collaboration, a podcast sponsorship and in-game advertising mean three teams and three ways of proving that the investment paid off. The US industry body IAB treated them as one thing for the first time this year. It placed the premiere CreatorFronts alongside the established Podcast Upfront and PlayFronts in a single week, from 15 to 17 September at Convene 360 Madison Avenue in New York, under the banner of IAB Global Creator Week.
One number holds the three markets together. Based on its own analysis, IAB estimates that US creator ad spend will reach $44 billion this year, growing four times faster than the media market as a whole. It more than doubled in three years, from $13.9 billion in 2021 to $29.5 billion in 2024, and last year, by the same estimate, came to roughly $37 billion. This is US data, but European brands buy into it too. That curve is the reason the association rearranged its calendar.
The logic of the shift was summed up by IAB CEO David Cohen. He said: "Consumers experience that creator connection as a seamless continuum." For the advertiser, this means that the boundary between social networks, audio, games and shopping is ceasing to decide where to send the money. What decides is the audience and its attention, wherever it flows.
The motivation behind the merger is operational. Buyers plan across environments that used to claim their own upfront, and three separate events forced them to deal with the same audience three times. One week is meant to simplify this work and put creators, podcasts and games side by side as comparable items in the media plan.
Money is outrunning measurement
IAB itself names the weak spot. The report it cites for the figure is called The As-Is Measurement Landscape in the Creator Economy, and its conclusion is that the market lacks "the measurement standards, currencies, and financial rigor" needed for creators to fit into corporate media strategies. It speaks of "fragmented metrics, siloed platforms, and proxy-based ROI." For a brand director this matters more than the sum of the budgets. Cintia Gabilan, IAB’s vice president for Centers of Excellence and Industry Initiatives, described the task as bringing together "what marketers need to make creator media a scalable, measurable and essential part of the media plan." Money is flowing into the category before a way to prove its return has settled. The same gap between volume and the apparatus that turns attention into lasting value persists in Europe too.
Games are the youngest part of the market
The newest of the three is PlayFronts. IAB says that in the US 84% of internet users aged 16 to 64 count as gamers, and among Gen Z and Gen Alpha it is 90 to 95%. Gabilan added that games move the viewer from watching to participating, buying and recommending, with measurable signals along the way. For podcasts the argument is different. Jason Adamski, head of the Media Center at IAB, spoke about trust and closeness: "it's a uniquely intimate medium." The Podcast Upfront programme was built on video podcasts, collaboration with creators and new measurement options. Both parts of the week thus point to the same theme. Whether it is a game or audio, the question is how to turn attention into a provable result.
European budgets flow into the same platforms
The week is framed as global. Alongside the New York events, 17 markets around the world hosted programming, and the whole thing ran from 14 to 18 September with a single shared online hub. For a European advertiser, though, the key point is that the number is American and that budgets from Europe largely go to the same platforms. The programme of the New York week featured YouTube, TikTok, Meta, Twitch and Roblox, so social networks, audio and games under one roof. On the European side, the measurement gap is joined by a stricter regime for labelling advertising.
The axis is thus shifting from reach to proof. Anyone who has so far bought creators, podcasts and games separately now gets them as a single market. The measurement that would justify the spend, however, is not ready yet.
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