PALM SPRINGS, CALIF. — Perhaps it’s because the creator economy is so unlike traditional forms of media that it’s still not quite seen as “essential” by advertisers as much as consumers do. But that appears to be changing, as brands shift from tacking creators onto campaigns to building storytelling with influencers at the center.
“About 50% of U.S. buyers now consider it a must buy for social,” Zoe Soon, vp, experience at IAB, told Beet.TV at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting. “Whereas creators were sort of being tacked on at the end or pushed to another channel, you’re seeing brands start with creators first and building that storytelling with creators at the center.”
The IAB is working to professionalize the creator economy business and bridge gaps between creator and media worlds through convening, marketplace development, and standards creation.
Strategic creator selection by funnel
Brands are growing more sophisticated in aligning creator types with campaign objectives, matching large celebrity and mega-creators to upper-funnel reach goals while deploying niche and micro-influencers for conversion.
“The larger celebrity creators, mega creators, they’re more suited to scale and reach goals — top of the funnel,” Soon said. “More of the niche and micro influencers drive conversion because they’ve got tighter, deeper relationships with their audiences. They have that trust.”
Brands are also nurturing longer-term relationships by bringing creators on as strategic partners and ambassadors rather than one-off activation contractors.
IAB as ‘UN of advertising’
The IAB operates as neutral industry body mediating change across the creator ecosystem, convening leaders and establishing a creator advisory board of influential voices to guide initiatives.
“I describe us as the UN of advertising,” Soon said.
The organization is launching Creator Upfront on Sept. 15 as the creator economy’s answer to upfronts and newfronts, signaling marketplace maturity by bringing buyers and sellers together. The IAB will also release measurement standards for the creator economy and undertake transparency work examining supply chain processes from brand briefs to campaign execution.
AI enables and replaces
Artificial intelligence manifests in two categories within creator work: tools that make existing creator work easier by eliminating need for large teams, and AI functioning as the creator itself through digital twins executing simpler campaigns or AI-generated creative.
“There’s AI tools that are making it easier for creators to do what they’ve always done. That’s leveling the playing field a little bit because now they don’t need whole teams to do things,” Soon said. “And then you’re seeing it in the more innovative way where creators can scale their presence by allowing digital twin versions of themselves to maybe execute campaigns that are a little bit easier.”
Infrastructure lags investment growth
The creator economy’s rapid brand investment growth has outpaced infrastructure development, creating friction points around organizational gaps, metric fragmentation across platforms, and education needs on both brand and creator sides.
“We’re seeing incredible growth in the brand investment in the creator space and the infrastructure is struggling or hasn’t kept up,” Soon said. “I think bridging that gap between brand creative teams that own it, organizational gaps that need to be addressed. There’s a lot of fragmentation in terms of how platforms define metrics and having standardized outcomes based metrics will go a long way.”
Education must work bidirectionally—teaching brands how to work with creators while showing creators how media works and brand collaboration operates.
“We’re getting there,” Soon said.
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