For years, brands have treated influencers as glorified billboards while simultaneously judging them by conversion metrics they were never designed to deliver.
The result has often been a mismatch between brand goals and measurement, with creators consistently under-credited for the discovery, trust-building, and purchase intent they generate before a single transaction occurs.
That disconnect is finally being addressed as retailers gain the ability to tie creator exposure directly to sales, said Zoe Soon, vp of the Experience Center at the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), in this video interview with Beet.TV editorial director Lisa Granatstein.
The missing link in measurement
“Creators have never just been billboards. They’re called influencers for a reason,” Soon said. “But what we’ve been seeing to date is brands having the goal of awareness when working with creators, but then using lower funnel performance metrics to gauge their performance.”
The shift toward measurability comes as global influencer marketing spending is projected to reach $24.1 billion in 2026, nearly double the $13.8 billion spent in 2021. That growth has intensified pressure on the industry to prove creator value beyond vanity metrics.
“Now retailers can use data to find out which creator audiences are most likely to convert, and they’re able to tie creator exposure to transactions,” Soon said. “And that’s been the missing link that’s really held back investment.”
From appointment viewing to always on
The cultural power of creators extends well beyond individual posts or videos. Soon pointed to the Super Bowl as an example of how creator content now surrounds and often supersedes traditional media events.
“Creators have something brands can’t manufacture, and that’s trust,” she said. “They have ongoing relationships with their audiences, there’s engagement, there’s community. And we’re really moving from a world of appointment viewing to always on, which is what creator emulates.”
A YouTube study found that Gen Z viewers prefer watching their favorite creator’s recap of the Super Bowl over the actual broadcast. For brands, this represents an opportunity to extend engagement far beyond a single 30-second spot.
“What that means for brands is that they can extend their engagement with their audiences beyond that one 30-second TV spot into conversation that goes beyond the event, both before and after,” Soon said.
The organizational problem
Before measurement can improve, the industry faces a more fundamental challenge: creators are often managed by PR teams or relegated to experimental budgets, far removed from the media buyers who control significant spend.
“The people who are creator experts are not the same people who are media buying experts,” Soon said. “At the IAB, we’re really trying to work with the industry to close that gap, and bring creators into the media mix, and professionalize the business of the creator economy.”
The IAB recently released new guidelines for commerce media, providing measurement frameworks and operating principles designed to help scale these emerging channels. Establishing shared definitions and standardized measurement remains a priority.
“One of the first things that needs to happen is a shared framework and understanding of definitions, standardized measurement, but before any of that can happen, we need to start bridging that gap between experimental and media buying,” Soon said.
The funnel becomes a loop
The traditional commerce funnel, with its orderly progression from awareness to consideration to purchase, no longer reflects how consumers actually buy. Soon described a compressed cycle where discovery and transaction happen almost simultaneously.
“Creators are having an impact on the traditional funnel because the funnel’s collapsing,” she said.
“It’s not a funnel anymore. It’s more of a closed loop. Someone sees a creator that they follow and emulate, they see a jacket that they’re wearing, they want to buy it, they can buy it natively through the affiliate link.”
You’re watching coverage from IAB Connected Commerce Summit 2026. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
