Sixty-one people. That's what it takes to run a single global creator marketing campaign today: an army of strategists, lawyers, analysts, and staff coordinating across time zones, agencies, and spreadsheets. Those 61 people reveal the creator economy's defining tension. It has scaled faster than the infrastructure built to support it.
At this morning's IPA Effectiveness Conference, WPP's Jane Christian dropped the most important digital marketing finding in the past decade: creators are digital's first true brand-building channel. Not via the usual they're authentic guff we've been fed for years. But in hard econometric terms that should make any CFO weak at the knees. We finally know how to use creators Analysis led by the IPA has combined 220 econometric studies across 133m of creator spend, covering 28 markets, 36 categories, and 144 brands.
Steph Ross, vp of social and influencer for the social media agency Born Social, said that influencer rates had "doubled" from 2024, but that her clients were largely unconcerned about the increases because they have also ramped up their influencer marketing spend. She said that influencers' increased rates were simply a result of that growing demand.