Gone are the days when influencer marketing was a nice-to-have element in a brand’s media plan. Previously, it was driven primarily by follow counts, intuition, and sporadic sponsorship deals. However, the creator economy is slowly but steadily entering its adulthood phase. This phase is characterized by measurability, analytics, and performance focus.
According to AdExchanger’s reporting on a recent podcast interview with Ryan Detert, CEO and co-founder of Influential, creators are becoming media channels in their own right. They have loyal audiences, CPMs, campaign measurements, and business value. This value goes far beyond individual sponsored social media posts.
Creators Are Becoming Their Own Media Companies
The key trend in today’s world of influencers is how creators view their businesses. While before, many creators focused solely on creating sponsored content, now they are developing multi-platform media brands.
The scope of a creator’s influence has expanded. It now includes YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, podcasts, digital ads, out-of-home media, live shopping, and even connected TV campaigns. Furthermore, the name, image, likeness, persona, and reputation of the creator can be leveraged across various platforms and media channels.
This means that brands are no longer purchasing access to a creator’s followers – they are investing in a creator-led media ecosystem.
Why Brands Are Starting to Take Influencer Marketing Seriously
For years, influencer marketing was viewed as hard to measure. It was easy to track likes, comments, and shares on sponsored posts. However, proving direct connection between a creator’s campaign and sales, footfall, or brand lift was much more difficult.
However, that is starting to change.
Influencer marketing platforms have started offering brands ways to measure creator campaigns akin to traditional media or digital advertising. According to AdExchanger’s report, Publicis has acquired Influential in 2024. The platform is now integrated into the company’s broader marketing tech stack which includes Epsilon’s identity data. Thus, creator campaigns can be planned, measured, and evaluated alongside other media activities.
For brands, this is important since influencer marketing can now provide the following benefits:
- Sales lift studies
- Marketing mix modeling
- Footfall attribution for retail and restaurant clients
- Audience matching
- Brand safety check
- Comparison of paid vs organic performance
The take-away here is that if influencer marketing wants to claim a bigger chunk of media budgets, it needs to demonstrate performance.
AI Will Drive the Next Phase of Influencer Marketing Growth
With the help of artificial intelligence, the influencer marketing industry will be able to take the next step in terms of growth and performance.
AI can help brands find the right creators and understand their audiences. It can perform analysis of timelines and content for brand safety purposes. Additionally, AI can compare performance of influencer marketing campaigns with other advertising channels. Influential uses AI for audience research, creator matching, content scanning, and performance measurement, according to AdExchanger’s report.
This is relevant because the creator economy has become more complex. Brands are not just looking for popular creators anymore. They need to understand whether the creator’s audience fits their goals, whether the content is brand safe, and whether the partnership can produce any tangible results.
Creator Marketing Follows Audiences
One of the main reasons why brands are investing more into creators is obvious – their audiences are spending more time consuming content produced by creators.
Growing up with YouTube, TikTok, livestreams, podcasts, and creator-generated entertainment, younger generations view creators as more influential than celebrities, TV networks, and traditional media brands.
This makes creators attractive partners for awareness campaigns. Additionally, they are well suited for product discovery, recommendations, shopping behavior, and long-term brand loyalty.
Live Shopping and Creator-Led Commerce May Be the Next Big Thing
While live shopping is already an effective commerce channel in some countries in Asia, it has yet to reach its peak in North America. According to Ryan Detert, live content and live shopping are underrated trends. They are becoming increasingly relevant as creators grow into essential sources of product discovery for audiences.
For creators and influencers, this means that there may be additional revenue opportunities beyond sponsored posts. For brands, this provides a more direct path from content creation to purchase.
Instead of directing audiences to “check the link in bio”, creators can host live shopping sessions where they present products to consumers and provide recommendations.
What Does This Mean for Creators?
The key takeaway for creators is that influencer marketing is moving away from being a nice-to-have feature. It is becoming a full-fledged performance medium.
If creators want to succeed in this new environment, they will need to be able to understand their audiences. They should diversify across different platforms, demonstrate measurable value to brands, and create media assets and campaigns beyond individual sponsored posts.
The most successful creators in the future may resemble small media companies. They will integrate content creation, commerce, community management, licensing, live experience, and paid media partnerships.
What Does This Mean for Brands?
In turn, for brands, influencer marketing is becoming more accountable and measurable. Focusing on creator follow count alone is becoming a thing of the past.
Now, brands need to assess creators’ audiences for quality, engagement, brand safety, conversion, and performance metrics. With growing use of data and AI technologies in measuring creator campaigns, influencer marketing may be poised to capture a bigger share of media budgets.
Conclusion
Influencer marketing has reached maturity, transforming from a supplementary channel into a performance-oriented medium. Creators are not just content partners anymore – they are media channels, commerce engines, and trusted voices within communities.
With further development of AI technologies, measurement practices, and creator commerce capabilities, influencer marketing is likely to become a standard part of a modern marketing strategy.
For creators, this opens up opportunities to create scalable media companies built on top of their personal brand. For marketers, this creates new challenges. Creator campaigns now need to do more than raise brand awareness – they need to drive performance.