Your Weekly Creator Marketing Update🚀
18.06.2025
📈Influencer Marketing Gains Ground as Global Ad Budgets Tighten
📌 TL;DR
The influencer marketing industry is exploding and is projected to hit $33 billion in 2025 (up 36% from 2024). Big brands like Unilever are dramatically shifting budgets, planning to dedicate 50% of ad spend to social media and hire 20x more influencers.
Brands are cutting traditional ad spending while influencer marketing proves more cost-effective and authentic, especially in regards to Gen Z consumers. Companies like Primo Brands have seen huge success when fitness influencer Ashton Hall organically featured their Saratoga Spring Water.
2025 will be the first year user-generated content ad revenue surpasses professionally produced content. Major ad agencies are acquiring influencer marketing firms to keep up, with 86% of US companies expected to use influencer marketing by 2025.
🔍 MY THOUGHTS
Mostly positives in this great roundup article by Bloomberg - a few things I’d like to focus on.
The data is (finally) catching up
“This year will be the first year that advertising revenue on user generated content and platforms actually outpaces the ad revenue on professionally produced content,” said Kate Scott-Dawkins, WPP Media’s global president of business intelligence. “That’s a big deal.”
This is a huge deal. While most in the creator industry have been saying that content that is created by people resonates better than sponsored brand-led content for a few years now - it seems that reality has finally caught up. The knock-on effect is clear, more businesses are building their strategies around content creators, instead of using them as an add on to their paid performance plays.
We will continue to see more acquisitions
“They have to be very acquisitive because if they don’t acquire these capabilities across their network, they’ll be left behind,” - Companies often favor smaller, independent, topic-specific influencer agencies that can connect them to creators with a strong reach and a defined audience.
There is a lot of pressure on bigger companies to keep the pace and expand their influencer marketing capabilities as overall influencer-adjacent spend continues to increase YoY - and this is likely to continue over the next few years with tech infrastructure and agencies having industry expertise and capabilities being the main targets.
Organic exposure (continues) to beats paid
Primo Brands, which wasn’t affiliated with Hall when he made his video, is among the increasing number of companies benefiting from influencer co-signs. Handbag-maker Coach, once synonymous with mall discounts, has become a Gen-Z status symbol and saw sales soar thanks to TikTok influencers expanding their collection of purses adorned with little cherry or pretzel charms.
No matter how much you spend on creators - or how big or small your social presence is - we’re all seeing the impact that viral videos can have on a brand. We’re now headed into an era where brands will go all out to try and earn their own viral moment - and developing a creator-friendly ecosystem is going to be key to maximise the returns if it does happen.
We’ve well and truly hit the era of direct-to-consumer
As social commerce — where people buy and sell on social media platforms like TikTok Shop — becomes mainstream, brands want to create content with an “easy onward journey to purchase”
Consumers have never been as powerful as they are today and the trust paradigm has gradually shifted over the past decade, in direct correlation with the rise of the creator industry. Creators are becoming increasingly important to brands when it comes to product discovery - powered by an ecosystem of fully integrated social commerce. The top of the funnel is changing shape, and pumping dollars into traditional (and even paid social) channels is losing the battle against that unmistakable human to human connection that content creators provide.
The (risky) rise of AI
“It’s going to be very interesting to see how much value there is in being human versus an AI when it comes to engaging audiences”
Please no - is all I have to say to that. A brand-controlled brand-safe content generating machine sounds like a real life Black Mirror episode that would keep me up at night.
📺Publicis Cannes campaign pits low cost of influencer reach against Super Bowl TV ads
📌 TL;DR
Publicis Groupe is running a provocative Cannes campaign that compares the cost and reach of influencer marketing to Super Bowl TV ads, claiming brands can get broader reach than the 127 million viewers of an $8 million Super Bowl ad by using their influencer tools instead. The campaign features a real lion named George (featured on wildlife creator Shandor Larenty's channels) that they're trying to make go viral to demonstrate their capabilities. The campaign includes digital billboards in Nice/Cannes comparing influencer campaign costs to Cannes expenses (like business class tickets or beach party budgets), plus a live "Lion tracker" showing George's growing audience in real-time. It's designed to showcase Publicis's recent influencer marketing acquisitions including Influential ($500 million) and their AI-powered platform that claims access to 19 million creators.
🔍 MY THOUGHTS
I’m a huge fan of influencer marketing becoming much more of a conversation at Cannes as each year passes - and this campaign is extremely clever. But I have some thoughts.
By positioning influencer marketing primarily as a “better” way to achieve Super Bowl-level reach, we have industry leaders continuing to perpetuate metrics that compare influencer marketing only to other performance channels. Yes, it is a more cost effective way to achieve “Super Bowl” reach, but (IMHO) it cheapens the true value and real value of influencer marketing. We know eyeballs are important, but I’d love for industry leaders to start pushing conversations that move beyond that.
While the article does acknowledge that influencers should "amplify tentpole moments like the Super Bowl ads, rather than replace them" the core messaging refuses to highlight influencer marketing's unique strengths like community building, niche targeting, and authentic storytelling, and instead chooses to actively sell tapped-in audiences cultivated by other human beings - often for years - as media inventory.
This kind of positioning might win some media budget shifts in the short term, but it ultimately cheapens what should be a more strategic, relationship-driven medium.
🏭Industry Headlines
📖How brands are extending social influence and commanding cross-platform conversations
Brands have fully embraced social media content and are pushing the boundaries on Instagram, TikTok, Meta, YouTube and other platforms to drive engagement, mainly in the form of social actions. Influencer marketing has evolved from broad-based brand awareness efforts centered around an influencer’s network into a powerful tool for precision-targeted engagement and revenue generation.
📖Why Kerrygold’s Butter-Themed Influencer Trip Went Viral on TikTok
In the past couple of years, influencer brand trips have seemingly fallen out of favor with consumers. If a brand trip stirs negative conversation across social media, marketers face backlash for being out of touch and showing a gross display of wealth. But Kerrygold’s latest brand trip is evidence that doesn’t have to be the case.
📖Pinterest is adding third-party influencer content to its feeds
Influencers on affiliate shopping platform LTK may soon get access to a huge new audience: Pinterest users. Under a new partnership announced today, high-performing image posts on LTK will automatically be cross-posted to Pinterest; the pilot program is expected to expand in the coming months to more creators and content formats.