For a long time, working with a creator meant sending a product, agreeing on a hashtag, and waiting for the post. The creator was a billboard with a face, and often it was just one or two posts at a time. Disney’s own marketing team still uses the phrase: “Creators are our best digital billboards,” according to one executive interviewed recently. It’s a fair description of what influencer marketing used to be, and a poor description of what it’s becoming.
The money shows how things have shifted. The Interactive Advertising Bureau projects U.S. creator ad spending will reach $44 billion this year, and 48 percent of creator ad buyers call creators a “must buy,” second only to paid search and social. Curtis Midkiff, a director of social media marketing at Sprout Social, put it plainly after this year’s Cannes Lions: senior marketers are focused on the creator economy, and creator activation is “not going away” and is “not a fad.”
What changed is what creators are good at. Yes, a post can still move a product. But the more valuable skills are the ones that don’t fit on a media plan. A creator can help a brand understand a market, translate culture, build trust with a specific audience, and open doors to communities traditional advertising rarely reaches. Treat a creator as a placement, and a brand gets content. Treat one as a partner, and it may get distribution, audience intelligence, and a path to sales.
Creators have worked out the difference faster than most brands. Many now run what are effectively small companies, paying for gear, travel, and help up front. Sprout got a glimpse of this when about 300 creators submitted pitches around Cannes. Midkiff said what they’re asking for is revenue and relationships, not a single transaction. That’s why many funded their trips out of their own pocket.
The companies getting this right are building for the long haul. Disney says it has worked with more than 6,000 creators this year, up 30 percent from last, and describes its goal as an “always-on” relationship rather than a campaign. Its creator trips don’t require a set number of posts, and the company talks about a “reciprocal relationship.” It has also made longer-term deals, like a content partnership with Dude Perfect tied to major franchises. Whether the arrangement is as even as Disney says is a fair question. But the structure points in the right direction: ongoing access, creative input, and repeat collaboration instead of one-off posts.
So what does success take? For brands, it starts with a few unglamorous commitments. Move from campaigns to multi-month relationships, so audiences see a creator’s recommendation as a habit and not an ad. Pay on time. Fast, predictable payment is one of the most basic demands from creators who are running businesses without a guaranteed paycheck. And just as importantly, loosen the brief. CreatorIQ’s chief customer officer says she sees brands tighten creative briefs as budgets grow, which can drain the very trust they’re paying for, and that smaller creators with more freedom often outperform heavily managed mega-creators. Companies also need to measure what really matters. Follower count is the easiest number to defend in a budget meeting, and a CreatorIQ survey of more than 5,000 creators found it correlates most closely with income, but it’s not the best for judging whether a creator is a good fit for the brand.
Creators have work to do as well. They need to treat the business like a real business (because it is): know their audience data, define what they’ll say yes to, and negotiate for more than a flat fee, whether that’s ongoing deals, product input, or a share of results. They must protect the thing that makes the work valuable. Audiences trust creators who tell them when something isn’t worth buying, and that credibility is hard to rebuild. And when possible, they should pick partners who invest back. A brand that wants a creator’s community should be willing to show up for the long term, not just the launch.
The industry’s vocabulary is shifting to match. Brands used to talk about “activations.” Now they talk about “relationships,” and creators are calling them on it. The test is simple enough: when the campaign ends, does anyone still call? If the answer is no, it was never a partnership. It was just an expensive way to rent trust.