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Creator marketing is growing – but prices are coming under pressure

The creator economy continues to grow, but brands are increasingly questioning influencer prices. New data shows misvaluations, measurement problems and growing pressure toward automation.

From Social Rocket editorial team

This text was created with AI assistance and reviewed editorially before publication. All sources are linked below.

Content creator filming a video for social media
Photo: Vitaly Gariev / Unsplash

The creator economy continues 2026 to grow strongly, while influencer prices and the economic logic of many brand deals are coming under increasing pressure. Digiday sees signs of a possible correction: brands continue to invest, but increasingly want to tie fees more closely to measurable results.

The contradiction is clear. The IAB expects 2026 creator ad spending of around 43,9 billion US dollars for the US market, after 37,1 billion dollars 2025. At the same time, a survey of 1.000 marketing and procurement managers cited by Digiday shows that 50 percent misjudge creator fees, and 40 percent believe they have overpaid.

The problem is not a lack of money, but a lack of pricing logic

Creator marketing has meanwhile become a fixed part of many media plans. According to the IAB, 2025 nearly half of creator ad buyers already considered creators a "must buy." Still, the market continues to lack shared measurement standards, uniform currencies and reliable benchmarks for the value of individual creators.

This is exactly where the pricing problem arises: a creator can deliver reach, brand impact, sales, community trust and reusable content all at once. Yet these services are often valued using very different metrics.

The IAB therefore describes the lack of standardisation as a structural obstacle to further growth. According to Digiday, new measurement currency guidelines for influencer marketing are now due to appear in October 2026.

Automation increases pressure on individual creators

At the same time, creator selection is becoming increasingly automated. Agencies and platforms use AI and large creator databases to identify suitable accounts faster, set up campaigns and forecast results.

This lowers transaction costs for brands, but can also weaken the negotiating power of individual creators. When companies can work with far more creators at the same time, the available supply grows faster. Fees then come under pressure, unless advertising demand rises at least at the same pace.

For creators, it therefore becomes more important not just to offer views, but to demonstrate audience quality, conversion data, brand fit and repeatable performance. Our overview of YouTube, TikTok, Instagram & Co. and their creator payouts also shows how widely direct platform earnings vary.

For brands, creator selection is becoming more data-driven

For marketers, this development does not mean that creator marketing is losing importance. On the contrary: budgets continue to grow. A professionalisation similar to that of other digital advertising channels is more likely.

Campaigns are likely to be planned more and more on the basis of comparable performance metrics. At the same time, the importance of first-party data, attribution and clearly defined campaign goals is growing. This development fits a broader trend in digital marketing: platforms such as Snapchat are investing more heavily in unified attribution for advertising campaigns, while new advertising environments such as ChatGPT Ads are quickly building their own performance infrastructure.

For creators, in turn, long-term brand loyalty becomes more valuable than a high number of interchangeable one-off deals. The better a creator can prove concrete impact, the less interchangeable their reach becomes.

Sources