The social landscape in 2024 has exploded with more platforms, creators, and content than ever before. This year, leading brands and agencies around the world leaned even further into creator marketing by placing creators at the center of their marketing strategies. According to CreatorIQ’s 2024-2025 State of Creator Marketing Report, 74% of organizations reported increasing their creator marketing investment YoY—compared to 55% last year.

At CreatorIQ, we’ve witnessed this shift firsthand, tracking record highs in creators, campaigns, and content on our platform. It’s an honor and a privilege to serve over 1,200 organizations across 85 countries that are leading this marketing transformation. To celebrate their achievements and spotlight this year’s biggest trends, we’re excited to share this year’s CreatorIQ Wrapped.

Creator Marketing Has Never Been Bigger—Or More Impactful

It’s clearer than ever that creator marketing is no longer just one lever within a brand’s overall marketing strategy. Creators—and the content they produce—are foundational to how brands and agencies market across all channels at a global scale. This year, our customers partnered with creators from 156 countries around the world. 

CreatorIQ Campaign Country Reach

• 26K campaigns launched (+17% YoY)
• 3.1M creator posts tracked (+29% YoY)
• $79M paid to creators (+47% YoY)

Organizations are continuing to allocate more resources to their creator marketing programs, and the investment is paying off. Creator marketing has enabled brands to reach global audiences at scale with authentic and effective content. 

2022, 2023, and 2024 Engagements

The power of creator-driven content isn’t just anecdotal—it’s measurable. The creator content we tracked this year saw massive growth in performance:

• 487 billion impressions (+184% YoY)
• 23.4 billion engagements (+159% YoY)

These jumps reflect an increase in both reach and engagement with creator content—signaling consumers’ growing appetite for creator-led marketing. The impact points back to a core truth: creator content works better, everywhere.

Now, let’s take a closer look at which social platforms creators are posting on and how their content performs on each. 

Instagram Still Dominates, but a Multi-Platform Strategy Is Critical

Total Instagram Posts

Year after year, Instagram has proven to be the cornerstone of creator marketing campaigns. Its broad user base and versatile content formats make it indispensable. This year, 91% of all campaigns within CreatorIQ included Instagram. Plus, creators posted on Instagram more prolifically than any other platform. No matter how you slice it, Instagram is at the forefront of creator marketing.

However, that hardly tells the whole story. A multi-platform strategy is now standard: 60% of campaigns within CreatorIQ included more than one social platform. Let’s explore a few other platforms that had standout growth this year. 

Creator content on TikTok is growing rapidly

While TikTok still trails behind Instagram in overall post volume, its rapid increase in creators, posts, and client adoption highlights a growing emphasis on the platform. Notably, the number of customers activating on TikTok is now nearly on par with Instagram, showcasing how integral the platform has become to brands’ program strategies.

Here’s a head-to-head comparison of the two platforms:

• Instagram posts: 1.7M (+29% YoY)
• TikTok posts: 415.5K (+72%)
• Customers activating on Instagram: 677 (+19%)
• Customers activating on TikTok: 610 (+33%)
• Creators posting on Instagram: 128.1K (+26%)
• Creators posting on TikTok: 59.8K (+63%)

While TikTok has seen explosive growth in its creator community and post volume, the platform is still less saturated than Instagram, offering a unique opportunity for brands to capitalize on this white space in the social landscape.

X sees an uptick in post volume

Another notable trend in our 2024 data is the significant increase in creator posts on X, which rose by 72% since last year. However, this content growth contrasts with a more modest 23% increase in CreatorIQ customers activating on the platform, and a 13% decrease in the total number of creators who posted on X. This discrepancy suggests that creators on X are producing content more efficiently, driving up overall post volume even while fewer creators are active.

Most CreatorIQ customers using X focus on tracking content from creator partners rather than paid activations. While X may not suit every program or campaign, it can play a valuable role in a brand’s creator strategy—particularly for rapid content production or monitoring organic conversation about your brand.

Snapchat and Pinterest are emerging players

Other platforms are still carving out their space in the creator marketing landscape. Snapchat and Pinterest, while not new, are increasingly becoming key players in brands’ creator strategies. Although many creator marketers have yet to fully embrace these platforms—partly due to their relatively limited APIs—there’s growing interest in exploring the opportunities they present.

We’ve seen an uptick in usage among CreatorIQ customers:

• On Snapchat, total creator posts grew by 221% YoY, reaching 2.8K posts.  
• On Pinterest, total creator posts grew by 50% YoY, reaching 18.9K posts. 

While Snapchat and Pinterest may not be leading the pack yet, marketers are increasingly testing the waters to see what creator marketing on these channels can offer. The potential upside lies in reaching audiences who are not active on other platforms or targeting specific demographics, such as Gen Z audiences on Snapchat. These platforms present opportunities for brands to experiment with new cohorts of creators and tap into highly engaged, niche communities.

The short-form video race is heating up 

Short Form on Platforms

Each social platform offers unique content formats, but many are vying for dominance in short-form video—a content type known for high engagement and lower production demands. Looking at short-form video performance across platforms, the race is closer than ever:

• Instagram Reels: creator posts increased by 52% YoY, reaching 520K
• TikTok Videos: creator posts surged by 61% YoY, reaching 398K
• YouTube Shorts: creator posts grew by 59% YoY, reaching 93.8K

Although Instagram still leads in overall post volume, its dominance in short-form video is narrowing. Notably, TikTok videos are now the third-most popular post type across all platforms, trailing only Instagram Stories and Reels. These trends signal that brands are prioritizing short-form video to stay competitive.

Brand Safety is Paramount, But Not One-Size-Fits-All

As content strategies evolve, investments increase, and creator content becomes even more prolific, brand safety has become a critical priority. Creators bring unparalleled authenticity to brands—but they also introduce complexity and unpredictability. As CreatorIQ’s VP of Product Innovation Nate Harris put it in a recent article, "You want to find that sweet spot when working with creators: the balance between unacceptable risk and risk tolerance."

An important step to determining whether a creator is suitable for your brand is to review their recent content. But anyone who has vetted creators can tell you how tedious and imperfect that exercise is. To help streamline the process, we’ve introduced custom brand safety flagging within the CreatorIQ platform, so our customers can set up automated filters that reflect their values and priorities. Across all customers using these brand safety filters, the following are the most commonly monitored topics:

1. Politics
2. Competitor monitoring
3. Adult content
4. Profanity
5. Illicit substances
6. Sensitive social issues

While traditional NSFW categories appear here, others—like competitor monitoring and sensitive social issues—are highly specific to individual brands, reflecting their unique identities and audiences. Each brand has the flexibility to choose the keywords for these categories, so they define exactly what each brand safety topic means to them. This type of monitoring will only become more important for organizations in the future, which is why CreatorIQ is continuing to invest in intelligent brand safety solutions.

Diving Into the Content-First Future, Together

As we look ahead, the demand for authentic, scalable, and impactful creator content will continue to grow—and the brands that don’t adapt risk being left behind. CreatorIQ is here to meet the moment.

This year, we introduced over 40 major platform updates—from a media library that stores all creator content, to an API dashboard that helps brand connect their creator marketing data to the rest of their organization. At the same time, we’ve been developing an all-new, next-generation platform, launching in 2025, that is designed to set brands and agencies up for success in the content-first, creator-led future. Check out our vision video to learn how CreatorIQ is committed to helping organizations thrive in 2025 and beyond.

And finally, to our customers: thank you for trusting us to be your partner. We’re honored to have been a part of your journeys this year, and we can’t wait to see what you achieve next.

As we look ahead to 2025, we’re excited to partner with brands, agencies, and creators from around the world, and continue pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with creator-led marketing—together.