Our State of Creator Marketing Report Has Arrived. Here's What You Need to Know. (HBBIP #56)

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Last week, I reviewed a few of the many highlights from a record-busting CreatorIQ Connect. Between CreatorIQ CEO Chris Harrington’s keynote address, the unveiling of our bold new product vision, and a birthday surprise for Marianna Hewitt, there was a lot to cover—oh, and Danessa Myricks and Jackie Aina were there, too. Needless to say, I didn’t get to everything. But there was one element of the day that I deliberately saved for later, because it deserves a spotlight to itself.

You might have noticed, sprinkled throughout that blog post, a scattering of scintillating statistics speaking to the strength of the creator economy. Where did these stats come from? And are there more of them?

Alongside CreatorIQ Connect’s incredible moment on October 10th, we launched our latest survey-based report on the industry: The State of Creator Marketing, Trends and Trajectory 2024-2025. This is our fifth edition of the report, and while we might only be half the age of CreatorIQ itself, we still wanted to celebrate that birthday in style. That’s why this year, we went bigger and better than ever before.

Partnering with our good friends at Sapio Research, we surveyed 1,138 brands, agencies, and creators—by far our biggest respondent pool ever. With representatives from 17 industries across 12 countries, the report offers CreatorIQ’s most comprehensive look yet at how the creator economy has transformed over the last five years, and where it’s going next.

Longtime readers know that I’m not one for hyperbole; in fact, I’ve literally never ever, not even once in my life, indulged in such a practice. So understand that it’s no exaggeration when I say that in my eight years writing about creator marketing, this is the proudest I’ve ever been to play a role in developing a certain piece of content. I really believe that this is the best content I’ve ever worked on.

So if that doesn’t get you curious to check it out, I don’t know what will.

The Top Report of All Time (Not Just of the Week, I Really Mean ‘of All Time’): The State of Creator Marketing, Trends and Trajectory 2024-2025

I’ll level with you guys: this is a very long report. There’s something for everyone, and it’s hard to narrow everything down to just a few key stats. But much like going to the moon, I do these things because they are hard, and so, in what will surely also be remembered as one of the signature accomplishments of our time, I’ve picked out my five favorite stats from the report, and shared them here as a tease of everything that State of Creator Marketing has to offer.

These aren’t necessarily the signature stats within the report—for that, we have our key takeaways in the report itself—but for me, they paint a compelling picture of both the data we’ve compiled and the position of the industry right now.

This is original research on our part, and I think it’s pretty darn cool.

To identify just how potent creator content has become, and what a powerful force creator marketing has been for connecting brands and consumers, CreatorIQ took a look at some of the Fortune 500 brands with the most active social profiles. (Sorry, Liberty Mutual Insurance Group. The Emu commercials are funny, but better luck next time.) We then compared TikTok and Instagram metrics from these brands’ owned social channels to the impact of creators who posted about the same brands. How much more effective are creators at getting brands’ messages across?

Fortune 100 Brands Vs. Creator Content 

With apologies to all the stellar social media managers out there, when it comes to viral reach, creator content beats brands’ owned channels every time. Given that you’re reading a creator marketing blog, this probably won’t come as a surprise to you. After all, the message most likely to reach your target consumers is the message created by the people who sit closest to those consumers.

It might be hard to wrap your mind around numbers like this. It was for me, anyway, so no shame if you’re in the same boat. For a more specific, singular example, let's take a look at how this pattern unfolds for Apple—the #3 company on the Fortune 500 list, and #2 by EMV for the brands we tracked.

Owned Vs. Creator Content on TikTok and Instagram

That’s a lot of iPads.

Okay, so creators are better at social media: stop the presses. But are brands taking note? Are they investing more in creator marketing?

2. Creator Marketing Investment Has Increased 143% Over the Last Four Years

Yes, brands are taking note and investing more in creator marketing.

Way back in 2021, CreatorIQ's Influencer Marketing Trends survey found that organizations’ average annual investment in creator marketing was $360.8k. By the time our 2024 survey rolled around, this figure had surged 143% among organizations as a whole, and even more dramatically among enterprise organizations, which reported an average $1.7M spend on creator marketing. This massive spike in just four years underscores how quickly the space is moving. 

Investment Expansion and Average Spend

These are impressive figures. There they are in pretty graphic/numeric form, for your viewing and comprehension pleasure.

To dive a little deeper, and validate creator marketing a little further, we saw a record 74% of respondents report a YoY increase to their creator marketing investment. That figure represents not only an all-time high for this question, but a 19% surge from last year’s survey. Don’t believe me? Check out this graphic:

Annual Creator Marketing Investment 

Literally the 📈emoji. So yes, creator marketing investment is increasing. But is the return on that investment increasing?

3. 98% of Industry Leaders Believe that Creator Content Drives More ROI than Traditional Digital Advertising

Oh, okay—I guess that return on investment is doing pretty well. If 98% can be taken as a definitive result, anyway. Still plenty of room for error.

What do we mean by “Industry Leaders?” Those are our survey respondents who spent $1M or more on creator marketing annually. In fact, these leaders allocated a majority of their marketing budget (57%) to creator marketing, spending an average of $3.5M annually—299% more than the average organization. Thanks for doing your part! 

Industry Leaders

It’s not just that 90% of Industry Leaders have increased their creator marketing spend over the past year: 93% expect to increase their investments over the next two years. With the forefront of the industry forecasting continued investment in this space, the future promises big things for creator marketing. 

Expected Investment 

But what else does the future hold for creator marketing? Which elements of the space are primed for a change?

4. For Five Years, Instagram Has Been the Dominant Platform for Creator Marketing—But TikTok and YouTube Are Climbing the Ranks

One of the most interesting changes we observed in this year’s report was a shift in the social media platforms favored by both brands and creators.

Since 2020, Instagram has maintained its spot as the most integral platform for creator marketing, as well as the channel offering organizations the most ROI. In 2024, 29% of brands and agencies chose Instagram as their most integral platform. This proportion was broadly similar across enterprise brands, Industry Leaders, and brands at large.

While Instagram was still the most integral platform for marketers in 2024, 29% represents less than half of the 62% of respondents who said the same about Instagram last year. In other words, marketers are still using Instagram—but they’re relying more on other platforms than ever before.

Most Integral Social Media Platform

My, how times change. In 2020, 0% of respondents chose TikTok as their most integral platform for creator marketing. By 2024, 27% of organizations chose TikTok as their most integral platform for creator marketing—trailing Instagram by a narrow margin. What’s more, in 2023 only 8% of respondents selected YouTube as their most integral platform, a rate that doubled to 16% in 2024.

Here’s how those responses broke down across all platforms, and between brands and agencies:

Most Integral Social Media Platforms in 2024

Will 2025 be the year when TikTok finally overtakes Instagram?

5. TikTok Is the Most Creator-Friendly Platform, But Instagram Is the Most Lucrative

Not necessarily. We can’t rule it out, of course, but nuances emerge when we take a closer look: each platform, after all, has its own special use case.

When we asked creators—this being the creator economy and all—how they're using social media platforms, we found that for the first time in our five years of the survey, TikTok surpassed Instagram as the platform that creators use most frequently. In 2024, 68% of creators regularly made content on TikTok, while 67% of creators regularly made content on Instagram.

TikTok Is The Platform Creators Most Regularly Create Content On 

TikTok was also chosen by a plurality of creators (31%) as the most creator-friendly platform, followed by 29% for Instagram and 19% for YouTube. But that didn’t mean that TikTok won in every category: 28% of creators chose Instagram as their most lucrative platform, making it the No. 1 platform for this metric. Granted, TikTok was right behind at 27%, with YouTube scoring 23%. So maybe this is a “wait for 2025” situation after all.

In Conclusion, Please Read It

I truly cannot recommend the report enough—read it right here. Thank you to Cherline Bazile for her tireless work in writing this report, as well as Caroline Goh for design, Taylor Masket for campaign coordination, Ashley Waxman and Brit Starr for guidance, and many more. It takes a whole team!

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