The $44 Billion Creator Boom

0:00Hi, everyone. This is Scalable, a weekly show about the business of the creator economy.

0:04Jasmine Enberg: I'm Kaya Yurieff. And I'm Jasmine Enberg. Every Thursday, we take you beyond the headlines to tell you what's happening, what it means, and why it matters.

0:15Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. A missed call doesn't feel like anything. No red flag, no notifications screaming at you. It just disappears into your call log. And nine times out of ten, that was someone ready to hand you money. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O, the business phone system built so you never miss a call. Here's what I like about it. All your calls, texts, and voicemails live in one place, so anyone on your team can pick up a conversation, see the full history, and respond fast. No more, wait, who talked to this customer last?

0:51And if you're worried about after-hours leads slipping through, Quo's optional built-in AI agent can answer questions and even book appointments while your team's offline. It's the number one rated business phone system on G2, and over 90 ,000 businesses already trust it to stay reachable. Money is on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free. Plus, get 20 % off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash tech. That's Q-U-O dot com slash tech. Okay, hear me out. creator brand deals for toilet paper. Nearly every company on the planet now has an influencer

1:27Jasmine Enberg: marketing strategy, including toilet paper brands. We unpack the current state of play when it comes to brand partnerships and address three major questions. Where is budget coming from? What is money actually being spent on? And what are the biggest growth opportunities?

1:47Hi Jasmine. Hi Taya. And hi everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into our weekly show about the business of the creator economy. Creators have arrived.

1:56Jasmine Enberg: They have migrated from our social feeds to TV screens, into retail stores, and even recently into movie theaters. This week, a lot of them are at Cannes Lions, the annual advertising festival in the south of France, hoping to rub elbows with big CMOs and capture their slice of the$44 billion that is expected to be spent on creator advertising in the US this year. But what is the actual state of play when it comes to brand partnerships? Where are the budget increases coming from? What is that money actually being spent on? And where are the biggest opportunities for growth? Spoiler alert, it may not exactly be where you think.

2:35That's partly because it now feels like virtually every brand under the sun has some sort of influencer strategy, whether you're a pharmaceutical company, a clothing brand, or selling toilet paper. Yes, you heard that correctly. Later in the show, we're joined by Kim Tipton, who is a senior social media manager at CPG and personal care company, Kimberly Clark. She helps create influencer campaigns for products like Viva paper towels, Kleenex, and Cottonelle toilet paper.

3:00Jasmine Enberg: Okay, who would have guessed that there was an online fandom around paper towels. I mean, I definitely did not know this, but they call themselves Viva La Divas and they use Viva paper towels for literally everything from cleaning up messes to taking off their makeup. We're going to use paper towels. Yes, you heard that right. Why is this very soft? I have the perfect solution with Viva Signature Cloth. It's so soft and durable and really tough on messes, but gentle enough for my hands and face. I was not expecting that from this interview. So make sure you stick around to hear the full conversation.

3:37Jasmine Enberg: I mean, I was not expecting it either. But it really is such a clear reflection of how important creators have become when you have legacy CPG brands like Kimberly Clark leaning in. And of course, they're not the only ones. I mean, we've spoken to so many legacy brands recently from Visa to Ocean Spray about how they're working with creators. Yeah. And like you said, in 2026, US brands are expected to spend roughly$44 billion on creator ads with growth outpacing traditional and digital media overall, according to the IAB. So that represents 50x growth in 10 years when it comes to influencer marketing spend in the US.

4:10Roughly a decade ago, influencer marketing spending reached just 900 million, according to eMarketer. And back then, I mean, influencer marketing just meant organic posts on influencers profiles. But now it touches, you know, nearly every marketing channel and tactic from Super Bowl TV ads to billboards to live events. And for those of you watching on YouTube, we are flashing a chart showing this data on screen. But let me also break it down for you. So what's interesting about 2026 is that of the$44 billion, only about a quarter or 26 % is going to direct partnerships to post content. Whereas 10 years ago, that was the only option for spending, right?

4:47And instead of$11.6 billion, it was only$900 million. We'll also talk about this a little more later on. But you may be wondering where the rest of the money is going to. So a lot of it's going to paid amplification on social media, but also paid amplification beyond social media. So that's everything from streaming TV to other online video or shopping ads.

5:05Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, I mean, it is a massive increase and shows just how far the industry really has come. And if you take a look at where the money is coming from, a lot of the growth that we've seen in brand budgets has actually been incremental or then it's come from traditional channels like TV. Some of it, though, has also come from other digital ads, including social media. which just all goes to show you how important influence and marketing now is to brands and how intertwined it really is with so many other channels. Even so, the reality is that$44 billion represents just 15 % of the roughly$300 billion U.S.

5:42Jasmine Enberg: advertisers spent on digital ads in total in 2025. Meanwhile, creator content probably accounts for just a little bit more than 15 % of most people's media time. And so what that means is that there is still a big mismatch between how people are spending their time and their money and where advertisers are spending theirs. To put some numbers around that, people are expected to spend over two hours per day on social networks this year, with much of that time being spent on creator content. So for context, that's roughly the same amount of time as four episodes of a TV show with ads. And speaking of TV shows, YouTube, not Hulu or Peacock or HBO, is now also Netflix's biggest rival.

6:23Time spent on YouTube globally reached 99 minutes in 2025, compared with 93 minutes for Netflix, according to new data from Digital Eye. And roughly one third of YouTube time was spent watching on TVs.

6:35Jasmine Enberg: Of course, none of this would matter as much if that attention wasn't being turned into sales. But it is. Over half, or about 58 % of Americans have bought something because a creator endorsed it, according to data from BBB national programs. Okay, so that answers our first question, where the budget growth is coming from. Incremental increases, or it's coming from traditional channels like TV or even digital ads, including social. But then the question becomes, how do we close that gap between what consumers are doing and what marketers are spending? Well, it's not going to be easy. In fact, you know, this next chapter of growth is probably going to be the hardest yet.

7:11Jasmine Enberg: As we've seen influencer marketing move from experimental budgets to a core part, a must-have in marketing strategies. I mean, creators just aren't the shiny new toy for marketers anymore. If you're wondering what is, that is AI. And that has both pros and cons. So on the one hand, it means that marketers no longer have to fight to get budget for influencer marketing. I mean, for so many years, securing budget was the number one challenge that brands faced. At the same time, though, more budget inevitably means more scrutiny, more accountability. And that means that brands can't just throw money at influencer marketing and cross their fingers and hope that it worked.

7:52Jasmine Enberg: So all CMOs today are facing tough questions from CFOs about measurement and performance. I mean, they want to know how they know if the campaign worked. They are probably also facing tough questions from legal teams and compliance, especially if they're in a highly regulated industry like pharma or finance. And here's Frank Cooper, the CMO of Visa, talking a little bit about that. I think marketers have become more precise in articulating what a return on investment looks like. There was definitely a time where marketers would say, you know, the world of marketing is unique. You can't understand it, members of C-suite.

8:31And I'm going to talk in a language that actually makes no sense to you. So I'm going to tell you about brand love and equity and things like that. And you'll kind of get it, but you'll never be fully convinced. And so I feel like one of the most foundational jobs of a CMO today is translating what we do in marketing into financial terms that non-marketers can understand within the firm. And the CFO has to be your best friend in that regard. This is where I think many people get it wrong. They think, oh, like, hey, you know, your best friend should be the creative side. And yes, you should have that piece of it.

9:04But, you know, nothing gets through unscathed unless you have a great relationship with a CFO, a great relationship with legal and compliance. And these might seem like simple questions on the surface. The problem is that the creator economy and the ad industry aren't yet set up to answer them at scale. I mean, there aren't universal or agreed upon metrics that marketers can point to and say, hey, this worked. And the data supports that. According to Linkia's annual State of Influencer Marketing report, 71 % of enterprise marketers said that proving the ROI of their influencer investments was their biggest challenge.

9:37And that was ahead of things like selecting the right creators, consistency and influencer rates and scaling their programs. That said, all of those were challenges, too, and they were cited by at least one third of respondents in the study. But the number one is the ROI.

9:51Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, I mean, there are no shortage of challenges in influencer marketing and marketing overall. But I think to your point about ROI being the top challenge, I think part of the issue is that there isn't just one way that brands are working with creators. So according to some new research from CreatorIQ, the most common way that brands in the UK and in the US were using influencer marketing was to generate engagement, to drive content consumption, and most importantly, consideration for their products. And that was cited by a whopping 77 % of respondents. But, and here's the catch, 60 % of respondents also cited both sales and awareness.

10:29Jasmine Enberg: And that shows that creators really are just a part of every stage of the marketing funnel. You should also note that this is just one study and the results vary a lot depending on, you know, the respondents and who's conducted the study, which again, just supports the fact that creator content and partnerships are used for literally everything in marketing at this point. Anyway, what that means is that there's never going to be a singular catch-all success metric for influencer marketing the way that there is for like traditional shopping ads on Google, at least when it comes to, you know, sponsored organic posts on creators' feeds.

11:03Sorry to disappoint any listeners who are hoping for a silver bullet. Yes, I know.

11:09Jasmine Enberg: But the one thing that brands can do today is ensure that the metrics they're using to measure the success of their campaigns actually match their campaign goals. And this is wild to me. It happens so often, but a lot of times they're not. I mean, that was even true in the Creator IQ study. I mean, despite the fact that engagement was the top reason to use influencer marketing, when you looked at what metrics mattered the most to marketers, engagements and engagement rate actually ranked third. And again, this is not an isolated finding. This is something I've seen over and over again from other studies, including one from LTK and Northwestern last year.

11:45So for creators, that means that when they're negotiating brand deals, one of the first questions they should be asking is what the campaign goals are and how the brand is measuring success. Gathering feedback during and after the campaign is also really important. We hear time and time again that creators rarely hear back from brands. And you can't improve if you don't know what worked and what didn't. Don't just take our word for it. Here's what workplace comedy creator Corporate Natalie told us about how important it is to have an open line of communication with brands. We always ask for feedback after campaigns wrapped.

12:16We've been doing this for three years with all of our brand partners. And we also build postmortems with every partnership we do. We pull together all of the comments, the DMs, the things the brands might not see that, you know, this partnership has led to. And we pull it all together and kind of offer new ideas for future collaborations, all of those. So we've been doing postmortems for three years. And we asked from the brand, how did this perform? Like, and I've had videos, I'm sure you hear this from a lot of creators, where I don't think it's performing well. I'm like, oh my gosh, should we do a make good post?

12:46And they're like, that was our highest performing asset of the whole campaign. I'm like, who knew? For those of you who may have missed it, Natalie also recently launched her own agency called Expand CoLab. And a big reason why is to try to help to solve some of the communication issues between creators and brands. Oftentimes, creators are not even getting on a call with the brand. I mean, sometimes that's because there is an agency acting as an intermediary. But even when not, it's pretty common. And that's not just a problem for the creator. It doesn't make much sense on the brand side either.

13:16I mean, they're oftentimes spending thousands or hundreds of thousands on campaigns and never even speaking to the creator. Natalie talked about this, too. There are so many times when I do a sponsored partnership and I don't even meet the brand. And it's it's so confusing to me. It's like you're paying thousands of dollars to have a video made. Why don't you get to hop on a call with me? Why can't we chat about what your goals with this campaign? And so we just try to break down those barriers and really, really build that that collaboration. Yeah.

13:43Jasmine Enberg: And as we've discussed previously on this podcast, I mean, Natalie is not the only creator with their own ad agency. I mean, Alex Cooper has one, so does Darman. And while these agencies are not going to fix all of the problems with influencer marketing, and I think could actually exacerbate some issues like pay rates, which we'll talk about in a little bit, I think they are also a sign of how the creator economy and influencer marketing in particular are operationalizing and professionalizing. So what we're seeing is that the infrastructure for influencer marketing really is being built right now.

14:16Jasmine Enberg: And it's being built by creators, by operators, as well as the social platforms, which for so many years took a mostly hands-off approach to influencer marketing. And that is a perfect segue into where influencer marketing spending is actually going. Increasingly, the answer isn't direct partnerships themselves. It's going toward paid ads rather than into the creator's pocket. According to the same IAB report, U.S. advertisers spent close to a third of their budgets on$11.2 billion boosting creator content as paid ads last year. That's over a billion more than they spent directly on creator partnerships.

14:49And this year, the IAB expects advertisers to spend over$13 billion versus about$11 billion directly on creators. This has so many implications for creators, brands, and social platforms. Let's start with the brands.

15:02Jasmine Enberg: I mean, paid ads seem to be the only way that brands can predictably and effectively break through on social media anymore. I mean, as our feeds have gotten more crowded and driven by unpredictable algorithms, creators just have less control over who sees their content. And we talked about this at length on a previous podcast, but so many creators have said that they're having trouble reaching their own followers. And that then has a ripple effect on their relationships with brands who are essentially partnering with them in order to reach those audiences. Here's Agentio CEO Arthur Leopold, who gave his take on this at the Scalable Summit last month when I asked him why brands are now spending more boosting creator content.

15:43Jasmine Enberg: For context, Agentio is an influencer marketing platform that helps marketers buy and scale creator ads. The platforms are essentially incentivized now to ensure that short-form content, if it's sponsored, doesn't perform well. So if you think about the more middle funnel and lower funnel part of your marketing funnel, you need to be boosting content and you need to be partnering with creators through partnership ads. Meta's done an amazing job of that. They've recently said that partnership ads perform about 20 % better than traditional brand content. So we very much view it as full funnel, like top funnel is organic, and then put spend behind the creators and ensure that the people who understand the platform's best in the world, better than any marketer, better than any creative agency.

16:23Let them crack it for their audience. And of course, boosting our whitelisting content isn't an entirely new trend. Advertisers have long turned to boosting as a way to work around some of the measurement challenges with influencer marketing that have always existed. But by boosting an organic post, they get all the tracking, targeting and measurement that a paid ad gets on those platforms. So makes a lot of logical sense. This is still a huge driver of paid creator ads, but it does seem to have hit a new high because of all the algorithmic changes. In that Creator IQ study, for example, 92 % of US and UK marketers said they were now using creator content in their paid media strategy, mostly on social media.

17:02So every platform from Meta to TikTok to YouTube and even LinkedIn now has some version of creator ads. Okay, so what is in it for the social platforms?

17:12Jasmine Enberg: Money. And potentially quite a lot of it. That's because the budget that brands are spending boosting creator content is going directly to the platforms, meaning to Meta, to YouTube, to TikTok, and even LinkedIn, rather than to creators. So in Meta's first quarter earnings report, for example, the company said that its creator ad product, which is known as partnership ads, had reached a$10 billion revenue run rate globally. That's roughly double what it was at the same time last year. That's still a small sliver of its total revenue, which hit over$200 billion in 2025. But it is more than what US creators were estimated to earn from direct partnerships last year, according to that IAB report.

17:55Jasmine Enberg: Of course, this is US and global figures, but just to give you a little bit of context of just how much money that is. Anyway, I asked Meta's CMO, Alex Schultz, about that on last week's podcast. And here's what he said about their strategy with partnership ads. What we're finding is partner ads are working really, really well. Last year at Cannes, I was pushed on us making sure that we have the data, right? Like you upload custom audiences to us. You tell us who your target audiences are with pixels, with Cappy, with all these things. Can we tell you which creators you should work with based on their audiences matched with what you want?

18:27So we shipped that at New Fronts. And we're going to be actually really talking about how you can use partner ads aligned with your target audience, aligned with what you want to achieve. It's working well enough for me as an old school direct response guy to be moving ads to partner led ads to a high double digit percentage, not the majority, but a high double digit percentage of my ad spend. I'm starting to do it actually for ads to promote Instagram and Facebook as well because it's working. So it's working for us. It's working for a bunch of other people. It's a big business sort of for that reason.

18:58Jasmine Enberg: So in short, what Schultz is saying is that partnership ads really speak the language of advertisers. And they do. They give CMOs those financial terms that they can use in conversations with non-marketers, including the CFO that Vsys Cooper was talking about earlier in the episode. And again, I mean, these ads seem to be working. And that means it's not going to be slowing down anytime soon. No, it definitely is not. And so for creators, that means they need to be keeping this in mind when they're working with brands. I mean, since they're not getting directly paid for any boosted content, they need to make sure that they're negotiating usage rights for their content ahead of time.

19:33And what that looks like will be different for every creator. But understanding that content boosting is going to be a part of the deal helps them price things accordingly. This reminds me of when creators in the early days, you know, would do like$1 ,000 or$500 brand campaign. And then they'd be like, why am I on a billboard? Like I got paid$500 for this. This is like this at scale.

19:53Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, they should be getting paid a little more for that. Anyway, but speaking of pricing things accordingly, one of the other challenges that is stopping marketers from knowing whether or not they're spending their budgets wisely is the lack of consistency and transparency in pricing. I mean, creator pay rates are literally all over the place. They're also usually negotiated in private, and there's no standardized framework that creators and brands can look to in order to figure out what things should cost. So I remember reading an article in Forbes last year that talked to five different brands and asked them how much they would pay for the exact same collaboration.

20:32Jasmine Enberg: And the rates ranged from$275 to$10 ,000. That is wild. I mean, that's absolutely crazy. I would be so upset if I was the creator getting paid$275. Like, that's outrageous. No, it's crazy. And okay, to be fair, a lot of this did have to do with the fact that these deals were being set up differently. So some of them included things like usage rights or exclusivity or both, and some didn't. But still, it should not vary that much. But either way, one of the reasons why there aren't standardized pay rates for creators is that nobody can really agree on how you should be pricing creators or creator campaigns.

21:10Jasmine Enberg: So metrics like follower counts and engagement rates still tend to be the baseline, but then they vary so much based on things like the platform, the type of content. Is it a short video? Is it a story? Is it both? The industry that the creator is in and a million other factors. Here's actually a video that we found posted by creator manager, Bella McDaniel, on how she priced a brand deal for a creator. For context, this creator had about 100 ,000 followers on Instagram, 25 ,000 followers on TikTok, and a 22 % engagement rate. We don't know what industry this creator was in, but I'm very curious to find out.

22:04two months and then again times two for the two videos which brought us to$3 ,200. So now we have that$8 ,000 plus that$3 ,200. The brand came back with an offer for one TikTok video cross-posted to Instagram and YouTube Shorts with 60 days of paid usage on that one video and their offer was$8 ,000. We have now signed the contract and this deal is officially underway. This is a deal from an agency representing a very large brand so of course the budget here is going to be a little bit more substantial. It's around a big cultural moment that's about to happen so once again they're willing to put the budget behind it because they know it'll amplify a moment that's already going to be very big in pop culture.

22:40Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. A missed call doesn't feel like anything. No red flag, no notifications screaming at you. It just disappears into your call log. And nine times out of 10, that was someone ready to hand you money. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O, the business phone system built so you never miss a call. Here's what I like about it. All your calls, texts, and voicemails live in one place, so anyone on your team can pick up a conversation, see the full history, and respond fast. No more, wait, who talked to this customer last?

23:16And if you're worried about after-hours leads slipping through, Quo's optional built-in AI agent can answer questions and even book appointments while your team's offline. It's the number one rated business phone system on G2, and over 90 ,000 businesses already trust it to stay reachable. Money is on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free. Plus, get 20 % off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash tech. That's Q-U-O dot com slash tech. Also very interesting to see a creator have way fewer followers on TikTok than Instagram. You normally see the opposite. it. But without knowing the industry, it's so hard to know where this deal falls in terms of pay.

23:58But based on data we've seen, creators in more specialized and highly regulated verticals like financial services tend to be paid the most on average. Meanwhile, fashion creators, for example, tend to be among the least paid. That's likely because there are so many more of them. Competition is so fierce, and it doesn't require any highly technical expertise to promote fashion, though you do need style. But the thing I'm curious to know is what the manager's cut was from the deal. I think one of the other issues with creator pay is that there are often so many middlemen, from managers to marketing agencies to sometimes a creator has a manager and an agent.

24:32So it's hard to know exactly how much of the paycheck actually reaches the creator themselves. But generally, managers take a 20 % cut, though it varies.

24:40Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, it's so true. And this is often referred to as the supply chain problem in the industry. And it's not just managers. I mean, we saw some data recently from the Association of National Advertisers, which showed that ad agencies generally take about a 30 % cut of brand spending on influencers. So that's a little bit more than managers take. That leaves about 70 % for creators, assuming, of course, they're not giving a cut to anybody else. But the rates varied widely. Some of these agencies took as little as 15%, while others took over half, which is crazy to me. For what it's worth, the survey also found that 51 % of marketers said that they didn't know how much of their spending was actually going to creators, which I think, again, just speaks to these problems with transparency and pricing in the industry.

25:28Jasmine Enberg: And unfortunately, the solution to these issues isn't as straightforward as for some of the challenges that we've already discussed, because it probably requires brands and creators, as well as every other party that touches brand deals to provide some more visibility into their pay. And they're just not incentivized to do that. And I think it's actually creators that are probably the biggest hold up here. I mean, I think people automatically assume that if creator pay rates were public, their pay would go up. And I think on average, that is probably the case. But then if you think about like the biggest stars, they're probably going to find that their pay goes down once brands realize the exorbitant amounts that they're actually charging.

26:10Jasmine Enberg: Like maybe not the Mr. Beasts of the world, but like those mega stars in between who are charging, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars sometimes. No, it's so true. Every once in a while, like an Instagram post goes viral. That's like Kylie Jenner got paid a trillion dollars for one Instagram post. But anyway, before we go on to the growth opportunities, one more thing about where influencer marketing spending is actually going. So a lot of it is to micro influencers. So according to data from eMarketer, almost half of all influencer marketing spending will go to creators who have between a thousand and roughly 20 ,000 followers this year.

26:43So that makes sense. I mean, one big trend that we've been following this year is that brands are increasingly choosing to partner with creators with more targeted niche audiences. So I would say the most extreme example of this is OpenAI's acquisition of TVPN earlier this year. But we really see it across the board. I mean, even if you just look at the advertisers TVPN had booked before the acquisition, the company that I associate most with TVPN is Ramp, which is an expense management, you know, corporate card solution for startups. startups, essentially, right? So it's clear that they were really going after a very specific tech audience.

27:18And it worked. That said, the TVP and guys aren't really micro influencers, at least based on eMarketer's definition. The show now has roughly 120 ,000 YouTube subscribers, which really shocked me because that's up double from when OpenAI bought it. I mean, I guess it makes sense because they got a lot of visibility with that deal. But anyway, it still makes sense as a comparison because their audience is this really targeted niche group of Silicon Valley elites and insiders.

27:44Jasmine Enberg: No, I couldn't believe that when I went to go fact check those numbers yesterday. Like when I opened up YouTube and it said 120 ,000, I was like, there is no way like I am reading this wrong. And I think I've checked it twice since. No, it's crazy. So we've talked about where the money is coming from and where it's actually going and the measurement challenges in the industry. So that brings us to our final question. Where are the biggest opportunities for growth? So So obviously, there's a bunch, but we're going to focus on a few main ones. And we're grouping them by under-tap type of creators, platforms, and new markets.

28:14We also see some broader opportunities around measurement and just the sheer amount of advertising budget that has yet to move into the space. So I will start with specialized creators and B2B marketing. So obviously, influencer marketing is most closely associated with lifestyle, beauty, fashion, but the biggest growth is happening in creators with deep professional expertise. So B2B brands are still much newer to influencer marketing. There's a lot of room for them to shift budgets and beef up strategies. And AI companies in particular are ramping up marketing spend, including on creators. This was a really interesting example.

28:47So Underscore Talent, a digital talent management company, recently launched a new experts division. They also have comedy, beauty, fashion, all the kind of normal genres. And this new experts division is going to work with founders, educators, and other professionals or thought leaders. I thought this was such an interesting move, and it just signals the opportunity that people in the space see. Plus, as we've discussed in a recent episode, brands tend to work with either top creators like the Mr. Beast and Alex Earls, as well as the more niche creators with engaged communities and expertise.

29:19So at this point, pro tip, it's way more likely that you're going to succeed as a niche creator than trying to become the next Mr. Beast, who recently crossed a record 500 million YouTube subscribers. which is very hard for me to wrap my mind around.

29:34Jasmine Enberg: Yes, another number that was very hard for me to believe and I checked multiple times to make sure it was correct. But anyway, totally agree on B2B. LinkedIn is also taking creators on its platform more seriously now. It's been rolling out a ton of new features and products, including a marketplace to connect brands and creators. And then it's been striking deals with some of the bigger stars on its platform, including Corporate Natalie, to develop some exclusive shows. I will say that there is definitely a lot more competition now on LinkedIn, though. I mean, you and I, we were among the first quote unquote creators to post about the creator economy way back when.

30:11Jasmine Enberg: And now it feels like basically every other post I see is from a creator economy thought leader or expert or whatever they want to call themselves. But still, it is way less competitive than, you know, other categories or other platforms that are more associated with the creator economy like, you know, Instagram or TikTok, which actually brings us to the opportunities on the platform side. So in terms of where there's room to grow, my picks would be LinkedIn, also Reddit and even YouTube. So Kim Tipton from Kimberly Clark had some really great advice about how brands should navigate Reddit. So stick around for our interview with her later on.

30:50Jasmine Enberg: But in general, I would say Reddit has been largely untapped for creators. I mean, to be fair, though, Reddit has never positioned itself as a creator platform. In fact, it spent a lot of time positioning itself as the opposite. At last year's Cam Lyons, I spoke with Jim Squires, who is the CMO of Reddit, and he said something to me along the lines of, they're not in the business of influencers, but they far in the business of influence, which I thought was just a nice succinct way to kind of describe how Reddit positions its platform. But there's tons of opportunity there for brands to partner with real people and do some more kind of customer-centric influencer marketing.

31:32Jasmine Enberg: And this can either happen on or off the platform. I mean, Dove, which has long been a first mover in advertising, recently did this really splashy Reddit campaign showing real customer reviews. And also, if brands aren't activating on Reddit, they should still be using the platform and the data there to better inform their strategies. Then, of course, there's the AI of it all. I mean, every brand needs to have a Reddit strategy today because it is one of the top most cited sources in LLMs, along with LinkedIn and YouTube. And yes, those are the other two platforms I picked for where there is opportunity.

32:08Jasmine Enberg: And so we went really deep into this in our June 4th episode. So check that out. Okay, last but not least, YouTube. And this probably seems counterintuitive just because of the size of YouTube, but YouTube is so many different things to so many different people, which is one of the things that has actually made it really hard for it to compete with Meta and TikTok for ad and influencer marketing dollars. But what we've seen is that the conversation really has shifted toward YouTube among brands and creators, and the money is inevitably going to follow. So every brand you speak to right now is thinking about their YouTube strategy.

32:42Jasmine Enberg: And I don't mean just paid ads on the platform. Some of them are developing their own shows like Adobe's The Marketers, and those often feature creators and celebrities. And then you have brands that are literally building out their own content pillars around YouTube. I mean, the Chicago Bulls is a great example, and it's treating it totally separately from other social platforms like TikTok and Instagram. And then, of course, on YouTube's side, I mean, they are pushing creator content really hard to TV advertisers, and also just rolling out so many new features and platform tools for brands and creators, including, of course, partnership ads, which we've talked about.

33:17Agree on all of this. I will say that Reddit for a time had a head of creators role. So who knows, maybe they'll come back to it. I would also add newsletters here, because it's not just the independent journalists and analysts of the world like us leaning into newsletters, but all kinds of creators are launching them. You have fashion and food creators, and they're still really under monetized. I mean, we're starting to see new companies pop up now that are dedicated to the monetization of newsletters and helping writers earn money from newsletters and their broader media ventures. Altogether Media is a good example.

33:49It's founded by AJ Frucci, who was a former ad sales executive at Axios and Puck, and he launched a new firm to do just that late last year. We also expect to see more Substack agencies pop up that focus on the newsletter space. And we expect more established agencies to make newsletters part of their core offerings. And we've been hearing that more influencer marketing deals are now including newsletters. Celebrities and brands from American Eagle to Rare Beauty are also getting into the newsletter game. And even big celebrities like Charlie XCX have their own newsletters and are posting regularly.

34:20They're sticking with it. Have you ever read any of those though? I've subscribed. You know how many newsletters I read? I know you do read a lot of newsletters. I subscribe to a lot of them. But the brand stuff to me is just less interesting, although I should read it more for market research. But I do read a lot of the like celebrity creator driven ones.

34:36Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, I mean, I want to sign up for Alex Cooper's Unwell's new newsletter, which just launched. I think it's called unsaid. And the featured lineup is actually a bunch of creators, including Isabel Timmerman, who has a podcast with reality TV star Georgia Hassiradi. And they actually also just signed with Unwell as well. Okay, lots of synergies there. But there are also significant opportunities globally. So the US is obviously the most advanced and lucrative market for the creator economy. It's not going to change. But international markets from Europe to Latin America are growing really quickly.

35:10I will call it Europe specifically for a few reasons. We're really seeing platforms eye more opportunities there. So TikTok shop has been expanding to more and more European countries. And this was an interesting one. YouTube just launched a European creator consultation, which is a survey of creators in all 27 EU member states. And through this, what this says to me is that YouTube is hoping that providing some hard data to European policymakers will help them better support the creator economy on the continent, aka help it grow more. So things are definitely slower, but I think they're picking up steam.

35:44There's more excitement, there's more investment, there's a lot of events now catering to creators in Europe. And I've had and have a growing number of European based events on my calendar this year, including conferences that previously didn't include anything around creators. Still, we do have to clash in these are smaller markets and obviously will not match the US when it comes to spending. But it's true of anything, right? Like, okay, you you capture the US market, you have to still keep growing. And there's plenty of interesting creators doing cool things in other countries.

36:10Jasmine Enberg: Another huge opportunity, I think is measurement and attribution. As we've said before, there just isn't a standardized framework or a Nielsen like gauge for influencer marketing. But everybody many wishes that there was. So whoever can solve that problem or get close to solving it will help unlock a lot more budget into the tactic. And as I mentioned, again, I mean, there's just so much more overall budget that could come into influencer marketing. It's still a tiny sliver of overall budgets. Okay, now we have our interview with Kim Tipton. And it's a perfect case study of a lot of the things we've been talking about today, including measurement challenges, shifting budgets, and how to convince leadership internally that influencer marketing is so important.

36:51Kim Tipton is a senior social media manager at Kimberly Clark. She joins us to discuss how a legacy CPG company approaches influencer marketing, why brands need permission before it's showing up on Reddit, and how to make compelling creator content for paper products like Viva paper towels, Kleenex, and cotton-all toilet paper.

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38:24Jasmine Enberg: most people probably wouldn't expect to have a toilet paper brand or a tissue brand as a big player in the creator space so tell us about your strategy there every time i tell anyone that i'm like working for brands that are paper products essentially household paper products they're like oh they do social media they do influencer they do creator and you know and i'm like yeah why not You see it for everything else, you know? And I think that it's really thinking through that creator marketing, the creator economy, is not just a fun little tactic. It is now a whole channel. People love Viva paper towels.

38:57Anybody that comes in my house knows that I use Viva paper towels. Well, Viva's the best paper towel. I'm not debating that back and forth with y 'all. When I see, like, videos on social, I'm usually expecting, like, skincare or makeup or rhetoric. of people like, oh my God, I swear by this. Like, oh my gosh, this is my favorite sunscreen. This is my favorite skincare. People are like that in the comment of Viva videos. They're like, can't use any other paper towels. Oh my gosh, I'm a Viva girl. They're in the comments like Viva La Divas. And I'm like, wait, what are, whoa, paper towels? Like, what are we talking about?

39:28I think we all look at like beauty, skincare, fashion is kind of those like halo. Oh, they can go do anything. You could do that with a paper towel. It's honestly just about the way that you position the product. And so what really surprised me and continues to surprise me a full quarter into the year is that on every single influencer post that gets posted, people are in the comments like, I love Viva. I'm obsessed with Viva. Viva's my favorite. Someone said it's giving Viva La Diva. And I'm like, you know what? It is giving Viva La Diva. I don't even, I didn't even think I could have a group of like a persona community that encompasses a paper towel.

40:03But if I'm going to be a part of one. I want to be a part of the Viva La Divas. It's just so fun. Okay. I actually really like Viva paper towels. There's something about them. They're like so thin, but they're so like effective. Like, I don't know.

40:16Jasmine Enberg: I probably have to switch to Viva paper towels now. They're soft and they're clothed and you can like wash them. I have lots of plants around here. You can probably see in my background and I like, you know, clean off the leaves of my plants and stuff. And I'm like, wait, these are so nice. Before we took a gander at some of your social accounts, I was thinking like when I think about paper towels, I think about like TV commercials of people like cleaning up spills, right? But when I was looking at kind of some of your recent partnerships, you've done one around allergy season, which like I'm dying right now.

40:49You've done like what's in my bag. We saw one for like around festival season, day in the life. So it was actually really interesting to see kind of how your products like can fit in pretty well with so many different trends and moments throughout the year. So talk a little bit about kind of how you think about these campaigns and how you make them fun for social and not just recreating kind of that like, oops, I spilled something. Let me clean it up type commercial. Kleenex is basically a lifestyle accessory if you think about it. You have allergies or your kids got food on their face or, you know, you're crying at a wedding.

41:21Like, what do you think about in all of those moments you think about tissues? So if you think about that positioning, it's a little bit different than just like the function of, you know, wiping my nose with the tissue. It's a lot. I think it's pretty easy to integrate Kleenex in the culture. But when you think about something like Viva, that is just like a paper towel, right? And you're like, wait, how do we take the brand away from just cleaning up spills? Because that's inherent, right? There's nothing interesting really about cleaning up spills. What other types of messes can you clean up?

41:48You know, when you think about mess, then the sky becomes the limit of all these different things you can do. Suddenly you can talk about durability by making a Viva paper towel, a dog leash. And suddenly you can talk about the most, you know, effective cleanup. Once a cow eats a spaghetti dinner with his owner or something as simply as making a nice coffee, which everybody does all the time, which can oftentimes be very messy when you're on your at-home barista, you know, kick and you're making your cold foam and you're spilling coffee, everyone putting ice, you know, it's not as aesthetic as a lot of people would have us believe.

42:23And so you can still get those lifestyle benefits in those moments that people really resonate with.

42:27Jasmine Enberg: How does it fit into your broader marketing or sales strategy? KC, great brand with great products, wonderful company culture behind on marketing. I think we could all say that if you asked anyone that worked at KC is that we have a lot to do in terms of cashing up with marketing. But the most exciting thing at the organization is that the leaders understand that there's work to be done. So creator, social, that entire bucket of work is growing exponentially at the company as we see how much creator can affect sales, can affect brand resonance, can affect brand relevance, and the power of the creator economy.

43:05Jasmine Enberg: How do you find and vet the creators that you're working with? I mean, I think everybody knows the big names, but in order to really get that emotional resonance, a lot of times you need to be working with, you know, creators who might not be the Mr. Beast or the Alex Coopers of the world. I mean, at this point, they're, you know, mostly, you know, like akin to celebrities, right? So how are you, you know, finding and vetting creators? I fortunately work in an organization where we can afford to work with influencer agencies. So number one, I'd say if you have the ability to work with specialized influencer agencies, they know the ins and the outs.

43:40They have a lot of the times personal relationships with these creators. They know the scale of mega or celeb adjacent to micro. And based on your goals are able to tailor your creator strategy to support those goals. Because some brands might benefit from macro mega, you know, campaigns at scale over and over and over again. But some businesses might benefit from hyper local micro influencers where it's getting people physically into their store and and showing off their products. And there's no one size fits all, even year to year. There's no one size fits all. It definitely depends on where your brand and your business is.

44:17But if you can't work with an agency, I think it's first about always, always, always recommend understanding who your brand is as a brand. What is the DNA? What is the like ethos of who you are? And then what are you trying to accomplish? Then educate yourself on, okay, I'm trying to accomplish brand relevance. That means you want as many people to see your brand as possible. You're going to probably go for some bigger names. And then if you're doing like hyper local, for instance, if I'm like in, I don't know, Little Rock or something, right? I might have a contingent of influencers that don't have hundreds of thousands of followers, but are very well known and well loved in my local area.

44:57It's really about number one, understanding what your brand needs at the stage that it is. Don't just emulate what you see everybody doing. Just because you see Alaska working with Jordan Howland or you see Alex Earl in the Super Bowl with Poppy doesn't mean that your brand needs to do that.

45:12Jasmine Enberg: Do you put together any guidelines or recommendations for the creators and influencers that you work with in terms of how they use AI? Because we've seen, you know, some brands kind of bake it into their contracts with creators saying, you know, here's what you can use it for. Here's what you can't use it for. And some of them even saying you cannot use AI at all in the creative. Where do you stand on that? We're working with the creators for their creativity. I don't think there's anything wrong with like validating this idea for a storyboard or anything and like cutting out the time that it would take them to do the million things you need to do to get a strong piece of creative out there.

45:45We just want the creator themselves to be the feature, right? You know, don't want to see any AI in the mix of what's being created. If I'm saying, for instance, hiring an SFX or an FX creator, I want to see their work, you know, being displayed. That's why you work with them. I think for me, just like in my personal process or with my team, it's like, hey, if you're using it to streamline tasks that would take you X amount of time, that's one thing. But I don't want to see any final output that came from an LLM. I don't want to see an image that came from an LLM. I don't want to see a presentation that came from an LLM.

46:21I want to see, and I am truly biased to like, I want to see a person's work because I just really love people and working with people. So I always want to see a person's work. So we, again, are hiring the creator and want to see the creators work. However they get to that work, totally up to you. You know, that's your creative process.

46:38Jasmine Enberg: So you want to see a real mess being cleaned up, not a real mess. Not a fake mess. I need the real life, real messes. Absolutely. What is the process like from pitch to post? I mean, you know, Kimberly Clark is a legacy brand. You can't always move as quickly as D to C brands. There's a lot more hoops to jump through. I mean, thinking everything from securing budget to getting approvals for the things. So how quickly do you move? We try to move at scale. It does take a little bit of time sometimes. Our products have different classifications. So different products take different levels of rigor and review, as you can imagine.

47:12But what we've done internally is we've taken those processes, broken them down and about, you know, how much they take. And we've tried to shave them to be as agile and optimal as we can while still protecting the brand's legacies and making sure that everyone is protected internally and that consumers are protected externally as well. Sometimes we can't do trends and that's okay. That's another thing I want to say is like, sometimes you can't do trends and that's okay. It is totally fine that you are not hopping on every trend, that you are not putting out an official statement on your Instagram just because everybody else is.

47:47So many brands don't really understand what to do on Reddit. So I'm curious, are you mostly using Reddit as like research on customers and what people are saying? Or are there activations? We saw Dove do an activation on Reddit recently. And I think that's sort of new for them. But yeah, tell us a little bit more about the Reddit strategy. I'm a user of Reddit. You know, I go there for my personal questions, thoughts, feelings, recommendations. And so I think it's very important that brands understand that it's not a place for brands to activate in the same way that they do on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook.

48:22It really is a community forum. And when I say it's a community forum, it's for the community. So in order for brands to activate and have a solid Reddit strategy, you need to have permission from the community to activate in those spaces. Dove did that because people were already talking about their amazing hair mask. So of course, when you see Dove is interested in your real reviews, that's actually like, oh, they're listening to us and they didn't just post positive reviews they posted some of the negative reviews as well that's why that was welcome that's why people enjoyed that activation you can't just go into the comments of a reddit thread and be like ran here it's it's not the place where you go and force permission it's a place where you go when you're invited um i think that is critically important distinction you go when you're invited there when you have the opportunity to drive clarity on like product benefits or you're an expert in the space or you're a leading brand that's able to give them some value, that's when you're invited in.

49:20But you can't make yourself be invited in. So we use Reddit. I use Reddit a lot for real consumer insights because people are going to be real on Reddit most of the time. I prefer to use Reddit as a social listening tool personally because I think it's one of the last bastions of community space where like brands are shoot out and it can just be a real space for humans.

49:46Jasmine Enberg: So social listening is critical. I feel like a lot of brands actually kind of skip that step when they're thinking about their campaigns. And many of them, to Kaya's point, like really don't understand Reddit or how they should show up there or use it as a social listening tool. Consumer sentiment overall is also an important way to measure the success of campaigns as well as things like brand loyalty, brand affinity that we've talked about. But what else are you using to measure the success of your activations and campaigns? I mean, we're in this period now where you have the CFO and the leadership team really putting so much more pressure to show real business results.

50:20Jasmine Enberg: So how do you think about that? We do a couple of things internally to attribute some actual monetary value. So I helped with the system internally that we do some things like that. But I also think it's level setting with those leaders, what are we here to do? Social is not a sales channel. I don't think it ever will be for a business like Kimberly Clark. D2C is totally different. When you can TikTok shop it, when you can direct link, when you can give influencers their own landing page, that's a totally different story. But for CPG, that's primarily retailer driven. Social is, you're not going to get someone to go to Target because they see a social post.

50:59It's just not going to happen.

51:01Jasmine Enberg: I also don't think people are on TikTok shop to buy Kleenex or toilet paper or any of those things. Those are like the fun, trending, like quirky products, not your household essentials. I mean, you already have places to buy that. So I totally agree with you. I think that social commerce is critically important for businesses to understand and where you fit into the social commerce of it all. And if you're doing fun, limited edition, or like, I think it's interesting for trial driving, or if you're doing something around a particular activation, that kind of unlock some things, but no one is buying their paper towels in bulk or like for their household off TikTok shop.

51:36I'm not doing that. No one's doing that. Right. And so you have to meet them where they're at in the way that they consume. We're increasingly in a world where we're so saturated with choice. You have a million choices from whatever you want, however you want, with whatever you want, at whatever scale that you want. So what's what makes me buy one brand over the other? Because it makes me feel good. Because they support my favorite creator. because it's got a$2 off coupon, you know, and money's tight. There are all these different factors that you can't just look at someone as a consumer. So it's a lot of education as well internally.

52:10We do a lot of education of like, social is not your sales channel. You've got a million of those, right? If you're sitting in the broader integrated marketing ecosystem, it's okay if social or creator sits in a more upper funnel, which spoiler alert, I don't really believe in the funnel. Sorry. I'm controversial I don't really believe in a funnel especially with digital I just think that the funnel doesn't exist I think people are constantly in and out of all the phases it's like more like a windy road where people enter and exit the funnel it's not linear and it never

52:41Jasmine Enberg: was linear I mean people get people get inspired to buy things in so many different places and now you know a lot of it is happening online I think the problem is is that we're in this sort of performance media era where you have that one metric that you can show and say, hey, this worked. Look, they bought something. But to your point, that's not, you know, necessarily how most people are buying things, especially from social media. Attribution where it's like, oh, this is the reason why they bought. Probably not. You know, you can also go from like not knowing anything about a product and jumping all the way down to purchase via TikTok shop.

53:18Right. Like you can be like, oh, just found out about this immediately purchasing. You didn't need to do prospecting or warming the lead or anything. They just ready to purchase. Or you can have somebody that's like been thinking of like buying a mattress, for instance, and it's been sitting in their cart and you've marketed them, you've emailed them, you've a creator seen them. And then suddenly a friend goes, Hey, actually I bought this other type of mattress. And I'm like, Oh, okay. I'm going to go buy this mattress instead. The path to purchase is so non-linear that that's another reason like we educate of every channel needs a role and you need to be comfortable with where that channel sits in the hierarchy.

53:54It's like not even a hierarchy in the ecosystem, like in your flywheel, you cannot make every channel a sales channel. Dang, I'm going to make every CFO hate me. They're going to be like, not hiring that girl, but you can't make every tactic a sales driving tactic. That is how you become one of those companies that people ignore because you're

54:11Jasmine Enberg: The flip side of that, though, is that everything is a sales driving tactic in the sense that the ultimate goal is to, you know, drive a sale. But that doesn't mean that that sale is going to be immediate. And like to what I said before about this performance media mindset that we're in is we've kind of forgotten about the long tail and all the things that have to happen in between. Sometimes, sometimes you're right. People will just be on TikTok shop and be inspired and buy immediately. But, you know, ultimately everything is driving towards the same goal. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be immediate.

54:43You don't have to have someone see your cool social posts and then they're like, yeah, they saw this, but they didn't buy. OK, so what? They're probably going to think about KitKat the next time that they're in the store because they saw a really awesome social post or this really sick activation with like Disney and F1. And now they're going to think, oh, I'd love to go to an F1 game. And that is bringing them along this journey that they're on. does that mean that just because there wasn't a sale attributed to that activation that it was useless or it was a waste of money? Absolutely not. Well, thank you so much, Kim.

55:12This has been great. Thank you so much, Kim, for joining us. We so appreciate it.