What Brands Really Want From Creators (And Vice Versa)

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. In a nutshell, the debate over whether creator marketing works is over. But there's still no standardized playbook for how creators and brands should work together. It is sort of crazy that we're still having this conversation in 2026. One celebrity is actually not going to do it for you. Sephora's VP of social media and influencer marketing said he gets really put off when a creator sends him an email saying that working with Sephora is their dream.

0:36But when he goes to check their profile, there aren't any posts tagging the company.

0:40Jasmine Enberg: I really appreciate it when you have a brand that tells us exactly what their campaign goals are, gives us a clear framework for the deliverables, and then lets us do our thing within those boundaries. So while the brands say they don't want the creator to be transactional, sometimes it's the other way around.

1:02Hi, Jasmine. Hi, Kaya. And hi, everyone. Welcome to Scalable, our weekly show about the business of the creator economy. Every Thursday, we tell you what's happening, why it matters, and where it's all going. We also bring on founders, creators, executives, and other experts who are driving this industry forward.

1:18Jasmine Enberg: Today's episode is all about brand-creator relationships. This year, the IAB predicts that spending on creator advertising will reach over$44 billion in the US alone, but there's still no standardized playbook for how creators and brands should work together. So one of the things that we love to do on this show, as well as on conference stages really around the world is ask creators and brands for their green flags and their red flags, meaning what they like and what they don't like when they partner. Last week, we brought the game on stage with us at Creator IQ's Connect Conference in LA during my panel with brand leaders from Sephora, Gap, Google, and PepsiCo.

1:56We also asked Warner Bailey, who is the creator and founder of the popular meme account, which has turned into a full-fledged media business called Assistance Versus Agents, for his reaction to common brand negotiation tactics during a live podcast that we recorded at the same event. We are going to share those with you today.

2:12Jasmine Enberg: Finally, we have an exclusive conversation with Amber Vansbox, the co-founder and president of creator shopping app LTK, and Northwestern professor Frank Dudley about new research they conducted about how CMOs are approaching influencer marketing, how that's changed over the years, and especially now in the age of AI. In a nutshell, the debate over whether creator marketing works is over. And now it's how do you organize it? How do you run it? How do you scale it? Brands are working with 275 % more creators year over year. Why are they doing that? Because just like with SEO, you need more people pointing in.

2:49And also, it's not just with the LLMs. Look what's happened across social. You have algorithmic feeds, which means that one celebrity is actually not going to do it for you. Okay, let's get into it. So the green flags from brands fell into two categories, when a creator is professional and when a creator is a super fan of the product or company. So starting with professionalism, Kate Bradley, who's the global head of creative and content transformation at PepsiCo, said that she likes creators who have their scheduling, their formats intact and know how they can plug PepsiCo and its products authentically into their channel.

3:22She also broke a little bit of news on stage. The company is in the early stages of figuring out its own employee influencer program, and it has more than 300 ,000 global employees that it could tap for it. We went very deep on the rise of these programs in a past episode, and it's such a significant shift because a few years ago, people were getting fired for posting TikToks about their work and their jobs. And now that's being rewarded by the company, and staffers are actually getting paid to do it.

3:48Jasmine Enberg: I mean, technically, you can still get fired for posting a TikTok about your job, but yes, it is an enormous shift in the industry. And speaking of employee creator programs, a senior marketing leader from Gap, Damon Berger, actually answered a question we had posed during the episode, which is how to approach disclosure when a creator is also an employee. And he said that for them, it's like any other partnership they do with creators, meaning that these employees do have to follow FTC disclosure guidelines. Anyway, Kate's green flag actually reminded me a lot of what Leah Walker, who's the head of creator and influencer marketing at Adobe, picked as her green flag on stage with me at Cannes Lions earlier this year.

4:27Jasmine Enberg: So she said that she loves it when a creator comes prepared with a unique idea rather than waiting for her to pitch them something. And this kind of feels like it should be a no-brainer, especially since creators are always saying that they know what resonates with their audience better than anyone else. But I can see also how this might happen. Like it can be really intimidating to pitch a big brand as a creator, especially if you're just starting out. And then I think there's also some creators who may just not want to do the work ahead of time. Yeah, it reminds me of job interviews when they ask you to do all this work.

4:59And you're like, wait, but if I'm not going to get hired, and then you're going to take my idea. So very true. But this was such a takeaway for us from Cannes Lions as well and meeting with brands ourselves. Like they really wanted to hear our ideas and really threw the ball in our court, which I think is exciting because I think those ideas, just to your point, come off better when it comes from the creator first.

5:18Jasmine Enberg: Well, the thing that actually stood out to me the most from your session was what Ava Donaldson, who's the head of talent and creators for platforms and devices at Google said. And it was something along the lines of you are your team, meaning that how creators, team members behave reflects on them for better, but mostly actually for worse. So for a little bit of context, 62 % of creators, so that's close to two thirds of creators worldwide, now have either part time staff, full time staff or outsource some of their work, according to a January report from Creator IQ that we've covered previously.

5:51Jasmine Enberg: So what we're talking about here doesn't just apply to the big creators. It now seems that most creators have some sort of outside help. And so we have seen this firsthand this year. And when you have a creator's gatekeepers, whether it's a PR team, an agent, a manager, or an assistant, being hard to work with, that definitely impacts our opinion of them. We're not going to name names though. We won't, but we have a long list over the years. And we've certainly had this experience over and over. I mean, not just in the past year of Scalable, but before that, as we worked with so many PR teams and management teams.

6:25And sometimes a creator is so lovely when you meet them or interview them, but then the team is super controlling or intense or just frankly unpleasant. And we never know if that's just kind of the creator behind the scenes or if they don't realize what their team is doing, or maybe they want the person saying those things on their behalf. They just don't want to be the ones to say it. I mean, it definitely could be a good cop, bad cop situation, but either way, the negative experiences certainly impact our opinion overall.

6:51Jasmine Enberg: I mean, I think they should know, right? At the very least, most of them probably do know. I mean, they probably don't know, especially when you're a big creator, every single person that their team members are talking to, what they're getting booked for, they're certainly not involved in every single conversation. But they should know the tone of these conversations. And you know, they've hired these people. Obviously, things can slip through the cracks. But one of the reasons that you hire a team is so that they can be the bad guy or the bad cop in these situations, right? Totally. I sometimes try to give the benefit of the doubt, but you're right.

7:24But back to brand and creator deals, though, it is sort of crazy that we're still having this conversation in 2026 about brand partnerships. But the best ones tend to really be when the creators are already truly super fans of a company or their product. I mean, we've certainly felt this way ourselves as we've started to work with brands, too. I mean, we had so much fun, for example, with our partnership with Numono, which makes amazing mics, because we had such a positive experience using them and just so much to say about it. And I think that really shows through in the ad read that we did. And it was also just easy for us to sit down and write it because we had so much to talk about and experience using it.

8:01And same thing for our Alice and Olivia partnership. I mean, our community knows how much we love and wear the brand. We've been wearing it for years and years, especially their suits. So everyone was just so excited for us when we announced it. Like we got so many comments and people also sharing their own experiences with the brand too.

8:17Jasmine Enberg: Yeah. And that excitement is so good for the brand. I mean, it's not just us. I remember listening to a podcast episode with the CMO of Verizon not too long ago. And if you remember, Verizon was one of the first, if not the first brands to do a deal with Jules LeBron, who is known for the very demure trend on TikTok. And the CMO of Verizon was talking about how the comment section below the videos that Jules posted was blowing up with people who are just so happy about the deal. And that goodwill can then transfer to the brand as well. And I think sometimes marketers still forget that people don't just follow a creator because they love their content.

8:54Jasmine Enberg: They're also there for the journey. I mean, it's that parasocial relationship, for lack of a better term. And they're genuinely excited when creators they love are doing well and vice versa. But anyway, back to being a super fan. I think one of my favorite examples of this, and you'll remember this, Kaya, actually came from Nick Taylor, who's the senior vice president of Lego Group during that same can session earlier this year. So basically what she said is that a major red flag for her is when a creator asks if they have to, quote, touch the product, meaning the Legos. And I obviously had to ask her if this happens a lot.

9:29Jasmine Enberg: And luckily she said no. But I'm also just like, who doesn't want to play with Legos? So I was in the audience for that. And I think I gasped. Like, why? Like, Legos are so fun. There are worse things to have to, like, touch and make a video around. Okay, they are fun until you wake up in the middle of the night and then you step on a Lego in the dark. But that is another conversation for another time. Moving on to other red flags. So the biggest red flags for brands in the Creator IQ panel that you just did were the opposite, actually, of their green flag answers. Not surprisingly, brands do not like it when creators are unprofessional or too transactional.

10:06Jasmine Enberg: So Gap's Damon Berger specifically called out creators not getting back to brands on time. He did note that this type of behavior is less common now than it used to be, which is a very good thing because I remember a little while ago seeing a campaign for a company that was promoting their texting tool for brands to get in touch with creators. And their whole pitch was something along the lines of creators don't use email, so brands need to meet them where they are. And I was so I think I texted you about this, like probably repeatedly because I was so annoyed by that ad. It was really just perpetuating this idea that creators are not serious business people.

10:43Jasmine Enberg: And also that brands have to cater to creators, right? It's kind of like when you hear other creators say things like their responsibility is to their audience only. No, it isn't. You know, brands are paying the bills. If you sign the contract, you also have a responsibility to them. And it's very similar in this case. Just answer the email. It's really not a good look for the industry, I think. Yeah, this was pretty ridiculous. I do remember you being big mad about this. And obviously, look, there are still creators who are unprofessional, who are disorganized, but there are so many more who are really professional and care so much about the work that they do with brands.

11:16And it also, just like you said, kind of feeds into the stereotype of influencers being unserious or the job being easy, which is just not true as we know. But at the same time, brands also don't like it when creators are just clearly in it for the money and the paycheck. So Sephora's VP of Social Media and Influencer Marketing, Brent Mitchell, explained it this way on stage. He said he gets really put off when a creator sends him an email saying that working with Sephora is their dream. But when he goes to check their profile, there aren't any posts tagging the company.

11:44Jasmine Enberg: OK, we all loved Brent. He got so many chuckles from the audience, especially when he said this. It was perfect. Yeah, he was a hoot. I told him backstage I want to be friends with him and that we want him on the show. So if you're listening, Brent, this is your official invitation. But let's also talk a little bit about the creator side of things. So Warner Bailey of Assistance vs. Agents said that a green flag for him is when a brand says, just be you or be authentic. But the catch is they have to actually mean it. So I'll be honest, I was not expecting this to be a green flag. But I think that's because most of the time brands that do that or say that, they don't really mean it.

12:19Jasmine Enberg: There's always some sort of fine print that comes later. And I think it's just better to be upfront about what those expectations are. Like, I really appreciate it when you have a brand that tells us exactly what their campaign goals are, gives us a clear framework for the deliverables, including things like talking points, and then lets us do our thing within those boundaries. I want it to be more of a collaborative process from the get-go because that avoids repetition and revisions, and it just makes sure that everybody's happy with the end result. And honestly, I'm sure that Warner would agree with all of the things I'm saying right now.

12:50Jasmine Enberg: I mean, we obviously just put him on the spot, but still, it was a surprising answer for me. Yeah. And Kris Jenner talked about this at Disney's Created in LA event in September. And she said that she was recently negotiating a deal for her daughter, Kim Kardashian, on the phone. And she told the woman on the other end something along the lines of, you know, what's going to make this a great deal for both of us? And the woman said, what? And she said that we both end up really happy and that we're going to have a great experience and we're both going to get something out of this. And it sounds really simple, but it's very smart advice for one of the best in the business.

13:21And we definitely agree with that. I mean, we love to have a phone call with the brand we're working with to kind of talk through everything. And we also want to work with brands who give us that flexibility where we're not tied to a script. And honestly, most of the brands that we've worked with very much want us to put it in our own words. And they do trust us that we know how to deliver the information in the best way possible that will kind of work with our specific audience. And that's something Natalie Marshall, who is better known as Corporate Natalie, also told us. She said she's shocked when she does a deal and never even meets the brand or talks to them.

13:52I mean, she's like, you're paying me thousands of dollars to have a video made and you don't want to hop on a call and chat about the goals and like really collaborate on this. So while the brands say they don't want the creator to be transactional, sometimes it's the other way around. And it's really the creator that feels that way about the brand. And as I've been listening to more and more podcasts lately, I'm really surprised by how some big name hosts, including celebrities, literally just read an ad read that was just so clearly written by a brand. It just sounds like a TV commercial with nothing personal added.

14:23And it just doesn't land well. And it just feels like there's so much more fun and creativity that can be added. Like at that point, why don't you just have programmatic ads only running on the show? I know it's better when the host reads it, but not if it's just reading what would have been a programmatic.

14:39Jasmine Enberg: Is it any different? Yeah, I know. I don't think so. I think it's worse, to be honest, as like a listener experience. Yeah, I mean, I think it's really disruptive as a listener. And you automatically just zone it out because you know the host is going into ad read mode. And now you can even just skip it with Spotify's new tool, which I admittedly have done quite a bit recently. Spotify swears, though, when we asked them, they said it is not an ad skipper tool. It's to skip like repetitive things and episodes, I guess, to be charitable. It could be for an intro, but I don't know what else people would be skipping.

15:09Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, but I think it's primarily used for ads, no matter what they say. Sorry, Spotify. But anyway, Natalie also gave us another green flag in that interview that really resonated with me. So I love it when you're speaking at an event or at a conference and the organizers share the people who are speaking right before and after you and the topic of their conversations. I think it really helps you to prepare for your conversation and also weave in other things that people might have been talking about that day. And you would be surprised, well, not you, Kaya, but maybe our listeners will be surprised at how many organizers don't do this.

15:43Jasmine Enberg: And, you know, the event agenda isn't always immediately available on their website until just before the events. And Natalie said something really similar about the brand partnerships that she works on and how she really likes it when brands tell her about the bigger picture, meaning, what other creators they're working with, for example. Here's what she said. I think one green flag that is very rare, it's usually when I work brand direct, but when they tell me and other creators who else they're activating. I think that's a huge green flag. I love knowing what other creators are in the campaign.

16:15Sometimes it incentivizes me to take a lower rate or do it because I wanna be associated with this broader campaign of creators. So I love when there's visibility into the broader campaign and other influencers they're activating. I think that's a huge green flag as well. Speaking of being incentivized to take a lower rate for a partnership, Warner Bailey said that he would be open to a brand negotiating his rate down if it's for a 12-month deal, of course, depending on the terms. And that's because like many creators, he would prefer to build longer-term relationships with brands that he really believes in.

16:45And another big benefit of that is that creators can better forecast and understand what guaranteed income they have coming in. So if you have a partnership over a 12-month period, you can do so much more with that rather than cobbling together income over that time. And he said that that would help him hire more people and also be able to invest more back into his business.

17:04Jasmine Enberg: On the flip side, though, he said it's a red flag if a brand doubles his rate but sends him a four-page script. And he said also that he's seen creators take deals like that. And much like the podcast ad reads, Kari, that you were just talking about, these partnerships fell really flat with the audience. And he specifically called out when creators partner with sports betting sites or AI companies and then they face a ton of backlash in the comments. He said that for him, it's just not worth the double payment. And as an added negative, it can make a future partnership also come off as less genuine, even when it's a partnership that a creator is genuinely excited about.

17:41Yeah, I mean, I completely agree with him there too. I mean, the money can certainly be tempting for creators. Income can be so inconsistent in this career. And at the end of the day, like you need to pay your bills. But it's also really important to think long term about your business and the trust that you need to maintain with your audience. I mean, one bad brand deal, one bad video, it can really hurt your reputation and even potentially sink your career and just impact future earnings potential too.

18:05Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, I think a lot of creators are grappling with this right now, specifically when it comes to whether or not to partner with an AI company. I mean, there has just been so much backlash toward AI in general and obviously toward the companies themselves. And some of that is now extending to creators who are working with those companies. I mean, just think about the open AI influencer trip. My feed was full of commentary videos, mostly negative, if not almost all negative about, you know, the influencers and the trip in general. But speaking of AI, one last major red flag from Warner, when a brand asks for the rights to an AI clone of his voice.

18:42Jasmine Enberg: So not surprisingly, he called that an absolute red flag. I mean, totally agree. We would never want anyone to have rights to our voice. Because especially as Warner pointed out, I mean, AI is getting so much better and it's getting harder and harder for people to tell what's real and what's not. I regularly fail those New York Times quizzes that test whether you can tell what's AI or not. I stopped taking them. No, I get like 60 % or lower sometimes. I mean, it used to be so much easier because you could just count the number of fingers because there was always like extra fingers on people. But it's much smarter now and way harder to discern.

19:18but I certainly would not want a brand to be able to do whatever with my AI voice and with me having no idea what I'm promoting. I mean, I don't know anyone who would be down for that.

19:28Jasmine Enberg: No, and I have a story about that. But I want to say the crazy thing about a lot of those AI quizzes too, that it's not just that people think AI content is real. They also think that real content is AI. So it goes both ways. It's crazy to me. But yeah, I mean, I can tell you from personal experience, like seeing your face and your name promoting something that you haven't agreed to, or perhaps even a product you've never heard of, is really jarring, right? And this happened to me recently. And fortunately, the brand took the post down and promised that I wouldn't be in any future marketing communications.

20:00Jasmine Enberg: But still, it's just a feeling that you don't want to have at all. No, very shady behavior we still see in this industry. But anyway, now it's time to go deeper on the CMO perspective with new research from LTK and Northwestern University. We covered this in our newsletter earlier this week, but Jasmine, you got to sit down with both LTK and the Northwestern researchers to hear more about the study. LTK and Northwestern University just released the fourth edition of their creator marketing survey. I sat down with Amber Vancebox, co-founder and president of LTK, and Northwestern professor Frank Dudley to discuss the findings and what they mean for the industry.

20:38Jasmine Enberg: And so what I love about this research is that it's one of the few creator surveys that is repeated annually. Because if you are a data nerd like me, you know that one data point does not a trend make. And with annual reports, it's really easy to see how things have and haven't changed over time. So I asked Amber and Frank for their high-level takeaways, the most surprising findings, and what still needs to be done to move this industry forward. And for some context for our listeners, LTK is a creator commerce company that was founded in 2011. We previously spoke to Amber about how the company and creator shopping overall has evolved over the past 15 years.

21:15And of course, one of the biggest changes recently is AI, which was also a big topic covered in the study. 41 % of marketers surveyed said that they use creator content to help them show up in search results, in AI chatbots, for example. And that's something we've thought a lot about ourselves at Scalable, how to ensure that we're showing up in LLMs without having it take away from the work that we're doing.

21:35Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, I mean, it also has major implications for the industry when you have brands designing their creator and broader digital strategies for AI chatbots rather than for people themselves. On the consumer side, AI is obviously changing our shopping journeys. It's becoming another place where people go to find new products, compare prices, look at reviews. And if the AI giants eventually have it their way, buy things as well. I think there's still a lot of debate over what that means for creators, but the TLDR from our side is that people are still going to want social proof and recommendations from people they trust, and that includes creators.

22:08Jasmine Enberg: LTK, of course, has also recently released its own AI shopping chatbot, which is embedded into its app and surfaces content from LTK creators. I dive into all of this and more with both Amber and Frank, who is also releasing a new book, Creator Marketing and Commerce Media, which looks at how creators can build brands and drive sales. Let's dive in. You save, you invest, you keep an eye on spending. So why do your finances still feel so complicated? Quicken helps you put the whole picture together and make sense of what to do next. Connect accounts from more than 14 ,000 financial institutions and see how all the different pieces of your financial life fit together.

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23:31Jasmine Enberg: Hi, Amber. Hi, Frank. Welcome to Scalable. Thanks for having me back, Jasmine. Hi, Jasmine. Pleasure to be here. So nice to have you here, Frank. And it's so nice to see you again, Amber. And you're in an amazing studio today. Where are you? You know, I am here in Dallas, Texas, trying out a new studio. So we'll see if it works. Well, it looks great. And I am so excited to have you both on the show today because you've just released the latest creator marketing survey from LTK and Northwestern University. This is actually the fourth year that you've partnered together to run this study. And what's different about it is that it's conducted among senior level brand leaders and CMOs, all of whom are already investing in influencer marketing, which means that they are sometimes ahead of the curve when it comes to influencer marketing, but it's also a really good way to see where the industry is going.

24:20Jasmine Enberg: So just to kick things off and high level, what were some of the big takeaways for you both this year? In a nutshell, the debate over whether creator marketing works is over. And now it's how do you organize it? How do you run it? How do you scale it? When we first started this study, we were really looking at creators being used, and they were more of a bolt-on to a media plan. Sometimes they were embedded in affiliate marketing departments. And now they've evolved into being actual infrastructure across the entire customer journey and are relevant across all the stages of the journey. So it's not, you know, what if we use creators or don't?

25:07but it's like, how are we actually going to run an effective and scalable creator program? On my end, I reflect on those last four years. In the first few, we're just trying to understand how many marketers were investing in creator marketing. Were they going to increase that? What portions of the team, where were the budgets shifting from? This year, you've seen very much a shift from that. The respondents saying, yes, I am all in on creator. In fact, it is an always on program. I think 91 % came back and said, this is an always on program for me. And so now the conversation has shifted to how intelligently are you actually running your programs?

25:41Jasmine Enberg: So I love that you brought that up. I think one of the biggest things that we hear over and over again in the creator economy is infrastructure, the need for infrastructure and how fragmented everything is. And I think part of the problem is that the way that brands are organized is not the way that people are consuming media. I mean, we don't think about if we saw something on social media or on TV or, you know, on a podcast, as long as we like the content and we're not differentiating in the way that brands are. And so breaking down those silos, not just for creator content, but, you know, across the board is something that I think a lot of brands are grappling with right now.

26:18Jasmine Enberg: And I think that's, you know, even more important now coming into the age of AI. Absolutely. What I'm finding on the ground and reflected also in this study is that a business will have five to 10 creator marketing leaders within the organization. So maybe at one point it might have come up through PR or maybe it came up through affiliate or maybe through a social team. Today, it's actually running the entire marketing department. Plus you've had new leaders hired in specifically just for creator. Last week I was in a meeting with a brand and they named 10 different leaders who own creator within the business.

26:53It's a medium-sized business right squarely in this group that we're talking about here with our study. And I said, you know, what's your philosophy around that? And they said, well, really creator here is just the more, the merrier. And you see that enthusiasm in your numbers. But where that starts to break down is when the finance team gets involved, because you're seeing more of the pie is shifting into this category. It's moving away from celebrity. It's moving away from social. And you're seeing that in the numbers here. So as those dollars are rotating in, finance is saying, okay, well, now I have 10 teams who want credit for the same things or that are playing the same ecosystems.

27:26And it's not just 10 leaders at the table now. It's a technology stack that they have decided to license. And we know that there are a lot of point solutions in the market. So for example, discovering creators, then how are you going to message them? Well, then how are you going to track them and then gift them? But how are you running your employee program? All of these things have different technology historically. And so then you're, you're stitching that plus the measurement systems you're using internally. You're doing all of that together. 45 % of respondents said they're doing all that together through emails and spreadsheets.

27:54And I would bet it's underreported because if anyone thought that they were going to be outed, they would not have told that because 95 % of them then went on to say that AI within the tooling is one of the most important ways to judge the tool. So they know the answer, but they're not yet employing it. So now in this next era of creator commerce and just the creator industry overall, when I talk about doing it intelligently, we're moving into an era of rationalization. So we know what all it can do for us, but how do we do that in a way that we're moving at the speed of culture, that every dollar is an incremental dollar, and that the majority of the dollars are actually going to the creator, not going to the technology that's being licensed to ultimately get to the creator?

28:36Jasmine Enberg: Frank, you are publishing a book on the intersection between commerce media and creators. So those two things have normally been siloed. How do you solve for the need to connect these two typically separate channels? Yes, the books, creator marketing and commerce media, how creators can build brands and drive sales. I wrote it to basically address this very issue, which is integration. Creators are really good at building trust and confidence in a consumer's mind, but then commerce media puts that trust in a place where the purchase can actually happen. So those departments, and it plays to your last question as well, you know, creator is being managed across all these different disparate departments within an organization.

29:2574 % in marketing in our surveys, social 65%, media 61%, brand 60%, right? And then PR went from 15 % to 30 % just this past year. And the nuance there is in B2B, comms is really playing a key role in corporate communications and helping cultivate leaders in business-to-business organizations as influencers, right? So all these different departments are having a stake. What's really exciting is the creators are probably the engine that's helping the enterprise realize that marketing is now becoming a, if not the, growth engine of the company.

30:12Jasmine Enberg: So I wanted to dig into another data point specifically from that question, actually, which really surprised me. It said that 41 % of marketers that you surveyed now use creator content for better visibility in AI search. And that felt really high to me. I mean, there's a lot of brands that are also still saying that they're figuring out their AI strategy. And there's all this rhetoric still about AI replacing creators. I know, Amber, you and I have talked about this on this podcast actually before and how we don't believe that to be the case. But just considering that that's kind of the backdrop that this is all coming out in, what does that actually mean?

30:44Jasmine Enberg: And what does it look like in practice where you have 41 % of marketers really extending their content for AI search? It's a really exciting halo to the work that our marketers have been doing for so many years. We had 7 million pieces of original content created on LTK alone last year, working in partnership with the LLMs to make sure that they can read and understand that and surface those recommendations. But you even think about what YouTube has launched this last week, where they're actually reading and studying the videos, pulling quotes. If you go in and you actually search for what's a three-day itinerary, I want to go to Milan.

31:17It's actually giving you that itinerary. It's surfacing some of what's, what is put within those videos. There's an interesting question that's coming next, not for this podcast today, but so how do you give credit to those creators? But I think we all intuitively know what is powering the recommendation engine, which is you need a lot of people saying the same thing about your products and about your business and then pointing in. And then of course the little wink there is you need to also get along with the CEOs and founders of those LLMs. Yeah. And a lot of that also ties into the growth and the importance of engagement over reach, right?

31:53Because the engagement is generating content that enables the discovery by the algorithms and driving the search rankings, et cetera, up. So it's really, really an exciting time. We do see, as a result of that, a growth, and the study showed this, a growth in expertise in creators. You know, lifestyle always trumped everything, especially over the past few years, even in tech. You know, lifestyle creators in tech were like trumped everybody else. But now we're really seeing in this last year, subject matter expertise is gaining. And the reason is, is that it generates higher engagement. And as a result, more content that's discoverable by the LLMs.

33:05We'll be right back.

33:12Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, I mean, that really stood out to me, too. The growth in the number of marketers that are working with creators in order to generate more content. And I feel like all of this goes hand in hand. When AI has become a new discovery surface for brands, they need more content, but they also need content from credible sources. Is that what you're seeing in the market as well? Absolutely. I think the value of content itself has actually been underestimated for the last 15 years. And just now are we bringing in those content volumes as part of the organic programming to these brands and saying, hey, and this, by the way, this is part of what's feeding those creator networks I'm talking about.

33:53Brands are working with 275 % more creators year over year. Why are they doing that? Because just like with SEO, you need more people pointing in. And also it's not just with the LLMs. Look what's happened across social. You have algorithmic feeds, which means that one celebrity is actually not going to do it for you. When we talk about that, like it's not just bigger campaigns, actually, because every feed is so nuanced. You need to make sure that you're speaking and working with a huge diversity of people so that you're showing up in a really relevant way. That person's putting your product or your business in context for that specific audience, which is, you know, another layer to all of this and the value of the content itself.

34:31That'll be part of, I think, the next chapter. And we're already seeing that I think 92 % of marketers reported that they're already using creator content within their social, within their paid ads. And so I think that'll be another huge next wave that's driven both by the algorithms and by AI discovery.

34:47Jasmine Enberg: What does all of this mean for lifestyle creators, though? I mean, obviously, according to your research, they're still the most popular type of creators for brands to be working with. But can a lifestyle creator still come up or do you need to now be a very niche creator in order to succeed in this environment? What's interesting is most people actually aren't going and following experts like you. You ultimately you can go search them out and kind of go go find them. But like your daily life, who you're being fed are people who have a life that's relevant to yours. We really saw this show up during the pandemic and around 2020 and going forward.

35:23People just want they want products put in context of their own life. They want to understand how they can use it, what it can do for them, what value it's providing. That's why creators are so strong. And then they want to understand what that kind of says and means about themselves. And so experts have a growing place. And I'm so excited that we have so many of them on the LTK platform, whether it's, you know, a beauty or, you know, our hair specialist. or it's actually, you know, ultra runners or Olympic gymnast athletes. But most people can connect with a lifestyle creator because there's something going on in their life.

35:56Either they also cook or they also have kids or they also live in your neighborhood. And the social platforms are doing a really good job of helping us find those people who have relevant lives to us. You know, I've said that this is this era, you are never going to get more pre-qualified leads for free than you ever have before in your life as a creator because the way these platforms work. So being a lifestyle creator and connecting on a lot of different levels, just like you would in a human relationship that's offline, it really does become a superpower. And just to reiterate Amber's point, subject matter expertise does matter.

36:28And we're seeing that, but still within the context of, you know, your life. So lifestyle really does still matter. And people want to make choices, but they want to be advised on those choices by someone who can show them how that product or service fits within their life.

36:44Jasmine Enberg: So Frank, I wanted to come to you because one of the things that I like about the study a lot is that you can do year over year comparisons. And in previous years, what I noticed was that there was a disconnect between the campaign goals that marketers had for their influencer marketing campaigns with the metrics that they used to measure the success of those campaigns. Was that the case this year or how did that all shake out on the measurement front? So on the measurement front, we're definitely seeing just more of an emphasis on the importance of conversion, you know what I mean, in sales. But we really think the next opportunity is to be able to not just track it, but actually measure it, right?

37:32So only 21 % report measuring return on ad spend, right? So there's opportunity there. So 2026, this survey is actually a new baseline because we're seeing the direction of going down the funnel further. It's no longer just at the top of the funnel. And we're also seeing that directionally versus 2025, certified experts, the importance of them went from 31 % to 49%. And campaign sales as a metric went from 37 to 51%. And loyalty is the number one goal this year. So they're all sort of different focuses versus just last year and the prior years. So we're really seeing a move further down the funnel.

38:25And those are areas that really need to be measured. And we're not quite there yet, but we're getting there. And Jasmine, I think it's really, it's symptomatic of a fractured tooling system, right? And then that's where we started the conversation today is if every team is only measuring the one point solution thing that they are focused on and they're not sharing that across the organization. And then people always have a bias to not measure what matters, but measure what they have access to. I will bring that up to my team constantly as I see that this report, how interesting, it doesn't tell me anything about the goal that we're trying to achieve.

38:59And as a marketer, I think you have to be radical about that and say, hey, I understand that the platforms want to show me reach. They want me to understand virality. They want me to think that that's the most important thing here. But actually, it was interesting in the rankings. The marketers came back and said, actually, one of the least useful things that they find creators to be used for is entertainment. They're actually not interested in hiring them for entertainment. Well, if that's true, then virality and reach should be one of the lowest ranking things. But it ends up being one of the highest things it's reported on because it's more readily available.

39:29And so what we're trying to do at LTK is really connect all of those dots from earned media value to kind of those interactions cross-platform to ultimately what is the retail value of this creator as a whole within your certain category, within certain AOVs, and kind of give you that full picture of who you're working with. But certainly historically, when teams are using different solutions and they can't tie those together, they're going to report out on just what's most easily available. But rationalization comes when you're talking about this level of movement of investment to an ecosystem.

39:59And so I think this year will be the year that everyone gets a little bit of relief and starts to really measure what matters for the business.

40:06Jasmine Enberg: I hope you're right. It's very much needed. I think, you know, the last big unlock for more budget into influencer marketing is getting measurement right. And I know a lot of people are working on it, but it's incredibly difficult. Creators, they're used in all stages of the purchase journey, as we've been talking about today. And that means there's all sorts of different campaign goals, all sorts of different metrics, so many different teams that are involved in it, to your point, Amber. And people are measuring what they have access to. So, you know, hopefully by the time we talk about this next year, if you conduct this study, we'll have made some more strides in that direction.

40:38Jasmine Enberg: But we've been talking a lot about what's changed. What hasn't changed over the four years that you've been doing this study? Creators were most trusted, again, you know what I mean? in terms of versus celebrities, you know, and other sorts of sources of trust versus social ads. So creator, we're at 44 percent. Social ads were at 34 percent. And celebrities were at 22 percent. So that wasn't really surprising. That's been pretty consistent. And of course, that AI is everywhere, right? So it's not about, you know, are you using AI? It's how are you using it? And And where is it being used effectively?

41:18The growth across the different categories hasn't changed the enthusiasm about using creators every year. We're seeing that, of course, that increased investment. We're seeing new people within that marketing team kind of like move in. And so that becomes kind of like less surprising, I guess, over time. I think, you know, people were interested to see how AI was going to impact the creator economy because, you know, platforms are telling you, hey, to run an ad on our platform, we can actually create you an AI ad. We can give you an audience based on it. Like we can, you know, end to end turnkey this for you.

41:45you know, there were some thoughts that, well, then like, why do you need the creator? And I think what has historically been missed is that it's actually not that it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck. It's that it is a duck and it has a relationship with other ducks, right? And so I don't care what kind of like lane you're in. If you're an ultra runner, other ultra runners, they see you at the course, they see you winning the races. They're looking at your shoes. They're curious what socks you're wearing. Like they're asking these types of questions. And it's not that ties back to sort of the kind of the expertise question.

42:17But I guess I'm not surprised to see that more dollars are flowing in, that more people in the department are interested in it. I'm not surprised to see that it is continuing to pull further and further away from other ways that marketers try to leverage trust to ultimately get to the creator.

42:35Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, I wanted to dig in a little bit deeper into AI because it was such a huge topic of the study. And I think, you know, it up in literally every single conversation that you have about marketing or pretty much anything these days. And, you know, as we mentioned at the top, a lot of the rhetoric has been that AI is going to replace creators. And I think what we're finding and is reflected in this research is that that is not the case. And I think everybody is starting to understand that creators, especially those with expertise, help you cut through the noise on social media, for example, but also that creators have become an integral part of, you know, AI strategies, right?

43:10Jasmine Enberg: The platforms that AI chatbots are using to source information from our creator and user-generated platforms primarily. So having that source of creator content is incredibly important. And I go back to that stat that 41 % of marketers are, you know, now using creator content to help improve their AI search visibility. How does this develop over the next year or so? So 87 % of people say they cannot tell what is real online. You are seeing across every single platform, they have stood up teams to attract real human content back to their platform. I think we are still in the middle of or probably the beginnings of a trust crisis online.

43:49Everything is available. There is a flood of synthetic content. I was told last week by one of the major platforms, if they did not rate limit synthetic content, you would never see a piece of human content on their platform. And so there's a real thirst for the human content. Why? Because they know it works. It converts all the studies coming out of the platforms themselves. Or when you work with a creator to connect with an audience, it's going to convert multiple times better. And so I'm really excited to see how that has rotated back, I think, directly back to the humans. But I'm sure our listeners here probably have an experience ordering something online.

44:23I would like to think that I'm above it because I'm in the middle of this industry and studying it. But I have too many examples of things that have shown up at my house that I bought through a social media ad that I just didn't recognize. In fact, I was in London last week. And one of the brands that we met with was a brand I've actually seen their ads on social media here. It kind of looked too good to be true, to be honest with you. And I've not seen a creator talk about it. So I didn't engage. And when I met with the founder, she was like, we're having a really hard time breaking into the States.

44:53Can you help me? And my first reaction was, I haven't seen it on a single creator. I was like, that's like step number one is people have to know that this is a real brand. You sell real products and something's actually going to show up on their doorstep that looks like what you sold. AI has been both an enabler for creators to create more content, to create more intelligent content. It's going to be an even bigger enabler on the brand side for them to move more swiftly. I think there's been a ton of waste in the creator economy. And so I'm excited to see those dollars tighten up. I want to be able to go to a brand and say$88, you know,$1 in equals$88 out.

45:24I want to tell that story every single time, not just one time. And I think AI is going to allow us to do that.

45:29Jasmine Enberg: All right. Last question. Frank, I'm coming to you. If, say I'm a brand and I get this study, what is the one big lesson I should take away from all of this research? Oh, gosh, there's so many, but it's a big study. I would say that the number one thing would be to fund creator marketing like an operation. You know, we see all these different departments across the organization have, you know, are doing something with creator. And there really is a need to start to integrate those in order to really extract the the optimal value, and to be able to, you know, build an always-on creator program at scale.

46:22I would say that's the big opportunity that I saw coming out of the study. But again, there's so many other insights that feed into that.

46:32Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, but that is a big one. And it's something that we hear in the industry all the time. For sure. For sure. Agile marketing processes can help with that to some extent. But I think we're going to see a lot of organizational realignment around this particular area just because of the impact it has on the potential impact it has on the growth of the business. Amber, one big lesson. I think I'm already seeing an action because the teams have no other option. I feel like I've loved my role lately with our brands, just kind of being, you know, a consultant and a therapist all at once of let's bring everyone in the room who's working on this.

47:09Let's figure out where the efficiencies lie, how we can organize around it. Luckily, I'm working now really with the C-suite to help influence the organization of the team. And they're working with me to influence what LTK is building. There's been exciting announcements in market of interesting partnerships of how we're helping teams really, when we say build out an infrastructure layer, think of this as simply as like, for example, at LTK, we use Gmail. We don't also use AOL and Yahoo and Hotmail or whatever else. Like we've chosen a system because the system is not the work. It's actually everything else that goes on top of it, right?

47:44And I think that's the era that we're moving into. You know, you think of like choosing a Salesforce, for example. You're choosing a platform that does everything for you. It connects your team. And I think 2027 will be an exciting one for creator marketing. Scalable is going to have a lot to talk about.

47:59Jasmine Enberg: Thank you, Frank. And thank you, Amber. It was so great to have you on to talk about this study. And I hope we'll be able to talk about this again next year. Thanks, Jasmine. Thank you, Jasmine. Thank you, Amber. Thank you so much for tuning into Scalable. We'll see you here again next Thursday. ijay