When Patreon wanted to launch a holiday 2025 campaign, it reached for an abundant resource. Like most brands today, the platform went to its stable of creators to craft its message.
Ads, titled “Santa Hates Patreon,” feature comedian Stavros “Stavvy” Halkias as a cranky Santa, threatening anyone daring to gift a Patreon subscription, and filmmaker Daniel Thrasher (who also directed the ad) as a cowering elf. Both are fixtures on the platform, which boasts more than 300K creators earning income each month.
“This might be the first year I’m seeing brands brag about AI-made ads — even Santa has become generated,” said Mike McGarry, senior vice president of marketing at Patreon, announcing the effort. “We’d rather put the spotlight on creators. They make the kind of ideas AI can’t touch – original, weird, deeply human – and they deserve to earn from that magic.”
Creators are Patreon’s lifeblood, but a number of more traditional marketers are also adopting them to bring that weird human touch McGarry mentioned to their campaigns. Creators are now big business, and as the business grows, so does the complexity and accountability.
“The culture is being driven on a niche level now. People talk about the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl has the greatest eyeballs for one period of time, but I know a lot of creators who do the same numbers as the Super Bowl every week, 52 weeks a year,” says Sean Atkins, CEO of Dhar Mann Studios. The production company was founded by its namesake, whose inspirational videos have built a following of 145 million across social media platforms.
The creator marketplace is picking up speed. Only two years ago, Goldman Sachs predicted the sector would nearly double by 2027, to $480 million, as the roster of creators reached 50 million worldwide. A more recent study estimated the marketplace will actually grow to more than $1.18 billion by 2032, an annual growth rate of 24.6%. A recent IAB survey estimated ad spend on the creator economy will reach $37 billion in 2025.
“It’s just brand after brand doubling down on it,” said Chris Bruderle, vice president, industry insights & content strategy at IAB.
Creators have even started leveraging their followings to launch their own brands. Jimmy “Mr. Beast” Donaldson has built Feastables chocolates to $250 million in sales; Logan Paul’s Prime Hydration beverages are now a billion-dollar business; influencer Emma Chamberlain leveraged her coffee shop videos into her own brand of brew; and Kardashian relative Kendall Jenner launched 818 Tequila, among other products.
Creators are also making inroads in becoming their own media brands, as several streaming platforms open up their channel lineups to them. Roku partnered with creator platform Jellysmack in 2023 to launch free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels; this year, the Fox-owned FAST streamer Tubi launched Tubi for Creators, a program to help them make and distribute content on the service; and Samsung recently signed partnerships with a number of high-profile creators, including Dhar Mann Studios, who will produce original content for its Samsung TV Plus platform.
“A new marketing model”
This ferment has not gone unnoticed by brands. When Fernando Fernandez assumed the CEO position at Unilever in March 2025, he surprised the industry by announcing the CPG giant would increase its spending on social influencers from 30% of its marketing budget to half. Speaking to investors in December, Fernandez doubled down, noting how the tactic had helped invigorate Vaseline, a 155-year-old brand, and turned a collaboration between skincare brand Dove and Crumbl cookies into “a social-first sensation that didn’t just get people talking, but got them buying,” with more than 2 billion impressions.
“This is a new marketing model of reach and persuasion,” Fernandez told analysts. “Social platforms are the road, influencers are the engines, content is the fuel, powered by what’s said by others. And it’s delivering.”
Unilever is hardly alone. The IAB’s survey found ad spend in the channel is growing four times faster than total media spending and marketing organizations have begun treating creators as an established channel, instead of an experimental tactic within their social media strategy.
Almost 50% of buyers rated creators a “must-buy” media, trailing only search and social media, noted Zoe Soon, IAB’s vice president, experience center.
“If anyone was going to say to us that it’s experimental – well, it’s nearly a $40 billion experimental market,” added Bruderle. “That’s not experimental to me.”
During Alphabet’s most recent earnings call, Philipp Schindler, chief business officer of its Google unit, described creators as “the number one piece” of YouTube’s business and noted the platform has added a number of tools to enable creators to work with brands, including artificial intelligence-based enhancements to functions controlling brand partnerships, in order to give creators more flexibility in placing sponsor content.
“A significant force behind the thriving YouTube creator economy is the collaboration between creators and brands,” he said.
Not one-offs anymore
That collaboration is also evolving into deeper, more measurable activities, experts say. The more innovative brands are sitting down directly with creators to form longer-term, more immersive partnerships and synching brand leadership with large, professional creators, said Atkins.
Smart brands “are seeing creators as creative directors, partners, brand ambassadors,” noted Soon. “I think creators are going to be the new media studios of the future,” she said.
Bruderle noted how YouTube recently presented its creator content to the industry at an event that rivaled a film festival and at the recent network upfronts, media companies showed off their creator partners “like they used to roll out their primetime TV show talent.”
Creators are another channel and should be used based on the goals and metrics of the brand for each effort, said Atkins. But one unique aspect of working with creators is the ability of brands to literally sit at the table and co-create with the media they are using, he said. “I can’t contact my favorite showrunner on a television show,” said Atkins, a former president of MTV.
The growing clout of creators will require changes in the way that all parties maneuver. Marketers will have to build relationships and loosen their grip somewhat on their brand image and agencies will need to rethink how they buy media. And as creators become part of media plans, they have to deliver return on investment and show results based on established metrics, just like other media.
“Brands are wanting creators to behave like new Hollywood storytellers, but they want them to perform like programmatic ad units,” said Bruderle. But the infrastructure to measure them is not set up right now, he said. “That’s the disconnect we’re trying to solve.”
Measurement continues to be a challenge, especially when brands are working with smaller, niche creators. The IAB survey found ROI is the most common metric for measuring success, but the main goals for many creator efforts tend to be building awareness, new audiences and trust—outcomes hard to gauge by that measurement.
“There’s a little bit of a dichotomy there,” said Soon. “You want to measure it, you want to scale it easily, and you want to use the same goalposts that you use for all other media. But if you bring all of the old media of infrastructure into creators, you may lose some of the beauty of what creators do. And that would be a shame.”
Friction points and paralysis
For agencies, working with creators will require restructuring the way media buying is set up, including measurement and incentives, said Atkins. He likened it to his days on cable television, trying to explain to major buyers the growing clout of cable channels while they remained focused Nielsen ratings for network TV, then seeing a similar dynamic once he moved to lead digital media at Bertelsmann.
“The infrastructures of media buyers and agencies are constructed for a world that doesn’t exist in the creator world,” said Atkins. He explained they are structured to work across verticals or across media, while creators may cut across multiple agency teams – talent, sponsorships, social, etc. – each with their own P&L statement. “It can become paralyzing,” he said.
The direct relationship between brand, creator and audience can bring challenges, as brands balance their need to maintain their core image while integrating creators who have built their business outside that brand environment.
“Finding and scaling the creators to work with is definitely a friction point for brands,” said Soon. Creators don’t come from the advertising world, and while they want to do brand deals, the best ones put their audience first, she said.
The IAB survey found creator reputation is still the top attribute brands look for, with 58% prizing that value, but following close behind were audience alignment (56%), presence on target platforms (54%) and alignment with brand values and tone (50%).
Unilever’s Fernandez acknowledged that even though his company has a “very serious screening process” to vet influencers it works with, “you have to live with a bit more risk” in this new marketing model.
“The risk profile is higher, of course, because in the past you had absolute control of your communication. When you were putting an ad on TV, it was absolutely under your control. But what is the option? Staying with that model? That’s not an option,” he said.
The best way to work with a creator is to find one that fits the brand, build a relationship of trust and let them work, says Atkins. But he adds this requires marketers to let go of established practices and control. Some brands, such as Sephora, have figured it out and created bibles to help in this space, he explained.
When working with creators that have an audience, “the most important thing for you is to figure out how you morph to their audience, not the other way around,” said Atkins. “It’s Marketing 101: You don’t dictate to the consumer; you match them and meet their needs. The great opportunity is to get in that flow.”
