Here’s a number worth sitting with. Creator content now makes up 44% of the paid media creative that brands are running. Not the organic grid. The ads – the videos you actually pay to put in front of people. That comes from CreatorIQ’s new Creator-Powered Funnel report, and it’s the clearest sign yet that creator content and paid media have stopped being two separate things. If you still treat UGC as a nice-to-have that lives on your feed, this is the year to rethink that.
What CreatorIQ actually found.
CreatorIQ surveyed 100 paid media managers, CMOs and growth leads across brands and agencies in the UK and US in May 2026. The findings are blunt. 92% of them already use creator content in their paid media somewhere. Creator investment now averages $6.6m per programme, and more than eight in 10 said they’re getting at least 2x ROI back. This isn’t a small brand’s experiment any more. It’s how big advertisers are buying.
Why creator content is taking over paid media.
The simple answer is that it works harder. In the same report, 77% of marketers said creator content outperforms traditional branded ad creative, and 43% said it does so significantly. Broken down, they rated creator content ahead of polished ads on click-through rate (65%), conversion rate (58%) and CPM efficiency (50%). People are tired of being sold to. A clip that looks like a recommendation gets watched, and a watched ad is a cheaper ad. I’ve seen this play out with my own clients – the content that feels least like an ad is usually the content that performs.
The funnel is collapsing into one format.
The old model had a tidy shape. Awareness at the top, consideration in the middle, a purchase at the bottom, different content for each. CreatorIQ’s argument is that creator content now does all three jobs at once. Someone discovers your product, weighs it up and buys it inside the same video, often without leaving the app. That’s why the report calls it a compressed funnel. Marketers backed it up: 36% now say creator content is equally valuable for awareness and for performance, so it no longer sits neatly at the top as a brand-awareness play. And every single brand surveyed said they repurpose creator content across other channels – paid social and digital ads first (65%), then websites and landing pages (56%), then retail and commerce placements (47%). One shoot, many homes.
What this means for how you brief.
If a single piece of content has to carry awareness, consideration and the sale, the brief matters more than ever. You’re not commissioning a pretty video. You’re commissioning something that hooks in the first two seconds, holds attention and gives someone a reason to act, all in one cut that can then run as an ad. That’s a different skill from filming a nice clip. It’s also why more brands are moving from the odd one-off video to a steady flow of content they can test and put spend behind. If three concepts beat one perfect video in organic, they really beat it once you’re paying for reach. I’ve written before about a retainer versus one-off videos if you’re weighing that up.
Where this leaves your 2026 budget.
Two-thirds of the extra money going into creator content is being pulled straight out of other paid media budgets, according to the same report. So this isn’t brands finding new cash. It’s them moving spend towards the creative that converts. Ad buyers are now calling creators a “must buy”, behind only social and search, and creator ad spend is on track to hit $44bn this year. The brands winning here aren’t the ones with the biggest production budgets. They’re the ones treating creator content as their main ad creative, not an afterthought. If you’ve been running polished studio ads and topping them up with the occasional UGC clip, it might be time to flip that round.
If you want a steady stream of creator content built to run as ads – filmed, edited and ready to post – that’s what I do. Take a look at how I work and what it costs over on the pricing page, or email me at [email protected] and tell me what you’re launching. I’ll tell you honestly whether UGC is the right fit, or the monthly retainer is.
