Here is a number worth sitting with. In 2026, US brands are on track to spend around $21 billion on social media creators, more than double what they spent back in 2022. That is eMarketer’s read on the year, and it tells you creator marketing has gone from a bright, shiny experiment to a fixed line in the budget. The figure I would actually watch, though, is a quieter one, because it points to where your money should go and the kind of content that is winning.
The number everyone quotes, and the one that matters more.
The $21 billion is real, and it is roughly double what brands spent in 2022. Growth like that usually means one thing: the results held up. The quieter stat is this. Nearly half of all US creator spend, 49.9%, now goes to nano and micro creators, up from under a fifth a few years ago. Brands have stopped paying for the biggest possible audience and started paying for the right one. Fit beats reach. That is the whole story in a line, and it is good news if you are not a household name.
Creator content is leaving the feed.
A creator video used to live in one place, the social post it was made for. Not any more. The 2026 picture is brands pushing creator content everywhere their customers already are. CreatorIQ’s numbers say it plainly: 58% of larger brands now put creator content on their own websites, 55% run it as paid social and digital ads, and 53% use it for organic social, with plenty more sending it into email, events and even TV. Best Buy ran creator clips as connected TV ads over the 2025 holidays and they performed on par with traditional TV spots. I have written before about how creator content is quietly becoming most brands’ paid media, and this is that same shift widening out. One good video is no longer one post. It is a website hero, three ad cuts and a month of stories.
The money is still following the human stuff.
You would expect a market this size to be racing toward AI creators by now. It is doing the opposite. eMarketer found 89% of marketers have no plans to work with virtual influencers or AI avatars, and consumer appetite for AI-made creator content has dropped from 60% to 26% in under two years. Around half of shoppers are uneasy about brands posting AI content without saying so. The spend is doubling and staying stubbornly human, because the thing people trust is a real person who genuinely uses the product. That is the whole case for UGC, and it is why I keep making it. I laid the trust argument out in full in this piece on why shoppers lean toward brands that skip the AI.
What this means if you are a smaller brand.
You do not need a $21 billion budget to use any of this. The move down to nano and micro creators is the door opening for you. A brand spending a few hundred pounds on a video can now compete on fit, not reach, against companies spending a hundred times more. eMarketer’s advice for the year comes down to three sensible things. Work with creators who would actually use your product rather than chasing follower counts. Brief them properly and decide how you will measure success before you start, because 79% of marketers say proving ROI is their hardest job and a clear goal fixes most of that. And stop treating the feed as the finish line: put the content on your product pages, in your ads and in your emails. It helps to know that TikTok Shop alone is forecast to hit $23.4 billion in US sales this year, so shoppable creator video is its own reason to get this right. If you are weighing up how to buy the content, I have compared a monthly retainer against one-off videos and looked at where the 2026 budgets are heading.
Where I would start.
Keep it small and specific. Pick two or three creators who fit your brand and would use it without being paid to. Give them a proper brief, a real hook and a reason to care, then let them sound like themselves. Film content you can cut more than one way, so a single shoot becomes vertical video for TikTok and Reels, a clip for your website and a couple of ad edits. Sort the usage rights up front so you can actually run it as an ad and keep it on your site, not watch it vanish off the feed in 48 hours. Then keep what works and drop what does not. It is how the big spenders are doing it, only cheaper.
If you want content built to travel like that, filmed and edited so it works on your feed, your ads and your product pages, that is what I do. Have a look at the packages and pricing, or email me at [email protected] and tell me what you are launching.
