The creator economy in 2025: Niche creators, measurement challenges, streaming success

2025 is the year marketers will get serious about the creator economy, according to our analyst Jasmine Enberg.

• “Marketers are starting to treat influencer marketing as a need-to-have rather than a nice-to-have, [and making it] a core part of their marketing strategies,” she said during the keynote session of last week’s EMARKETER virtual summit.
• We forecast US influencer marketing will grow 14.2% this year to $9.29 billion—not including paid media amplification or spend outside social media.
• While the potential TikTok ban could impact how much marketers spend on creators, it still represents less than a fifth of total influencer marketing spend in the US.
• “The creator economy is much bigger than just TikTok,” said Enberg.

As the creator economy evolves, it’s become harder for brands to identify the right partners.

“Historically, follower count has been the primary way that marketers both classify and identify influencers to work with,” said Enberg. “The conventional wisdom has been that micro- and nano-influencers drive sales while larger influencers are great for brand awareness and brand equity.”

• But in today’s era of algorithmic feeds, follower counts aren’t always an accurate predictor of business outcomes, which is good news for the long tail of creators with medium-sized audiences.
• “We’re going to see a rise in niche creators, including local creators, and the resurgence of mid-tier creators in 2025,” said Enberg.

The catch: Measurement challenges hinder influencer marketing adoption as marketers face pressure from leadership to show business results.

“Lagging measurement is the single biggest threat to influencer marketing budgets,” said Enberg, who estimates that 20% of US marketers are being held back from influencer marketing due to measurement issues.

• By repurposing creator content as paid advertising, marketers can track and compare the performance of their creator campaigns.
• It also enables them to reach a wider audience without the need for new creative, making their influencer dollars work harder.

AI can increase the effectiveness of influencer marketing spend by speeding up partner selection, identifying the context around organic brand mentions on social media, and segmenting creators into smaller subsets, said Enberg.

“[AI] will also help marketers take a much more nuanced approach to engagement, looking not just at engagement rate, but the quality of that engagement, they can determine the breadth and depth of engagement on a post, as well as audience sentiment toward the content, the brand or the product,” she said.

Moving beyond virality: Creators are realizing that the path to success from a viral video isn't guaranteed or easy, said Enberg.

• Because of this, creators are focused on building sustainable audiences that can follow them across platforms, using more predictable programming to do it.
• “Viewers come back because they know and like what they’re getting, like they would on a traditional TV show,” she said.

Consistent content could help creators secure more brand integrations or create their own products.

“Having [more predictable content] is often considered the path to owning IP,” said Enberg.

It also opens the door to opportunities off social media, as shown by the popularity of “Beast Games,” the reality competition show starring YouTuber MrBeast, which launched on Amazon Prime Video last December.

“The success of ‘Beast Games,’ despite or maybe because of all of the controversy around it, has really made Hollywood executives much more open to licensing deals with creators, in part because it also gives them a more budget-friendly and audience-tested way to bring in new viewers,” said Enberg.

Watch the full session.

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