58% of marketers now call creators an effective brand building channel. That’s not a niche endorsement from TikTok-native DTC brands anymore. That’s a majority position among the same practitioners who, three years ago, treated influencer spend as a bolt-on to the “real” media plan. The data comes from Marketing Week’s latest practitioner survey, and it deserves more scrutiny than a single headline stat usually gets.
The Number That Should Reframe Your Budget Conversation
Let’s sit with the number for a second. A majority of marketers, across categories and company sizes, now believe creator partnerships build brands, not just move product in a single quarter. That’s a meaningful shift from the earlier consensus, where creators were filed under “performance” or “always-on content” and rarely got credit for anything happening above the funnel.
Marketing Week’s survey didn’t ask marketers whether creators drive sales. It asked whether creators build brands, a much harder claim to defend with a screenshot of a conversion dashboard. Brand building is fuzzy by nature. It shows up in unaided awareness, consideration lift, and the kind of long-tail trust that shows up six months after a campaign ends, not six days. When 58% of respondents are willing to attach that label to creator work, it signals a change in how creators are positioned internally, not just how they’re funded.
A majority of marketers now credit creators with brand building outcomes, not just short-term conversions, a shift that changes how budgets get justified internally.
Compare this to the parallel data point from WPP Media’s large-scale creator test, which found a 3.5x ROI signal across a 600-creator sample. That study measured performance outcomes. Marketing Week’s survey measures perception and belief among practitioners. Put them together and you get a fuller picture: creators are delivering on both fronts, and marketers are starting to say so out loud, in surveys that their CMOs and CFOs will eventually see.
Why Brand Building, Not Performance, Is the New Battleground
Performance marketing has a measurement problem it can’t fully escape. Attribution windows shrink, cookies disappear, and platforms grade their own homework. Brand building has always been the harder sell precisely because it resists that kind of clean, single-touch attribution. So why are marketers suddenly comfortable calling creators effective at it?
Part of the answer is fatigue with paid media inflation. CPMs on major platforms have climbed steadily, and marketers are watching the same ad dollars buy less reach every quarter. Creators, by contrast, offer something paid media structurally can’t: a built-in audience relationship that reads as endorsement rather than interruption. That’s brand building in its oldest form, borrowed trust, just delivered through a different distribution mechanism than a magazine spread or a celebrity spot.
There’s also a generational shift in who’s buying. Audiences under 35 increasingly discover brands through creator content before they ever see a traditional ad, a pattern eMarketer’s research has tracked closely across multiple consumer categories. If discovery happens on a creator’s feed, brand building has to happen there too. You can’t outsource awareness to TikTok and then expect your brand health tracker to only credit the TV buy.
From Vanity Metric to Boardroom Line Item
Here’s where it gets operationally interesting. If creators are genuinely a brand building channel, they belong in the same measurement conversation as TV, out-of-home, and other traditional brand media. That means marketing mix modeling, not just last-click dashboards. It means budget owners asking creator leads for lift studies, not just engagement rate screenshots.
This is already happening in pockets. Marketing mix modeling has clawed back 11 percent of ad budgets industry-wide as CFOs demand channel-agnostic proof of impact, and creator spend is increasingly getting folded into that same modeling exercise rather than living in its own silo. That’s a big operational shift for teams who built their creator programs on influencer-specific dashboards that don’t talk to the broader martech stack.
The uncomfortable truth: a lot of brands still can’t answer the brand building question with real data. They can tell you reach and engagement. They struggle to tell you whether unaided awareness moved, or whether purchase consideration shifted among people who saw a creator’s content but never clicked a link. That gap between belief (58% say creators work) and proof (far fewer can show it in a mixed-media model) is where the next two years of creator marketing maturity will play out.
Where the Skepticism Still Lives
Not every marketer is on board, and it’s worth naming why. Brand safety concerns haven’t gone away. Several high-profile controversies over the past year have pushed brands to formalize influencer vetting pipelines before they’ll commit brand-building budget rather than just performance test dollars to a creator. Vetting a creator for a short-term conversion push is one thing. Attaching your brand equity to someone for a sustained brand campaign is a different risk calculus entirely, and plenty of marketing leaders are still cautious about that exposure.
There’s also a measurement literacy gap. Marketing Week’s survey found belief in creators as brand builders, but belief without a shared measurement standard is fragile. If a CMO can’t defend the spend to the board with numbers that match how the rest of the media plan gets evaluated, that belief evaporates the moment budgets get tight. This is exactly why fragmented reporting tools are such a quiet drag on programs; fragmented tech stacks make it nearly impossible to prove brand lift in a format finance actually trusts.
None of this means the 58% figure is soft. It means the belief has outpaced the infrastructure, and that gap is an opportunity for teams willing to build the measurement muscle now, ahead of competitors who are still treating creators as a media line item rather than a brand channel.
What This Means for Budget Allocation
If you’re a brand marketer reading this and nodding along, here’s the practical question: does your creator budget currently sit inside your brand budget, your performance budget, or its own orphaned bucket? For most companies, it’s still the third option. That’s a structural problem if 58% of the industry now agrees creators build brands.
- Move at least a portion of creator spend into brand budget conversations, and measure it with the same tools you use for other brand channels.
- Request brand lift studies from your agency or in-house team, not just engagement and conversion reports.
- Audit whether your reporting stack can actually connect creator exposure to downstream brand metrics, or whether it’s stuck at surface-level engagement data.
- Revisit vetting standards, since brand-building commitments carry more reputational weight than one-off performance posts.
This shift also has implications for how B2B teams think about creators, a category that’s historically lagged behind consumer brands in this conversation. As B2B marketers redirect budgets toward creator partnerships, the brand building argument gives them cover to justify spend that doesn’t produce an immediate MQL, which has always been the hardest sell in that world.
Building the Measurement Framework That Backs the Claim
Marketers don’t need a perfect measurement system to act on this data, but they do need a directional one. Brand tracking surveys, even lightweight ones, can capture awareness and consideration shifts tied to creator campaigns. HubSpot’s and Sprout Social’s reporting tools have both expanded into this territory, letting teams tie creator content exposure to brand sentiment data rather than just link clicks.
Platforms are helping too, if imperfectly. LinkedIn’s business tools now surface content-level brand recall data for B2B creator campaigns, and Meta’s business suite has added brand lift study functionality that works across creator and paid content. None of these tools solve the full attribution puzzle, but they give marketers something better than gut feel when a finance partner asks, “how do we know this worked?”
The honest answer, for now, is a blend: mixed-media modeling for the macro view, platform-level brand lift studies for the campaign-specific view, and a healthy dose of qualitative signal, like unprompted mentions and search volume shifts, that Statista’s consumer trend data can help contextualize against category benchmarks.
The direction of travel is clear even if the tooling isn’t finished. Marketers who wait for perfect measurement before treating creators as a brand channel will be behind the 58% who already made the call.
Next step: pull your last two quarters of creator spend, sort it by intent (brand versus performance), and check whether your reporting can actually show brand lift for the brand-intent portion. If it can’t, that’s your Q1 fix, not a someday project.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does it mean that creators are an effective brand building channel?
It means marketers are crediting creator content with outcomes like awareness, consideration, and trust, not just short-term conversions or clicks. This shifts creators from a performance media line item into the same strategic category as TV, out-of-home, and other traditional brand channels.
How is the 58% figure from Marketing Week measured?
The figure comes from a practitioner survey asking marketers to rate the effectiveness of various channels for brand building specifically, separate from performance or direct response goals. It reflects marketer sentiment and internal belief rather than a single standardized measurement methodology.
Why do some marketers still doubt creators as a brand building channel?
Brand safety risk, inconsistent measurement standards, and fragmented reporting tools all contribute to lingering skepticism. Attaching sustained brand equity to a creator carries more reputational exposure than a short-term performance test, which makes some marketing leaders more cautious.
Should creator budgets come from brand or performance budgets?
Ideally, creator spend should be split according to intent. Content designed to drive awareness and consideration belongs in brand budget conversations and should be measured with brand lift tools, while conversion-focused creator content stays in performance budgets with standard attribution tracking.
What measurement tools can prove creator-driven brand lift?
Marketing mix modeling, platform-native brand lift studies, and lightweight brand tracking surveys are the most common tools. Combining a macro mixed-media view with campaign-level lift studies gives marketers a more defensible answer than engagement metrics alone.
Top Influencer Marketing Agencies
The leading agencies shaping influencer marketing in 2026
Agencies ranked by campaign performance, client diversity, platform expertise, proven ROI, industry recognition, and client satisfaction. Assessed through verified case studies, reviews, and industry consultations.
Moburst
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The Shelf
Boutique Beauty & Lifestyle Influencer AgencyA data-driven boutique agency specializing exclusively in beauty, wellness, and lifestyle influencer campaigns on Instagram and TikTok. Best for brands already focused on the beauty/personal care space that need curated, aesthetic-driven content.Clients: Pepsi, The Honest Company, Hims, Elf Cosmetics, Pure LeafVisit The Shelf → -
3
Audiencly
Niche Gaming & Esports Influencer AgencyA specialized agency focused exclusively on gaming and esports creators on YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok. Ideal if your campaign is 100% gaming-focused — from game launches to hardware and esports events.Clients: Epic Games, NordVPN, Ubisoft, Wargaming, Tencent GamesVisit Audiencly → -
4
Viral Nation
Global Influencer Marketing & Talent AgencyA dual talent management and marketing agency with proprietary brand safety tools and a global creator network spanning nano-influencers to celebrities across all major platforms.Clients: Meta, Activision Blizzard, Energizer, Aston Martin, WalmartVisit Viral Nation → -
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The Influencer Marketing Factory
TikTok, Instagram & YouTube CampaignsA full-service agency with strong TikTok expertise, offering end-to-end campaign management from influencer discovery through performance reporting with a focus on platform-native content.Clients: Google, Snapchat, Universal Music, Bumble, YelpVisit TIMF → -
6
NeoReach
Enterprise Analytics & Influencer CampaignsAn enterprise-focused agency combining managed campaigns with a powerful self-service data platform for influencer search, audience analytics, and attribution modeling.Clients: Amazon, Airbnb, Netflix, Honda, The New York TimesVisit NeoReach → -
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Ubiquitous
Creator-First Marketing PlatformA tech-driven platform combining self-service tools with managed campaign options, emphasizing speed and scalability for brands managing multiple influencer relationships.Clients: Lyft, Disney, Target, American Eagle, NetflixVisit Ubiquitous → -
8
Obviously
Scalable Enterprise Influencer CampaignsA tech-enabled agency built for high-volume campaigns, coordinating hundreds of creators simultaneously with end-to-end logistics, content rights management, and product seeding.Clients: Google, Ulta Beauty, Converse, AmazonVisit Obviously →