Sixty one percent of CMOs say they cannot confidently measure the ROI of their creator programs, yet creator budgets keep climbing anyway. That contradiction sits at the center of Dentsu’s new Making It Real report, and it should worry anyone holding a creator budget line. The report is less a trend forecast and more a confession: marketing leaders are funding a channel they still cannot fully justify on paper. For brands trying to set next year’s creator spend priorities, that gap between investment and proof is the whole story.
What the Report Actually Found
Dentsu surveyed senior marketers across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, and the headline finding is a reallocation story more than a growth story. Budgets aren’t simply expanding into creator, they’re being pulled from other lines (paid social, traditional influencer retainers, even some brand media) and redirected toward formats CMOs believe will survive the next platform shake up. That’s a meaningfully different posture than the “creator spend is growing” narrative that’s dominated trade press for the better part of three years.
Three priorities surfaced repeatedly in the data: performance accountability, fewer and deeper creator relationships, and AI-assisted production at scale. None of these are new concepts individually. What’s new is CMOs ranking them above reach and follower count for the first time in the report’s history.
Dentsu found that CMOs are three times more likely to increase spend with creators who can show funnel-stage attribution than with those who only report engagement metrics.
Priority One: Provable Performance Over Vanity Reach
This is the big one, and it tracks with what we’ve been covering all year. Brands are done paying for impressions they can’t tie to a business outcome. The shift mirrors what we reported in GMV overtakes engagement as a core KPI, where gross merchandise value started replacing likes and views as the number finance teams actually care about. Dentsu’s data adds another layer: CMOs now want payback period visibility before a campaign launches, not after.
That expectation is forcing agencies and in-house teams to build attribution models they previously treated as optional. It also explains why CAC payback period has become a gatekeeper metric for approving new creator spend. If a program can’t show how fast it recovers acquisition cost, it doesn’t get funded next quarter. Simple as that.
Practically, this means brands are asking creators and agencies for:
- Unique tracking links or promo codes tied to every piece of sponsored content
- Platform-level conversion data, not just reach and impressions
- Clear reporting cadences that match finance’s quarterly review cycles
- Benchmarked CAC targets before a creator is even briefed
If your program still reports success in engagement rate alone, you’re going to have a hard conversation with finance next budget cycle. The data increasingly points to eMarketer’s own research showing performance-based creator deals outpacing flat-fee arrangements in growth rate.
Fewer Creators, Deeper Relationships
The second priority is a consolidation story. CMOs told Dentsu they plan to work with fewer creators next year but spend more per relationship. This isn’t a budget cut dressed up as strategy, it’s a deliberate bet that depth beats breadth when algorithms keep shifting organic reach unpredictably.
We’ve seen this pattern building for a while. Brands that treat creators as recurring collaborators rather than one-off vendors see measurably better retention and content quality, something we unpacked in creator franchise strategy turning spend into owned IP. Dentsu’s report frames this as risk mitigation as much as performance optimization: fewer contracts means fewer compliance headaches, fewer disclosure gaps, and fewer surprises when a creator says something off-brand at 2am.
There’s also an operational logic here. Managing fifty micro-influencer relationships costs more in internal labor than managing ten strong ones, even if the ten cost more per deal. That math is exactly why creator operations strategist roles are showing up on org charts that didn’t have dedicated creator headcount two years ago.
Consolidation also shows up in platform choice. Rather than spreading budget across five point solutions for discovery, payment, contracting, and reporting, enterprise brands are standardizing on fewer, more capable platforms. We covered this shift in enterprise brands picking platforms over point solutions, and Dentsu’s findings reinforce it: risk and operational simplicity are now procurement criteria, not afterthoughts.
AI Production, But With Guardrails
Here’s where the report gets interesting. CMOs aren’t avoiding AI in creator content, they’re embracing it faster than most trade coverage suggests, but with conditions attached. Dentsu found strong appetite for AI-assisted editing, localization, and format repurposing. What CMOs are far more cautious about is synthetic or fully AI-generated creator content replacing human voices entirely.
That caution is well placed. Audiences can smell inauthenticity, and the backlash risk is real. We detailed the trust problem building around fabricated creator content in synthetic UGC networks forcing brands to rebuild trust metrics. Dentsu’s respondents seem to have internalized that lesson already: AI as a production accelerant, yes. AI as a creator replacement, not yet, and maybe not ever for categories where trust drives purchase decisions.
This nuance matters for budget planning. If you’re allocating next year’s creator spend assuming AI will slash production costs across the board, you’re reading the data wrong. The savings are concentrated in post-production and localization, not in replacing the human relationship that makes creator marketing work in the first place. For more on how conference conversations are shaping this debate, see our coverage of the IAB Hong Kong session putting AI reset budgets on trial.
Compliance Is Quietly Becoming a Budget Line
Buried in Dentsu’s findings is a less flashy but equally important shift: CMOs are allocating specific budget to disclosure compliance, contract review, and brand safety monitoring. This used to be a legal team afterthought. Now it’s a line item marketers plan for upfront.
Part of this is regulatory pressure. The FTC’s enforcement activity around influencer disclosure has sharpened over the past two years, and international brands are watching guidance from bodies like the ICO just as closely. Part of it is reputational. One mishandled partnership can undo months of brand equity work, a lesson explored in our piece on how a single lifestyle post backlash exposed programs without strategy.
Smart CMOs are treating compliance budget as insurance, not overhead. It’s cheaper to fund a review process than to manage a crisis.
Where the Money Is Actually Moving
Dentsu breaks out category-level spend intent, and a few patterns stand out. Retail and CPG brands are shifting dollars toward creators who can demonstrate basket lift, not just awareness, echoing what we found in phygital campaigns forcing brands to prove ROI. B2B marketers, long an afterthought in creator budgets, are increasing allocation faster than any other sector, a trend we flagged in the LinkedIn preference gap forcing B2B budget shifts.
Finance and fintech brands show a particularly interesting pattern: tying creator payouts directly to business outcomes like account funding rather than post volume, a model we broke down in neobanks tying creator payouts to funded accounts. Expect more categories to copy this performance-linked payment structure over the next budget cycle, especially as finance teams demand tighter accountability across every marketing line.
Podcasting also gets a notable mention in Dentsu’s data, with CMOs citing completion rates as a reason to shift dollars toward long-form audio creators, something we covered in the 80 percent completion rate pulling ad dollars into podcasts.
The Maturity Gap That Explains Everything
Maybe the most useful framing in the entire report is this: the CMOs reporting the strongest creator ROI aren’t the ones with the biggest budgets, they’re the ones with the most mature measurement systems. Dentsu’s data aligns closely with our own reporting on the creator marketing maturity curve splitting 2x ROI winners from everyone else.
Maturity isn’t about tenure in the channel. It’s about whether a brand has built the infrastructure, attribution, contracting, lifecycle management, that turns creator spend from a marketing experiment into a repeatable revenue driver. Brands stuck at low maturity keep running the same playbook and wondering why results plateau.
What This Means for Next Year’s Budget Conversations
If you’re building a creator budget proposal for the next planning cycle, Dentsu’s report gives you a credible external benchmark to anchor against. Lead with attribution capability, not reach projections. Finance teams respond to payback periods and CAC, not impression counts.
Second, don’t assume more creators equals more results. The data suggests the opposite: fewer, better-resourced relationships outperform spray-and-pray tactics, especially when you factor in the operational cost of managing dozens of smaller deals.
Third, budget for compliance and brand safety as a standing line item, not a reactive expense. And finally, treat AI as a production tool that frees up budget for human creator relationships, not a replacement for them. Brands that get this balance wrong will spend next year explaining underperformance instead of reporting it.
Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs
What is Dentsu’s Making It Real report about?
It’s a survey-based report examining how CMOs across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific are prioritizing creator marketing spend, with findings on performance measurement, creator relationship consolidation, AI production use, and compliance budgeting.
Why are CMOs reducing the number of creators they work with?
Dentsu’s data shows brands are prioritizing depth over breadth, investing more per creator relationship rather than spreading budget across many smaller partnerships. This reduces operational complexity, compliance risk, and reporting overhead while often improving content quality and retention.
Is AI replacing human creators according to the report?
No. CMOs surveyed showed strong interest in AI for production tasks like editing and localization, but expressed clear caution about fully synthetic content replacing authentic creator voices, particularly in categories where consumer trust drives purchase decisions.
What metrics are CMOs prioritizing for creator ROI next year?
CAC payback period, funnel-stage attribution, and gross merchandise value are replacing engagement rate and follower count as the primary metrics brands use to justify and expand creator budgets.
How should brands prepare their creator budget proposals based on this report?
Anchor proposals in attribution and payback period data rather than reach projections, budget for compliance and brand safety as standing costs, and prioritize fewer, deeper creator relationships over broad, shallow rosters.
Next step: Pull your current creator roster and flag every partnership that can’t produce a CAC or payback figure within the next reporting cycle. That list is your starting point for next year’s budget reallocation.
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