Eighty-nine percent of B2B marketing decision-makers expect their investments to rise. That is the number behind most 2027 creator budgets headlines. It is also not a creator number at all. Before you take a bigger ask to your CFO, you need to know which findings measure creators and which measure marketing in general.
The headline stat is about total marketing, not creators
Start with the source everyone is quoting. In its 2027 budget planning guides, Forrester found that 89% of B2B marketing decision-makers and 91% of B2C marketers expect marketing investments to increase over the next 12 months. Good news for the function. Thin evidence for a creator line item.
The same coverage breaks down where B2B money is headed. Technology gets the biggest boost, with 80% of B2B marketers planning to raise spending, while personnel and programmes follow at 76% each. Creators are not named in those categories. If your creator program lives inside “programmes,” it competes with every other campaign for a share of that growth.
So what do the reports claiming rising creator budgets actually mean? Usually one of three things: a vendor survey of its own customers, a market-size forecast, or a general budget survey stretched to fit. Each is useful. None is a benchmark for your allocation.
A rising total budget does not guarantee a rising creator budget. Creator spend grows only when someone can show it earns its share of that growth.
What B2B creator data does exist
The strongest creator-specific signal for B2B comes from LinkedIn’s own research, published alongside its creator product launches. Treat it with the usual caution: LinkedIn sells the media. Still, the sample is B2B marketers who already work with creators, and the findings are worth reading closely.
- Performance belief: 82% of B2B marketers who work with creators agree influencer campaigns are essential to deliver measurable ROI.
- Buyer behavior: 56% of B2B buyers who use creators rely on their input at the final stage of the buying process.
- Cost of retreat: 81% of B2B marketers who use creators say pulling back would mean leaving revenue on the table.
Notice the selection effect. These are people already using creators. Of course they defend the channel. The buyer-behavior stat is the more interesting one, because it points to creator content working late in the funnel, not just as top-of-funnel awareness. That is a pipeline argument, and pipeline is what finance listens to.
Market forecasts: big, but definition-dependent
Forecasts are the other pillar of the “budgets are rising” story. Forecasts are the other pillar of the story, but they measure the whole creator economy, which is a much wider pool than any brand budget. Impressive. Also not your budget.
The same article is careful to explain why these figures disagree. Some researchers count only influencer marketing. Others fold in platform payouts, subscriptions and digital product sales. The narrower, more useful number for budget owners is influencer marketing spend alone, and your own spend history is a better guide than any single market-size estimate.
If you want a deeper read on why the big number keeps shifting, our breakdown of where creator money flows covers the definitional traps.
Why B2B creator spend is plausibly rising anyway
The data is imperfect, but the direction holds up for structural reasons. Three are worth naming.
Buyers trust independent voices. Brand content is discounted by default. A practitioner who has run the sales team or the security program carries credibility a vendor blog cannot manufacture.
The plumbing improved. LinkedIn has been adding creator tooling inside Campaign Manager, including search by topic and managed payouts. Fewer manual steps means cheaper to run at scale. We looked at what that means for sourcing in our piece on the LinkedIn Creator Marketplace.
AI is changing discovery. Forrester reports that 94% of business buyers now use generative AI during the purchasing journey. If buyers ask a chatbot for a shortlist, third-party mentions matter more. Creator content is one source of those mentions, though the link is an inference, not something the survey proves.
Where budget growth tends to come from
Here is the practical question. When creator budgets rise, whose money is it? Our earlier analysis of influencer budgets outpacing media spend suggests much of it migrates from paid media and events, not from fresh dollars. That matters because it turns your request into a trade-off, and the person across the table will ask what you are cutting.
Be ready with an answer. Pull a cost-per-qualified-opportunity comparison between a creator-led program and the paid channel donating the budget. Even a rough one beats a general claim that creators work.
How to build the case without overreaching
- Separate the evidence tiers. Label each stat in your deck as general budget intent, creator-specific survey, or forecast. Finance will respect the honesty.
- Anchor to pipeline. Late-stage influence is the strongest B2B story. Tie creator touches to opportunity velocity using a pipeline velocity scorecard instead of reach and impressions.
- Model scale costs. Spend that grows needs a different structure than a pilot. Our guide to rebuilding the creator budget model walks through fixed versus variable lines.
- Judge audience, not size. A practitioner with a small following dense with your buyers can be worth more than a broad-reach account. A creator with a few thousand followers who are mostly procurement leads, CTOs and founders in your category can beat a far larger generalist account. That is an illustration, not survey data, but the logic holds for B2B selection.
- Build in vendor-grade controls. More money means more scrutiny. Contracts, usage rights and disclosure checks should look like any media buy.
What the data cannot tell you
Be clear-eyed about gaps. No source I reviewed reports a verified average percentage increase for B2B creator budgets next year. Self-reported intent is also not committed spend, and budgets get trimmed when quarterly targets slip. Vendor-sponsored surveys skew toward customers already invested in the category.
That does not make the trend false. It makes your own data more valuable than anyone’s survey. A clean test with a defined audience, a pipeline metric and a control group will outweigh every external benchmark in the room.
FAQs
Do surveys show B2B creator budgets will rise in 2027?
Not directly. Not directly. Forrester’s planning guides show 89% of B2B marketing decision-makers expect marketing investments to increase, but that covers all marketing. Creator-specific evidence is mostly belief and behavior data, such as LinkedIn’s finding that 82% of B2B marketers who work with creators agree influencer campaigns are essential to deliver measurable ROI.
Which B2B budget categories are growing fastest?
In Forrester’s findings, technology leads, with 80% of B2B marketers planning to increase spending. Personnel and programmes follow closely, at 76% each. Creator spend most likely sits inside programmes, so it has to compete for that growth.
Why do creator economy market-size numbers differ so much?
Definitions vary. Some firms count only influencer marketing, while others add platform payouts, subscriptions and product sales. For budgeting, the influencer marketing figure is the more relevant one.
How should I justify a larger creator budget to finance?
Show the source of the money, usually paid media or events, and compare cost per qualified opportunity between the two. Pair that with late-stage influence data, since 56% of B2B buyers who use creators rely on their input at the final stage of the buying process, according to LinkedIn.
Is LinkedIn’s research reliable for budget planning?
Use it as directional evidence. LinkedIn sells creator-related media, and its respondents already work with creators. Cross-check it against your own pipeline data before treating it as a benchmark.
Next step: before your 2027 planning meeting, label every stat in your budget deck by evidence type, then run one 60-day creator test against a paid channel using cost per qualified opportunity as the single scorecard.
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