Is there such a thing as over-preparing? It certainly feels that way in the case of TikTok’s ban, which has been playing out in the U.S. for months since its initial January 2025 deadline following legislation signed by former President Joe Biden in April 2024 requiring the ByteDance app to sell to a U.S. owner or get shut down. After January, President Trump signed a 75-day extension for TikTok to work out a deal.

This time around, eight agencies and influencer marketing execs told Digiday that their general sentiment going into the April 5 deadline this weekend is more calm and confident. That’s because they’ve had months of practice and data gleaned from the temporary outage on Jan. 18, while some are more sure that a deal or extension is likely to go through by this deadline. Some advertisers like Coca-Cola and Comcast have even increased their spend on the platform this year, as Digiday previously reported this week.

“We’re worn down a little bit by the drama,” said Joanna Fowler, head of talent at Shine Talent Group. “We’re ready to just … move into the action phase, [which includes] building on another platform.”

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Unilever may be investing billions of dollars into influencer marketing, but marketers aren’t necessarily copying their playbook just yet.

When one of the world’s largest advertisers says it will now invest half of its ad budget (some $8.5 billion globally in 2023, per Statista) on social media with plans to work with 20 times more influencers, it can make waves — enough that small and medium-sized marketers rush to follow suit.

But before marketers consider doing so, they need to remember that the creator economy isn’t just another media channel but an ecosystem all its own with potential hazards along the way.

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With influencer marketing budgets steadily rising, more multinational brands are partnering with influencer agencies as the industry becomes more complex.

The World Federation of Advertisers released a report today showing that some 54% of multinational brand marketers plan to boost influencer marketing spend in 2025, with 61% agreeing that influencer marketing will become more important in the future. However, due to ongoing challenges navigating the space, like issues with disclosures and transparency on creator campaigns, more brands are employing the help of agencies that play a role in influencer marketing.

“Budgets will reflect this as will the increased usage of partners with expertise in influencer marketing,” said Will Gilroy, director of communications and strategy at WFA. “But this opportunity is a double-edged sword unless we get it right through responsible practices.”

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We’re all familiar with user-generated content all over social media by now — but what about employee-generated content?

Five B2B brands told Digiday that they are turning to their own employees to create and publish content as the new company “influencers,” to extend their reach and engagement beyond their brand social pages. Some of these brands said their employee content performs better than brand content as social media algorithms continue to prioritize individual pages over brands.

“Employees have always been an extension of a brand’s identity,” said Michelle Mastrobattista, founder and creative marketing strategist at marketing agency Brand Paradise. “This expectation has shifted to social media, where employees are encouraged to share their professional journeys, behind-the-scenes moments and personal insights.”

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Agencies are updating more creator contracts with AI clauses and terms as clients raise brand safety considerations, according to three agency execs who spoke to Digiday.

With the ongoing use of generative artificial intelligence in content creation and influencer marketing raising legal and practical considerations for marketers and creators, execs say they are hearing from more clients over the past year to adjust creator contracts to mitigate brand safety risks, copyright infringement and other legal troubles down the line. This includes language specifying that creators do not use AI in content generation, as well as requests for the agency itself not to use AI in its work.

This comes as broader AI and copyright policies continue to take shape in the U.S., with tech giants and lawmakers debating the balance of pushing AI innovation and upholding copyright restrictions. For instance, OpenAI already faces lawsuits from The New York Times, The Center for Investigative Reporting and multiple outlets owned by Alden Global Capital. Google was also sued by education company Chegg, which claims that the search giant’s AI-generated summaries in search results impact its traffic and revenue.

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The lines between a Hollywood celebrity and content creator are blurrier than ever, which is shifting the way agencies and brands approach influencer marketing.

In the current marketing landscape, it comes down to prioritizing the partner and most effective brand ambassador, according to influencer marketing agency execs. While there might have been a clearer distinction between working with traditional celebrities and betting on creators in the earlier days of influencer marketing, the business increasingly demands someone who understands both realms.

Take the confluence that happened at the Super Bowl, where Alix Earle and Addison Rae have appeared in ads. It wouldn’t have happened 10 years ago, said Sarah Gerrish, senior director of influencer and creator marketing at creative agency Movers+Shaker.

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With so many creators making their livelihoods across social platforms, players like shopping app LTK and creators virtually have no control over how those algorithms shift and prioritize content.

More importantly, this leaves creators vulnerable if their affiliate businesses are built on social media, like TikTok and Instagram. LTK hopes to give back control to creators with a revamp of its consumer app that began in late February.

LTK (LiketoKnow.it) might be best known for finding deals and trendy influencers, but the company is now overhauling its consumer experience to focus on more entertainment and social media features, like direct messages, discovery feed and videos. The new app will look and feel more like a social app with a watch video tab based on location and interests, a home feed of updates from creators, chat tab for messaging and a discover page for finding more related content.

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Creator company Whalar Group opened its doors to a newly-built co-working and production space in Los Angeles for creators in February. Named The Lighthouse, it’s not exactly a school, but not exactly an office either. For Whalar, the intention is to gather creators in one place and see what comes of it, whether that’s business ventures, funding or other creative pursuits, explained Neil Waller, co-founder and co-CEO of Whalar Group.

“Now, a week after when the space is open, I just see people talking to each other and agreeing to do things with each other just by the nature of being around each other,” Waller said in late February. “It’s literally everything we could have like dreamt of coming to fruition.”

The Lighthouse is a members-only place for creators to connect with fellow creators, work on attracting brand partnerships and access professional resources. That’s why Whalar sees it as akin to a university campus that aims to not just provide a networking and production ground for creators, but also act as a vehicle for brands to recruit talent — and prove that all these services under one roof can work as a business.

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The creator economy is taking a closer look at creator affiliate programs, giving them more scrutiny than before. The move follows creator pushback against Honey, a PayPal-owned browser extension, after reports broke late last year that the company was allegedly skimming creators’ affiliate revenue.

Honey, which finds coupon codes for online shopping, was exposed by YouTuber MegaLag for allegedly hijacking affiliate links from creators and using its own (even in cases where it wasn’t a better deal). This has since resulted in class action lawsuits from several creators including YouTubers Legal Eagle and GamersNexus, against the browser extension, claiming that Honey is taking affiliate revenue that belonged to creators.

It’s not just Honey. Other companies including Microsoft and Capital One are facing similar claims regarding their browser extensions through Microsoft Shopping and Capital One Shopping. Now creator and legal experts expect to see greater scrutiny to these affiliate partnerships and changes to influencer contracts and agreements to include more protections to mitigate risk — on both the brand and creator sides. While some creator agreements already include morals clauses or similar terms for exit deals if a brand engages in disreputable conduct, there’s more interest from creators today for those terms. PayPal, Microsoft and Capital One did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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The creator economy is still growing rapidly but that growth isn’t always a benefit to creators.

It’s already difficult to maintain a living as a full-time creator — even more so in recent years as new creators continue to flood the market. An estimated 3% of the U.S. population in 2022 was considered an influencer, up from about 2% in 2020, per influencer marketing platform Influencity — with places like New York (6.45% of its population considered an influencer) and California (5.42% of its population considered an influencer) leading in influencer density in the state.

Meanwhile, influencer agency Neoreach found that only around 15% of 2,000 creators surveyed in 2023 made more than $100,000 per year, and about 69% made less than $50,000 annually. Some 48% made less than $15,000 per year, per the company’s data. Given the competitive landscape as well as an uncertain economic market and the stability of platforms like TikTok, some creators are considering re-joining the traditional workforce for more stability.

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Marketers can’t just check the influencer box on a campaign these days — it’s not enough to have influencers in the mix. Brands need the right influencers for them.

That’s what Black-owned digital media network Culture Genesis has been pitching to brands: A targeted, engaged audience through a network of multicultural and Black creators that are already successful on YouTube. Creators like YouTuber LaLa Milan (422K YouTube subscribers and 3.9 million Instagram followers) and streamer Kai Cenat (with 12 million YouTube subscribers and 13 million Instagram followers) work with Culture Genesis; the agency’s creators make content for brands like Ford and Dove. Now the company hopes it can replicate that growth in its creator strategy with the launch of a new content network dedicated to South Asian creators, called HYPHEN8.

“We are copy pasting … from Culture Genesis, where you’ll see that they follow this exact pattern,” said Joey Mullick, partner at Skara Ventures, an investor of Culture Genesis. (Sean Kilbane, current chief strategy officer at Skara, will also serve as the network’s interim CEO.)

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Publicis on Tuesday said it plans to acquire Brazil-based influencer marketing company BR Media Group, and its network of some 500,000 creators.

With another holding company acquiring an influencer marketing shop, it seems the creator mergers and acquisitions market is still hot. WPP bought influencer agencies Village Marketing in 2022 and Goat in 2023; Stagwell purchased Leaders last year and rolled the agency into Stagwell Marketing Cloud’s tech suite.

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Pending regulatory approval, the Publicis deal is expected to close in late March 2025. While financial terms were not made available, this acquisition would build on a growing influencer division for Publicis, which also acquired influencer company Influential last year.

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Not every creator will end up with a media empire like Mr. Beast’s and score a lucrative streaming deal — but maybe they don’t have to go that route.

Thanks to a variety of revenue streams, be it a product line or brand sponsorships, creators can supplement the ad revenue they generate from posting content to social media platforms. Now with content studios (and some agencies) offering new ways for creators to monetize existing content or produce original creator series for social or connected TV — they can up their content distribution and negotiate more extensive partnerships with brands.

Founded in 2007, production company London Alley, which has produced commercials for Smirnoff and Bose, is developing original creator content through its digital studio that seeks to fill a new space of “indie television” on YouTube, said Ryan Horrigan, president of London Alley Studios. By producing long-form episodic content with creators who come with an established audience (in the millions, per Horrigan) on platforms like YouTube or TikTok, Horrigan believes creators and brands can go beyond the traditional model of selling shows to streaming platforms.

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Instagram Reels might be the current closest social media experience to TikTok, but can it seize upon its competitor’s stumble in the U.S. to overtake a major rival?

Reels is similar in user experience and content to TikTok, which puts the Meta app in a strong position as the ByteDance-owned app remains in flux. But Instagram will have to lure more Gen Z users as it combats an aging user base and convince advertisers to continue investing in Reels despite some seeing costs increase. Instagram is already the largest part of Meta’s ad business, and if it can seize this opportunity to upsell advertisers — will users still flock there instead of TikTok?

Both TikTok and Instagram draw younger audiences compared to Facebook, with 62% of 18- to 29-year-olds in the U.S. saying they use TikTok, while 78% of the same age group use Instagram, per Pew Research Center. Americans ages 30 to 49 use LinkedIn, WhatsApp and Facebook at higher rates. A brand’s consideration comes down to where its audience is, said Mark Lodwick, director of marketing at Intuit Mailchimp. Lodwick has found “TikTok [being] great for reaching millennials and Gen Z.”

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The lines between entertainment catered to social media versus sit-down TV may be blurring more than ever, especially as more creators straddle the two worlds.

As creators roll out more episodic content and series, major marketers are inking longer-term deals to puts ads on those series and expand content beyond ad hoc creator partnerships and to invest in creators and their audiences. Advertisers like Match Group (with series like “The Connection Experience”), Amazon (“Boy Room”) and Walmart (“Add to Heart”) are among those already working with creators on longer-term series.

There are also cost advantages when working with creators more long-term, according to agencies, and beyond that brands can get more sustained return on their content strategies rather than banking on one-off posts or hoping for viral moments. When it comes to long-term, creators might be partnered for a series of social posts or videos and contracted for a longer duration of a campaign. If they are producing a show or starring in one, they might be signing agreements or contracts like actors.

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Snapchat is vying for ad dollars dedicated to creators, touting monetization tools and its Gen Z audience — but three agency execs say they are not seeing dollars move over just yet.

There is money on the table for TikTok rivals right now, given the roller coaster of TikTok’s status in the U.S. But Snapchat will have to convince marketers that it can reach beyond its mostly Gen Z or Gen Alpha audience to win over any amount of substantial dollars from its competitors like Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube.

Snapchat revealed in its Q4 earnings yesterday that the creator content had grown year-over-year by 40%. The platform postured itself to marketers as a unique place for creators at last week’s 2025 ANA Creator Marketing Conference, where Brooke Berry, head of creator development at Snap and Francis Roberts, global head of public figures at Snap, boasted in a panel discussion about the variety of ad formats and types of creator content they see across all different parts of the funnel in working with advertisers like Priceline and Celsius Energy Drink.

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Marketers are integrating creators into their Super Bowl plans not just during the Big Game but in the run-up and after this year. Last year, creators like Addison Rae and Charli D’Amelio, broke into the Super Bowl by appearing in Big Game ads. This year, creators are hosting live events, rallying fans online and staying at creator-only houses to make content and attract brand deals.

Super Bowl LIX is not only a competitive night for the teams — the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles will face off Feb. 9 on Fox at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans — but for advertisers. A 30-second ad can now top some $8 million in 2025 — surpassing $7 million for the same type of spot in 2024.

Creators and brands have to find more ways to stand out in a period of content overload and ensure their investments still pay off. It’s a difficult task in a more fragmented digital landscape and an important moment for creators as the continuously-looming TikTok ban continues to change the creator economy.

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While TikTok’s status in the U.S. still hangs in the balance, agencies are already shifting the way they recruit creators and develop strategies for their creator campaigns moving forward.

Now even as marketers warily resume their influencer marketing spending, agencies feel pressured to put more emphasis on creators’ multi-platform presence and flexibility in their advertiser contracts. It will no longer be enough for creators to have a million followers on any single platform.

“It kind of makes you think a little bit more deeply about … each and every deliverable [and] the way we go about future campaigns, as well,” said Ria Madon, senior director of creator partnerships at social media agency Superdigital. “Moving forward, [the focus is] working with creators who have diversified their platforms and have similar reach on all platforms, versus just one or the other — it’s affecting that thought process across the board for me.”

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The cloud of TikTok’s uncertain future is still lingering.

Some marketers are forging ahead on TikTok creator campaigns after its brief shutdown this month, albeit warily, given the app’s unclear future. Others are maintaining their strategies as if a ban is still in effect and limiting their long-term campaigns as they consider the various twists and turns happening around the ByteDance-owned platform.

“We are still seeing deals come through as usual, but some brands are focusing on other platforms outside of TikTok at the moment because of the long-term uncertainty,” said Ali Grant, co-CEO of influencer agency The Digital Department. “Once TikTok was inoperable in the U.S., we received emails about moving campaigns to alternate platforms. But as we know, that was short-lived.”

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By now, spotting influencers in major ads and at events is all but mainstream — but what if artificial intelligence allowed influencers to tap into old-school product placement without actually having to shoot in person with brands?

Imagine seeing more seamless product placements across movies and TV shows that are more story-driven and adaptable to various pieces of content, where brands get virtually inserted onto products, backgrounds or signage in post-production. New AI-backed virtual product placement tools, such as Mirriad, Ryff and Inshorts, can add an election billboard to a movie scene or edit in clothes in the background of a creator’s lifestyle videos without the talent or creators actually featuring those products in the filming. Brands from Hallmark to Univision have been testing this product placement method since 2020.

With these platforms, brands can make product placements far more natural-looking and scalable now — and the hope is this technology can bridge the gap in the world of product placement and simultaneously boost influencer content across channels. For example, Mirriad included its virtual product placement in 2024 TV Upfronts. South Korean ad company Inshorts last year also applied its AI digital product placement to drama “Maestra.”

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