Creator partnerships have grown up. Treat them like commercial deals

Creator marketing is no longer an experiment you run with leftover budget. According to the IAB’s 2025 Creator Economy Ad Spend & Strategy Report, US advertisers were expected to spend around $37 billion on creators in 2025, up 26% on the previous year and growing roughly four times faster than the media industry overall. Nearly half of ad buyers (48%) now describe creator partnerships as a "must buy".

As the money has grown, so have the expectations. Brands want creators to build awareness and reach new audiences, but also to drive sales and trust. And the top criteria for choosing a creator are reputation and genuine audience fit, not follower counts.

From gifting to proper partnerships

Sending free product and hoping for a post still has its place, but the brands getting real value are structuring creator relationships the way you’d structure any commercial partnership: clear objectives, agreed deliverables, usage rights and a way to measure what worked.

How to get more from creator partnerships

• Start with the audience, not the creator. Define exactly who you need to reach, then find creators whose audience genuinely matches. Relevance beats reach.

• Negotiate usage rights upfront. The biggest value often comes after the post goes live, when strong creator content is reused in paid social, email and on your website. Agree those rights at the start.

• Brief the outcome, not the script. Creators know what works with their audience. Give them the message, the guardrails and the goal, and let them make it their own.

• Think in series, not one-offs. Longer relationships build more trust with an audience than a single sponsored post, and usually cost less per piece of content.

• Be open about AI. The IAB found the overwhelming majority of advertisers have concerns about AI in creator marketing. Be transparent about how content is made and edited to protect trust on both sides.

The skills behind a great creator programme are the same ones behind any good partnership: finding the right fit, structuring a fair deal and making work people actually want to watch. That’s where creative and business development meet.

Here’s how we run business development for clients: researched target lists, outreach written for each person, introductions and a monthly pipeline report, with nothing sent until you approve it.