Despite 71% of U.S. marketers now investing more than $1 million annually in creator marketing, many brands struggle to scale their efforts effectively. A recent study by global creator-first agency Billion Dollar Boy (BDB) identifies the specific operational challenges preventing brands from unlocking the full potential of their creator partnerships, even as investment in the channel continues to grow.
“At Billion Dollar Boy, research is core to how we operate. We don’t rely on intuition, we always listen to clients, creators, and partners, stay informed with how the industry is responding to new developments, and layer regular, independent research on top,” explains Edward East, founder and CEO of Billion Dollar Boy.
“With this survey in particular, we set out to understand the biggest obstacles brands face in scaling their creator marketing efforts and how we can better support them in growing their campaigns with confidence.”
The study, conducted by Censuswide on behalf of Billion Dollar Boy, surveyed 2,000 senior marketing professionals across the U.S. and UK to identify the most pressing challenges in creator marketing. The findings reveal a significant “operational gap” that’s preventing brands from scaling their creator marketing efforts with the same confidence they have in the channel’s performance.
The Authenticity-Scale Tension
The research highlights a key tension at the heart of modern creator marketing: how to maintain authenticity while scaling operations.
One in three marketers (33.88%) cite “maintaining authentic, high-quality content and consistent brand messaging” as their top concern when growing creator marketing efforts, while a nearly identical percentage (33.58%) worry about “managing relationships at scale and ensuring creator preference for the brand’s partnerships.”
Image source: Billion Dollar Boy
“Authentic, quality content, and consistent brand messaging are essential for effective creator marketing campaigns,” Edward explains. “Creators need a level of creative freedom to tailor their content to their audience while still aligning with the brand’s goals and messaging for the campaign. But, as brands scale creator efforts, vetting creators to ensure they align with the brand’s values, managing the creators, aligning on creative direction, and overseeing content, becomes increasingly complex.”
This challenge is particularly pronounced in the UK market, where 36% of marketers cite relationship management as a primary concern, compared to 31% in the U.S. The personal attention that made early creator partnerships successful becomes harder to maintain as programs expand to include more creators across multiple platforms and campaigns.
“Creator marketing is growing fast and brands want to keep up with the pace of culture,” Edward notes. “But the speed of change has left internal processes struggling to keep up. Many teams simply don’t have the resources to search for and vet creators, manage large-scale campaigns, track content performance, or make real-time content pivots.”
Strategic and Creative Expertise
Beyond operational issues, 31% of marketers worry about “finding the right insight, strategy and creative expertise” when scaling their creator programs. This suggests that many brands recognize the need for specialized knowledge as their creator marketing initiatives become more sophisticated and central to their overall marketing strategy.
“It’s clear evidence that marketers are taking this channel seriously and investing extensively in it … the research is proof that it’s no longer an ‘add-on’; brands have moved well beyond experimenting and are now investing significant and growing ad spend on creator marketing.”
As creator marketing becomes a more significant part of brands’ marketing mix, the strategic demands increase. Marketers need deeper insights into creator audiences, more sophisticated creative approaches, and better integration with broader marketing initiatives. This growing complexity requires specialized expertise that many internal teams don’t possess.
Vetting and Platform Challenges
Another significant challenge identified by 29% of marketers is “identifying and vetting the right influencers at scale.” As programs expand beyond a handful of creators to potentially dozens or hundreds, the process of finding and evaluating suitable partners becomes exponentially more complex.
This vetting process encompasses not only basic factors, such as audience demographics and engagement rates, but also more nuanced considerations, including brand alignment, content quality, and creator values. The risk of partnering with inappropriate creators increases as programs scale, making thorough vetting processes essential, but often difficult to implement effectively.
Beyond creator selection, 26% of marketers express concern about “managing platform changes and new social media trends” when scaling creator marketing efforts. This issue is slightly more pronounced among U.S. marketers (27%) than among their UK counterparts (24%), potentially reflecting uncertainty surrounding platforms like TikTok in the U.S. market.
The constantly changing social media space, with new platforms emerging, existing platforms updating features and algorithms, and shifting user behaviors, creates an additional layer of complexity for brands trying to scale their creator programs.
The Measurement Misalignment
“Proving effectiveness against business objectives” ranks fifth among marketers’ concerns, cited by 28% of respondents. While still a significant challenge, this suggests that the operational aspects of managing creator programs at scale are currently more pressing for most marketers than measurement concerns.
Edward notes that measuring effectiveness continues to be viewed as one of the channel’s biggest hurdles, a finding echoed in research from the World Advertising Research Center, where a majority of marketers identified it as a top challenge. But this will soon change with ever more sophisticated and integrated measurement systems, driving stronger use of first-party data, and clearer industry standards to determine full-funnel creator impact and halo effects with complementary channels – from direct attribution in retail sales to more agile econometric modelling techniques.”
Billion Dollar Boy’s research also revealed a significant misalignment between campaign objectives and success metrics, which complicates scaling efforts. “We found that 41% of marketers say ‘increasing brand awareness is a top priority during the planning phase of creator campaigns,’ but 60% actually measure success by ROI [Return on Investment]. It highlights a structural gap when success metrics don’t match campaign objectives.”
This misalignment between planning and evaluation creates a barrier to effective scaling. When brands evaluate creator marketing based on metrics that don’t match their stated objectives, they may make incorrect assumptions about performance and allocate resources ineffectively.
Edward emphasizes that “to get the most value from creator marketing, internal teams need to align on goals and define success measures so that the campaign isn’t being set up to fall short.”
Why Brands Turn to Agency Partners
As brands confront these scaling challenges, they’re increasingly turning to specialized partners for support. The research found that fewer than 1% of marketers manage creator marketing activity without agency support. This contradicts the common narrative that brands are increasingly bringing creator marketing in-house.
“There’s been a growing narrative suggesting brands are increasingly managing creator marketing in-house, but our research found that in fact fewer than 1% of marketers manage creator activity without agency support,” Edward says. “This finding was really interesting, because it shows just how much brands are relying on specialized agency partnerships to provide logistical support, creative leadership, robust creator networks, rigorous vetting processes, and expert teams to manage and measure campaigns.”
The operational challenges identified in the research help explain this reliance on agency partnerships. As brands recognize the complexity of scaling creator programs while maintaining quality, they seek external expertise rather than building these capabilities internally.
The research indicates that brands are utilizing various types of agency partners to expand their creator marketing efforts, with creator marketing agencies (29%), social media agencies (26%), and creative agencies (15%) being the most common. Regional differences are notable, with U.S. marketers more likely to work with specialist creator marketing agencies (38% vs. 19% in the UK), while UK marketers are more frequently partnered with creative agencies (21% vs. 12% in the U.S.).
Strategies for Scaling Creator Marketing
For brands looking to overcome these scaling challenges, Edward suggests several strategic approaches based on Billion Dollar Boy’s experience working with global brands such as Heineken, Nike, Unilever, PepsiCo, and L’Oréal.
Ambassador programs represent one effective strategy for maintaining quality while scaling. “For brands not working with agencies to scale their creator marketing, ambassador programs offer a great opportunity to achieve authenticity and consistency,” Edward says. “It’s a popular strategy. According to our research, 73% of marketers planned to invest more in ambassador programs this year.”
These partnerships provide a solution to several of the key challenges identified in the research. “These long-term partnerships help brands build deep relationships with creators who truly align with their values. As creators become more familiar with the brand and its messaging, they naturally develop into brand advocates. Audiences also start to develop trust and recognition of the brand over time, especially for longer partnerships that can last up to a year or even more,” Edward explains.
Technology and specialized infrastructure also play a critical role in addressing the operational gap. “Our proprietary creator marketing platform, Companion, uses AI to help us discover and vet creators, track performance, and generate instant campaign reports. It has a database of 130M+ creators globally, helping us quickly identify the best-fitting creators for each brand, alongside our human oversight and manual searches,” Edward says.
The Future of Scaled Creator Marketing
As creator marketing continues to mature and brands invest more heavily in the channel, addressing these operational challenges will become increasingly important. Edward, who founded Billion Dollar Boy in 2014 based on the belief that “creators were not a bolt-on or a channel – they were the future of brand-building,” sees the industry at an important transition point.
“What excites me most is that we’re on the cusp of a meaningful shift in how marketing works. For years, creator marketing has been about proving itself, showing it can drive engagement, sales, and brand love. That proof now exists at scale. The next chapter is about something bigger: creators becoming the architects of how brands show up in culture,” he explains.
Edward envisions a future where creator marketing transforms from an isolated channel to a central organizing principle for brand building. “I find it thrilling to imagine a world where brand stories aren’t bolted on to culture, but are born from it. Where creativity, technology, and community collide to make marketing feel less like an interruption and more like a living part of people’s lives.”
For brands and marketing professionals adapting to this shift, understanding and addressing the operational challenges of scaling creator marketing will be essential to unlocking the channel’s full potential.
As Edward concludes, “That’s the future we are working towards, one where creators don’t just influence culture, they’re driving the culture. And the opportunity to help shape that future is what excites me every day.”
David Adler is an entrepreneur and freelance blog post writer who enjoys writing about business, entrepreneurship, travel and the influencer marketing space.
Despite 71% of U.S. marketers now investing more than $1 million annually in creator marketing, many brands struggle to scale their efforts effectively. A recent study by global creator-first agency Billion Dollar Boy (BDB) identifies the specific operational challenges preventing brands from unlocking the full potential of their creator partnerships, even as investment in the channel continues to grow.
“At Billion Dollar Boy, research is core to how we operate. We don’t rely on intuition, we always listen to clients, creators, and partners, stay informed with how the industry is responding to new developments, and layer regular, independent research on top,” explains Edward East, founder and CEO of Billion Dollar Boy.
“With this survey in particular, we set out to understand the biggest obstacles brands face in scaling their creator marketing efforts and how we can better support them in growing their campaigns with confidence.”
The study, conducted by Censuswide on behalf of Billion Dollar Boy, surveyed 2,000 senior marketing professionals across the U.S. and UK to identify the most pressing challenges in creator marketing. The findings reveal a significant “operational gap” that’s preventing brands from scaling their creator marketing efforts with the same confidence they have in the channel’s performance.
The Authenticity-Scale Tension
The research highlights a key tension at the heart of modern creator marketing: how to maintain authenticity while scaling operations.
One in three marketers (33.88%) cite “maintaining authentic, high-quality content and consistent brand messaging” as their top concern when growing creator marketing efforts, while a nearly identical percentage (33.58%) worry about “managing relationships at scale and ensuring creator preference for the brand’s partnerships.”
Image source: Billion Dollar Boy
“Authentic, quality content, and consistent brand messaging are essential for effective creator marketing campaigns,” Edward explains. “Creators need a level of creative freedom to tailor their content to their audience while still aligning with the brand’s goals and messaging for the campaign. But, as brands scale creator efforts, vetting creators to ensure they align with the brand’s values, managing the creators, aligning on creative direction, and overseeing content, becomes increasingly complex.”
This challenge is particularly pronounced in the UK market, where 36% of marketers cite relationship management as a primary concern, compared to 31% in the U.S. The personal attention that made early creator partnerships successful becomes harder to maintain as programs expand to include more creators across multiple platforms and campaigns.
“Creator marketing is growing fast and brands want to keep up with the pace of culture,” Edward notes. “But the speed of change has left internal processes struggling to keep up. Many teams simply don’t have the resources to search for and vet creators, manage large-scale campaigns, track content performance, or make real-time content pivots.”
Strategic and Creative Expertise
Beyond operational issues, 31% of marketers worry about “finding the right insight, strategy and creative expertise” when scaling their creator programs. This suggests that many brands recognize the need for specialized knowledge as their creator marketing initiatives become more sophisticated and central to their overall marketing strategy.
“It’s clear evidence that marketers are taking this channel seriously and investing extensively in it … the research is proof that it’s no longer an ‘add-on’; brands have moved well beyond experimenting and are now investing significant and growing ad spend on creator marketing.”
As creator marketing becomes a more significant part of brands’ marketing mix, the strategic demands increase. Marketers need deeper insights into creator audiences, more sophisticated creative approaches, and better integration with broader marketing initiatives. This growing complexity requires specialized expertise that many internal teams don’t possess.
Vetting and Platform Challenges
Another significant challenge identified by 29% of marketers is “identifying and vetting the right influencers at scale.” As programs expand beyond a handful of creators to potentially dozens or hundreds, the process of finding and evaluating suitable partners becomes exponentially more complex.
This vetting process encompasses not only basic factors, such as audience demographics and engagement rates, but also more nuanced considerations, including brand alignment, content quality, and creator values. The risk of partnering with inappropriate creators increases as programs scale, making thorough vetting processes essential, but often difficult to implement effectively.
Beyond creator selection, 26% of marketers express concern about “managing platform changes and new social media trends” when scaling creator marketing efforts. This issue is slightly more pronounced among U.S. marketers (27%) than among their UK counterparts (24%), potentially reflecting uncertainty surrounding platforms like TikTok in the U.S. market.
The constantly changing social media space, with new platforms emerging, existing platforms updating features and algorithms, and shifting user behaviors, creates an additional layer of complexity for brands trying to scale their creator programs.
The Measurement Misalignment
“Proving effectiveness against business objectives” ranks fifth among marketers’ concerns, cited by 28% of respondents. While still a significant challenge, this suggests that the operational aspects of managing creator programs at scale are currently more pressing for most marketers than measurement concerns.
Edward notes that measuring effectiveness continues to be viewed as one of the channel’s biggest hurdles, a finding echoed in research from the World Advertising Research Center, where a majority of marketers identified it as a top challenge. But this will soon change with ever more sophisticated and integrated measurement systems, driving stronger use of first-party data, and clearer industry standards to determine full-funnel creator impact and halo effects with complementary channels – from direct attribution in retail sales to more agile econometric modelling techniques.”
Billion Dollar Boy’s research also revealed a significant misalignment between campaign objectives and success metrics, which complicates scaling efforts. “We found that 41% of marketers say ‘increasing brand awareness is a top priority during the planning phase of creator campaigns,’ but 60% actually measure success by ROI [Return on Investment]. It highlights a structural gap when success metrics don’t match campaign objectives.”
This misalignment between planning and evaluation creates a barrier to effective scaling. When brands evaluate creator marketing based on metrics that don’t match their stated objectives, they may make incorrect assumptions about performance and allocate resources ineffectively.
Edward emphasizes that “to get the most value from creator marketing, internal teams need to align on goals and define success measures so that the campaign isn’t being set up to fall short.”
Why Brands Turn to Agency Partners
As brands confront these scaling challenges, they’re increasingly turning to specialized partners for support. The research found that fewer than 1% of marketers manage creator marketing activity without agency support. This contradicts the common narrative that brands are increasingly bringing creator marketing in-house.
“There’s been a growing narrative suggesting brands are increasingly managing creator marketing in-house, but our research found that in fact fewer than 1% of marketers manage creator activity without agency support,” Edward says. “This finding was really interesting, because it shows just how much brands are relying on specialized agency partnerships to provide logistical support, creative leadership, robust creator networks, rigorous vetting processes, and expert teams to manage and measure campaigns.”
The operational challenges identified in the research help explain this reliance on agency partnerships. As brands recognize the complexity of scaling creator programs while maintaining quality, they seek external expertise rather than building these capabilities internally.
The research indicates that brands are utilizing various types of agency partners to expand their creator marketing efforts, with creator marketing agencies (29%), social media agencies (26%), and creative agencies (15%) being the most common. Regional differences are notable, with U.S. marketers more likely to work with specialist creator marketing agencies (38% vs. 19% in the UK), while UK marketers are more frequently partnered with creative agencies (21% vs. 12% in the U.S.).
Strategies for Scaling Creator Marketing
For brands looking to overcome these scaling challenges, Edward suggests several strategic approaches based on Billion Dollar Boy’s experience working with global brands such as Heineken, Nike, Unilever, PepsiCo, and L’Oréal.
Ambassador programs represent one effective strategy for maintaining quality while scaling. “For brands not working with agencies to scale their creator marketing, ambassador programs offer a great opportunity to achieve authenticity and consistency,” Edward says. “It’s a popular strategy. According to our research, 73% of marketers planned to invest more in ambassador programs this year.”
These partnerships provide a solution to several of the key challenges identified in the research. “These long-term partnerships help brands build deep relationships with creators who truly align with their values. As creators become more familiar with the brand and its messaging, they naturally develop into brand advocates. Audiences also start to develop trust and recognition of the brand over time, especially for longer partnerships that can last up to a year or even more,” Edward explains.
Technology and specialized infrastructure also play a critical role in addressing the operational gap. “Our proprietary creator marketing platform, Companion, uses AI to help us discover and vet creators, track performance, and generate instant campaign reports. It has a database of 130M+ creators globally, helping us quickly identify the best-fitting creators for each brand, alongside our human oversight and manual searches,” Edward says.
The Future of Scaled Creator Marketing
As creator marketing continues to mature and brands invest more heavily in the channel, addressing these operational challenges will become increasingly important. Edward, who founded Billion Dollar Boy in 2014 based on the belief that “creators were not a bolt-on or a channel – they were the future of brand-building,” sees the industry at an important transition point.
“What excites me most is that we’re on the cusp of a meaningful shift in how marketing works. For years, creator marketing has been about proving itself, showing it can drive engagement, sales, and brand love. That proof now exists at scale. The next chapter is about something bigger: creators becoming the architects of how brands show up in culture,” he explains.
Edward envisions a future where creator marketing transforms from an isolated channel to a central organizing principle for brand building. “I find it thrilling to imagine a world where brand stories aren’t bolted on to culture, but are born from it. Where creativity, technology, and community collide to make marketing feel less like an interruption and more like a living part of people’s lives.”
For brands and marketing professionals adapting to this shift, understanding and addressing the operational challenges of scaling creator marketing will be essential to unlocking the channel’s full potential.
As Edward concludes, “That’s the future we are working towards, one where creators don’t just influence culture, they’re driving the culture. And the opportunity to help shape that future is what excites me every day.”
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