Home / Journal / Spend is up, pay is not
Spend is up. Creator pay is not.
Industry spend on creator marketing rose about 18% this year. In the same year, a survey of just over five thousand creators found 67% of them earning under $10,000 a year from content. Both are true, and the reason they are both true is worth twenty minutes of your time.
The gap
Two lines on the same chart, pulling apart.
The spend line. US creator economy ad spend went from $29.5 billion in 2024 to $37.1 billion in 2025, and is projected at $43.9 billion this year. Growth of about 18%, which is roughly four times the rate the media industry as a whole is growing at.
The pay line. This summer CreatorIQ surveyed 5,095 creators across a hundred regions. 67% earn under $10,000 a year from content. Fewer than 5% clear $100,000. That is not a survey of people who just started. It is the shape of the whole population.
Put those two next to each other and the obvious question is where the money is going, since it is clearly going somewhere. Three answers, and only one of them is anybody’s fault.
The first is that most of the growth is media, not fees. 55% of that $43.9 billion buys advertising that amplifies creator content rather than paying for the content. So the headline number was never a pot for creators in the first place.
The second is that the population grew. More people making content, chasing a fee pool that grew more slowly than the headline. An average holds still while the total rises, because the denominator moved.
The third is the one you can do something about. The market has no price discovery in it. Nobody publishes what anybody was actually paid, so almost every fee is set by guessing, on both sides.
The two numbers, side by side
Industry spend 2026: about $43.9 billion, up roughly 18%.
Creators earning under $10,000 a year from content: 67%. Over $100,000: fewer than 5%.
Sample of 5,095 creators, fielded May and June 2026.
What this is not
It is not a claim about what you will earn. I make no earnings claims on this site and I am not about to start.
It is a description of a distribution. Where you land in it depends on your work, your category and your negotiation.
The distribution
What creators actually earn from content.
The part nobody says out loud
The industry now admits the pricing is broken.
In August this year a survey of a thousand marketing and procurement leaders found that half of them believe they misprice creator fees, and 40% believe they have overpaid. Not that creators are expensive. That the buyers themselves cannot tell what the right number is.
James Nord, who runs Fohr, put it plainly in the same reporting: this is not a functioning market, prices never go down, there is no clearinghouse and there is no transparency.
I want to be careful here, because that survey was run by an agency selling a pricing tool. Treat the percentages as soft. But the underlying observation matches six years of my own experience on the buying side, and it is the single most useful thing a creator can understand about the person on the other end of the email.
They do not know either. There is no rate card on their desk. There is a budget, a vague sense of what similar creators cost, and a strong preference for not being the one who overpaid. Which means the number is set by whoever brings evidence.
That is why the creators who get paid properly are almost never the ones with the biggest audience. They are the ones who arrive with a figure and a reason for it, while everybody else is waiting to be told.
What you can actually move
Four things, and none of them is growing your following.
Price the licence separately from the post
Usage now appears in almost every deal. The published benchmark for what it costs is 3% to 10% of the brand’s paid media budget, on a thirty day window.
If your fee is a single number that quietly includes the right to advertise with your face for as long as they like, you have given away the half of this industry that is growing. That is the whole argument, and it is on the usage rights page in full.
Change the category you are pitching, not the audience you have
Tech, electronics, finance and apps pay at the top of every band. Premium beauty sits in the upper half. Fast fashion sits at or below the bottom of every published table, and no amount of negotiating changes that.
A creator moving from fast fashion into premium beauty has done more for their rate than one who doubled their following inside fast fashion.
Bring a number to the first email
Do not ask what their budget is. Asking hands the number back to the person who has already decided what it is, and it tells them you have not got one.
Quote the top of your range. You can come down. You cannot go back up, and every creator who has tried has learned that the hard way.
Recalculate after every third campaign
Most creators are quoting a figure they set eighteen months and forty thousand followers ago, because nothing forces them to revisit it.
Three campaigns is often enough for your average views to have moved. If it has, your number should have moved with it.
From my own records
The spread is much wider than any published table admits.
Five real campaigns, five fees I agreed myself, all on the work page with the creator sizes attached. A 120K creator was paid $2,000. A 410K creator was paid $1,000 for comparable work. A 552K creator was paid $2,000.
Three of those five fees are the same number, and the three creators are 120K, 333K and 552K. If follower count set the fee, that could not happen.
What set it was category, timing, and whether anybody argued. I know, because I was the one arguing. Those are five deals out of my files, not a benchmark, and I would not present them as one.
The reason I publish them at all is that almost nobody publishes anything. Search for what creators are paid and you get twenty articles quoting the same four numbers, none of them written by anyone who agreed a fee. Five real ones with the sizes attached is a small thing, and it is still more than the market usually offers.
Where the wide part sits
The 10K to 50K band for a single feed post runs $350 to $1,400. That is a factor of four, before format multipliers and before usage.
Follower count sets which band you are in. Everything inside the band is decided by things you can change.
Where this comes from
Every figure on this page, and where it was published.
The market figures are published research and they are here with the publisher and the date on them. The five campaign fees are mine, out of six years of agreeing them, and they are five deals rather than a benchmark.
- IAB, Creator Ad Spend and Strategy Report November 2025. The $29.5 billion, $37.1 billion and $43.9 billion spend figures and the growth rate. 453 US ad decision makers, fielded July and August 2025. The 2026 figure is a projection.
- CreatorIQ and influencers.club, State of Creators 2026 August 2026. The earnings distribution. 5,095 creators across 100 regions, fielded May and June 2026, margin of error 1.4 points.
- Digiday 28 August 2026. The mispricing figures and the quote from James Nord. The underlying survey was run by an agency selling a pricing product, so treat the percentages as soft.
- Digiday 14 January 2026. The 55% amplification split, and the 3% to 10% usage benchmark on a thirty day window, attributed to Victoria Bachan at Wasserman.
What to do with it
Move the things that move.
Start with the band you are actually in, on the rate bands page, then run your own numbers in the calculator. Neither asks for your email.
If an offer has already landed and you want to know whether it is any good, the offer check is seven questions and then a straight answer.
The list
What brands are actually paying.
Rate breakdowns, pitch teardowns, and when a brand comes to me looking for creators, that goes out here first. The free guide arrives the moment you sign up.
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