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The news: YouTube creators are rapidly evolving from digital influencers into mainstream media powerhouses, with top personalities like MrBeast generating $85 million in 2024 while building substantial business empires beyond their video content. Creator-led brands are projected to generate over $1 billion in retail sales in 2025.

The Influencer Marketing Factory.

This was particularly true of beauty products, which young influencers like Evelyn GRWM have been showcasing on their own accounts. Shein and Casetify worked with Gen Alpha influencers, while Claire鈥檚 focused on the generation with a new fragrance line. Drunk Elephant made a post about which of its products were safe for children. And Dior even launched a $230 perfume for babies.

Child influencers: Ryan鈥檚 World, a channel starring 12-year-old Ryan Kaji, is one of the highest-earning YouTube accounts, at $35 million in 2024. Kaji is one of several wildly popular 鈥渒idfluencers鈥� whose content centers around toy reviews, slice-of-life, and challenges. Targeted advertising toward children on Kaji's channel contributed to YouTube鈥檚 $170 million fine for violating COPPA in 2019.

Social media and influencers are changing the tourism calculus by cultivating a desire for 鈥渁uthentic, off-the-beaten-path鈥� trips, per a Booking.com report. Travelers are ditching Milan for Brescia and Paris for Reims, per data from Expedia. They鈥檙e searching for areas that are more affordable and, ironically, have fewer tourists.

Young US adults increasingly consume news from influencers, many of whom lean right politically, creating opportunities for conservative content creators to shape narratives. Twenty-seven percent of these influencers identify as Republican, outpacing their Democrat counterparts at 21%. Yes, but: Not everyone has figured out how to successfully monetize political loyalty.

Meanwhile, Gen Z overindexes compared with other generations in terms of watching influencer videos, with YouTube as the predominant platform, per Ampere Analysis as cited by The Media Leader. But Gen Zers are always looking for the next big thing. From media consumption to social networking to digital buying, video is a core element of most Gen Zers鈥� digital experiences.

Other influencer marketing agencies are sure to prioritize LinkedIn moving forward, especially since sponsored content will see double-digit growth in the US over the next few years, per our forecast. Click here to view our full forecast for US influencer marketing spending. Creators are becoming more reliant on LinkedIn.

This is largely a result of social media鈥檚 preeminence as an ad channel with a range of display formats in-feed, including sponsored posts and influencer content. Display will be boosted by video formats, which will account for 40.6% of digital in 2025. These include short-video clips in social media feeds and more traditional commercial spots in long-form content delivered digitally.

We expect 82.7% of US marketers to work with creators or influencers on social media this year. And over 90% of advertisers now consider creator content a high-quality ad channel, per IAB. TV advertising strategies are becoming more social and creator-driven. Broadcasters and their advertisers have had to adapt to reach audiences. That鈥檚 also boosting social video ad and influencer marketing spending.