A €32 billion market in Europe, and a window of instability
Europe’s creator economy reached approximately €32 billion in market value in 2025 and is growing at 25% per year. The creator economy generated roughly €7 billion in revenue in France in 2025, up 19% year-on-year. That puts France third in Europe, behind Germany and the UK. The number of creators monetising their content has passed 348,000 active profiles, up from 303,000 a year earlier. Globally, the market is valued at $254 billion in 2025 and is expected to top $313 billion in 2026.
The growth figures hide a structural tension. UNESCO projects that creators could lose up to 24% of their global revenue by 2028 — the combined effect of format saturation, algorithm shifts, and rate compression driven by generative AI.
Platforms are rewriting the rules faster than companies can adjust their strategies. That gap was the throughline of the ESCP conference.
Brands fund it. Creators produce it.
Creators’ business model now rests heavily on brand partnerships. In 2026, 59% of their revenue comes from sponsored content, against just 24% from platform payouts and 8% from affiliate schemes. Some creators report relying on partnerships for up to 90% of their income.
On the brand side, financial commitment is accelerating: annual influencer marketing budgets grew 171% year-on-year, according to CreatorIQ, and 71% of organisations increased their investment. Nearly two-thirds of that increase came from reallocating traditional advertising spend.
The knock-on effect: according to CreatorIQ, creator-produced content now runs at up to 32 times the volume that brands publish themselves. Companies are funding the content but no longer control most of what circulates under their name. That imbalance forces a shift away from one-off briefs toward sustained editorial relationships.
TikTok: a flow medium, not a social network
The ESCP conference offered a blunt diagnosis of TikTok, put forward by Jean-Patrick Cheylan, the platform’s Country Manager for France:
“95% of people don’t post on TikTok. They watch what people with the same interests are doing.”
That shift, from network to flow medium, has a direct implication for companies: visibility no longer depends on follower count, but on how content is consumed. Does it get watched to the end? Shared? Dropped after two seconds? A creator with a small following can reach several million people within hours. A heavily followed account can go unnoticed if its content stops holding attention. According to CreatorIQ, follower count now ranks among the least decisive criteria when brands select creators.
For 2026, TikTok remains the priority platform for 26% of brands, ahead of Instagram (23%) and YouTube (19%).
Social commerce: when content becomes the point of sale
TikTok Shop is arguably the most structural shift of the past two years. Under this model, content no longer redirects to an external site — the purchase happens directly within the video, without leaving the platform.
The volumes speak for themselves. TikTok Shop generated $66 billion in gross merchandise value in 2025, double the $33.2 billion recorded in 2024. Projections for 2026 reach $112 billion. In the US, the platform already accounts for 18.2% of total social commerce, up 108% year-on-year. By 2026, more than one in two US social shoppers will make at least one purchase on TikTok.
Media and creators: the boundary is moving both ways
Traditional media groups are no longer watching the creator economy from a distance. French media groups such as Les Échos-Le Parisien and broadcaster TF1 now work directly with creators to adapt their formats for digital audiences and reach younger viewers. At the same time, some creators are levelling up production quality to a point where their output rivals traditional editorial formats.
This convergence carries an operational implication for brands: content made with a creator is no longer destined for a single platform. According to CreatorIQ, 98% of brands now repurpose creator content across other channels — website, email, advertising, events. Content, in other words, has to be designed from the outset to travel across channels.
B2B: the creator economy moves beyond consumer markets
For a long time, the creator economy was associated almost exclusively with consumer categories: beauty, fashion, food. That perimeter has widened.
According to Forbes, 61% of consumers trust creator recommendations more than traditional advertising, and that dynamic is extending to professional audiences. 81% of B2B marketers now have a dedicated influencer budget, and more than half plan to increase it.
In B2B, creators operate differently: tutorials, tool comparisons, first-hand accounts of real workflows. Virality isn’t the goal. Credibility, built over time, is. In tech and SaaS, demand for specialised creators already outstrips supply. That’s a signal that B2B influencer marketing remains largely untapped.
AI: more content, not more attention
74% of marketers now use AI in their influencer activity. The technology allows them to produce faster, adapt formats, and scale output across channels.
The direct consequence is saturation: the volume of available content keeps rising while audience attention does not follow. The share of consumers who view generative AI as a negative factor in the creator economy nearly doubled between November 2023 and July 2025, from 18% to 32%. Enthusiasm for AI-generated content fell from 60% to 26% over the same period.
What companies need to take from this
The creator economy isn’t one more lever to activate. It’s a system that changes how content creates value.
Three priorities stand out:
- Move away from one-off campaigns and build strategies designed to last
- Tie the creator economy directly to business outcomes — acquisition and conversion
- Structure the organisation rather than multiply content, with a focus on consistency, distribution and measurement
The companies furthest ahead aren’t the ones producing the most. They’re the ones with the most structured approach.
Talk to our experts
