2026 Creator Economy Predictions 🔮

Earlier this week, I recapped 10 creator economy trends of 2025. Now, I’m back with predictions for 2026. This will be my final send of the year… wishing you a wonderful holiday season, and thank you for reading in 2025!

The AI-powered wearable space is set to get crowded in the new year with a wave of new competitors. Meta currently leads the category with millions sold across the Ray-Ban Metas, recently expanding its lineup with new models that combine everyday style with hands-free content capture.

Meta has been heavily promoting its wearables through creator partnerships and celebrity campaigns, prominently surfacing content made with them across Instagram. With this level of investment, adoption of AI-powered glasses is poised to accelerate.

As a result, we will see a surge in POV (point-of-view) content. Professionals will share “a day in the life,” recipe creators will capture each step of a dish, and adventurers will document their journeys. Creators will increasingly use wearables to share immersive moments that feel effortless and built for everyday consumption.

According to CreatorIQ data, one in ten agencies are already using Substack for influencer marketing. Combined with Substack’s own testing of native sponsorships and the heightened conversation around the platform by marketers, it’s poised to grab more influencer marketing dollars in 2026.

Forward-thinking brands, especially in fashion, lifestyle, and beauty, will run campaigns involving Substack creators around timely moments, shopping events, and promotions. We will see creators who already partner with brands on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube adding Substack as a high-intent add-on to their media kits.

We will also see more brands with their own Substack publications tapping popular writers as guest columnists to drive readership.

Affiliate revenue is a major income stream, with some creators earning six- to seven-figure paydays. This includes social commerce solutions such as TikTok Shop and YouTube Shopping, affiliate apps like LTK, ShopMy, and Mavely, affiliate platforms such as Impact.com and Awin, as well as brands’ and retailers’ own programs.

As budgets shift toward performance-driven models, talent managers have a clear opportunity to professionalize this side of the business. Their support will go beyond deal sourcing to advising creators on which platforms to prioritize, a critical role as the ecosystem consolidates, as seen recently with the shutdown of Flagship’s marketplace and the closure of Collective Voice.

Managers will also help broker custom affiliate terms, develop posting strategies, and optimize how affiliate content is distributed. This not only boosts creators’ earnings but also extends managers’ own commission streams.

As algorithmic feeds become increasingly crowded, a sense of “algorithmic isolation” is emerging, where users see more content, including AI-generated posts, but share fewer collective cultural moments. To combat digital fatigue, creators and brands will invest more in real-life (IRL) experiences.

This could include a B2B creator hosting an intimate dinner with a company’s clients or prospects, a brand sponsoring a recurring event series a creator has built, co-creating a new activation, or simply having creators cover their own events.

According to StubHub, creator-led events have become big business, with ticket sales for these experiences increasing by 500 percent over the last year. Furthermore, 41 percent of U.S. social media users have attended at least one in-person influencer event in the past year, demonstrating a strong demand for physical connection.

IRL partnerships will also generate a flywheel of content, from pre-event promotion to in-the-moment coverage and post-event amplification.

Following the surge in B2B creator marketing on LinkedIn, more consumer brands will explore life-and-work-adjacent campaigns on LinkedIn. Examples include fashion brands dressing thought leaders for keynotes or wellness brands showcasing product integration into a busy workday.

Early examples include Unilever’s K18 partnering with creators Jade Walters and Elvi Capernois to give away products and offer mentorship, and VEGAMOUR hiring Iryna Kremin, founder of Innocos, as its first-ever Chief LinkedIn Advisor to combine consulting with sponsored content. Brands are realizing that everyone is a consumer on the platform. W

With Gen Z as the fastest-growing demographic on LinkedIn, this provides another way for brands to reach younger audiences beyond the typically cited platforms.

Episodic content is on the rise across all platforms. Because the format keeps audiences returning regularly, serialized content, whether weekly social shows or multi-part content, will be a major entry point for brands to invest in long-term partnerships.

Some brands will strike deals to sponsor entire seasons, as Amazon Prime did with Boy Room, while others will integrate products organically over several episodes. Brands will also explore hiring creators as recurring characters in brand-owned shows, allowing the company to show up in a way that feels additive rather than interruptive.

With AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI becoming central to discovery, brands are starting to focus on Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and creators will be key.

Brands will begin working with creators who produce content on platforms that AEO engines crawl, ensuring their products are cited in AI responses. For example, HubSpot is currently hiring for a marketing role dedicated to creator partnerships that help the brand show up in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews. A new partnership between Evertune and Impact.com will also allow brands to see their visibility in AI searches and then use the Impact marketplace to find the specific creators and publishers who can help increase that visibility.

Creators with blogs, newsletters, YouTube channels, and a presence on LinkedIn will benefit as well, since these are often among the most popular sources for AI search tools.

Meta’s previous attempts at native social commerce, such as Instagram Shops, struggled because user demand was limited. However, Facebook Marketplace has remained popular, particularly with younger audiences.

Over the last few months, Meta has rolled out new social, collaborative, and AI-driven tools for Marketplace, and launched creator-curated holiday shops. These updates show that Meta sees Marketplace as a key part of its ecosystem. With a growing appetite for social commerce, expect Meta to maintain Marketplace’s peer-to-peer commerce roots while expanding the types of products listed. This will attract more brands and creators, positioning Marketplace as a direct competitor to TikTok Shop and YouTube Shopping.

In 2026, more creators will join the likes of Alex Cooper (Unwell Agency) and Anthony “Anthpo” Potero (Pufferfish) in launching their own agencies. Cooper launched Unwell to help brands reach Gen Z through original productions, with Google as its launch client, while Anthpo’s Pufferfish helps brands go viral through social and digital campaigns.

As big agencies consolidate and mid-sized firms feel the pressure, smaller boutique agencies built by creators will be highly attractive, especially as creators have been shown valuable as consultants and advisors. These firms offer a level of cultural insight and social-first execution that some long-standing agencies can struggle to provide.

Creators also have the advantage of being able to funnel brand partners, with whom they have already found success with, into their services.

As long-form content is increasingly broken into short-form snippets, clippers are being recognized as a class of creators. These specialists turn podcasts, YouTube videos, and live streams into highly shareable moments optimized for TikTok, Reels, and Shorts.

What began as fan-driven behavior is evolving into a formalized role. Brands are starting to work with clippers as distribution partners to drive views and cultural relevance—similar to how Lionsgate hired fan editors to market their films. Clippers are emerging as the new nano-creators: cost-effective at scale, capable of helping brands co-create with communities, and ensuring content reaches social channels to stay top of mind.

Here are some of other end of the year reports and content to check out:

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