Influencer boost budgets are throwing gas on social video spending fire 

Social video spending is set to rise 13% in the U.S. this year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), faster than investment in CTV. Marketers cited falling production costs for creative video assets and the ability to target audiences on social platforms as the primary drivers behind that.

Whether you call it amplification, “boosting”, or “influence-led paid media” (Robinson’s preferred term), it’s a long-standing practice in creator marketing in which brands devote part of their paid media budget to juicing the performance of influencer activity.

In some cases amplification is used as part of a test-and-learn strategy, with posts that perform well organically rewarded with additional budget; in others it’s a defensive measure used to bolster poorly performing content.

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“Our strategy is to hold back a percent of budget for opportunistic amplification,” said Regan Clarke, U.S. vp of American Whiskey Brands at Suntory Global Spirits. “That percent of our budget has gone up over time as we realize paid applications become more and more important in the overarching ecosystem.” Clarke declined to provide specific financials.

Agencies also make use of features such as TikTok’s “Ad Only Mode,” to allow them to inject paid budget behind a given post without obliging the creator to publish it on their own feed.

Creators typically charge a premium on their regular fee for brands boosting content to a wider audience, reflecting its higher value. As recently as two years ago the strategy was an “afterthought” for marketers looking for ways to use up the dog ends of their budgets, according to Olivia Cripps, senior paid media manager at influencer shop Billion Dollar Boy.

That’s changed. Amplification budgets still have a large range, starting down in the low thousands of dollars — but can now reach up to $5 million, according to one influencer expert who exchanged anonymity for candor.

“[Now] it’s not just an afterthought, it’s actually integrated in the campaign itself,” said Cripps. She added that within the last year, two global retail clients had increased their amplification budgets by 79% and 253%, respectively, but declined to name the clients. 

In part, those increases reflect overall growth in creator budgets. IAB estimates published in November suggested that the creator economy was growing at 26% year-on-year, four times faster than the media industry overall.

But amplification spending is set to increase considerably. According to eMarketer, 2027 will see almost equal spending on paid amplification and creator production fees in the U.S., at $14.2 billion each. By 2028, the research company estimated amplification would surpass production fee spending to reach $16.1 billion. 

“The line between “influencer budget” and “paid media budget” is getting blurrier every year,” said Shelby Currie, associate media director, paid social and influencer at indie media agency Moroch. “A lot of brands are no longer just paying for a post to go live organically; they’re building in paid usage, Spark Ads, whitelisting, dark posting, creator licensing, from the start.”

And because video is the dominant format for influencers, amplification dollars are also paid social video dollars. “It’s all reels now. It’s all short-form video,” said Goat’s Robinson.

Tom Cooper-Smith, vp of creative operations, EMEA at Influencer, told Digiday creator budgets were increasingly tilted away from creator fees and towards paid media allocation. “You’re seeing almost a 50-50, even 60-40, split in favor of media,” he said.

There are other factors at play. Social platform feed algorithms remain black boxes to marketers and users alike, meaning there’s little guarantee that organic influencer content will perform as expected. But CMOs increasingly expect clear and predictable outcomes from their creator activity, so setting aside budget to secure those outcomes isn’t a steep price to pay. “It becomes more pertinent when you are trying to drive specific goals, things like clicks and sales,” said Cripps.

Performance-related briefs from clients have proliferated in the last year, said Cooper-Smith, adding that “[the] number one brief we are receiving time and time again from existing clients and new clients is performance marketing and commerce.”