WTF is behind the explosion of faceless creators? 

Over the past three months, AffiliateNetwork.com — a network of faceless creators across social platforms — has grown from 5,000 members to 21,000, according to numbers shared by its founder Roman Khaves, who said that top creators in the network had made an average of $30,000 to $40,000 per month in brand deals. Media buyers at Publicis and Dentsu also said that faceless creators represent an increasing share of their clients’ influencer marketing budgets, although they declined to share specific figures.

What exactly are faceless creators?

Faceless creators, also known as user-generated content (UGC) creators, are people who make content and share it on social media without showing their faces. Instead of putting their personalities front and center as brand ambassadors, faceless creators create and share videos or memes that focus on a central theme or brand identity. Many faceless creators are younger — college or even high-school students doing the work on the side to make extra income.

Although some faceless creators, such as Internet HOF, can boast large followings, the majority operate smaller accounts, relying on social algorithms to get eyeballs on their posts instead of a large following. To maximize their metrics, the majority of the faceless creators in AffiliateNetwork.com’s network maintain multiple accounts, per Khaves, who said that some faceless creators operate “phone farms,” using multiple mobile devices to get around platform guidelines that punish individuals with too many accounts.

“They’re posting 100, 200 times a day, and some even more,” he said. “We had one creator posting over 1,000 pieces of content a day.”

Why would an advertiser work with a faceless creator, rather than a traditional creator?

Most brands that engage in influencer marketing in 2025 put some investment into both faceless and faced creators, according to Publicis svp of innovation strategy Jessica Berger. However, she said, faceless creators can represent a cheaper option because they are typically paid based on the performance of their videos, rather than charging a flat fee for a certain number of social posts or other deliverables, as a traditional influencer would. 

“It’s performance vs. brand strategy. With brand strategy, you’re aligning with the brand identity of a big influencer. Performance truly is for lower-funnel conversion — you really want to be just hitting that quick conversion, and thinking about how quickly it can go to action,” Gerber said. “In that regard, you’re going to the UGC creator, because it’s cheaper in the production funnel.”

This sounds like clipping. What’s the difference?

Faceless creator marketing is similar to clipping in that both rely on smaller, often anonymous social accounts rather than major influencers. But the two approaches operate in opposite directions. Clipping involves brands or agencies issuing a bounty for a set number of views on a specific piece of content, allowing any eligible creator to repost it to their feed. In contrast, faceless creator marketing requires brands to proactively identify and commission faceless creators to produce original, bespoke branded content tailored to their audience.

Hasn’t this been happening for a while?

Faceless creators have been present on social platforms for years, but this category of creator is expanding significantly in 2025, per both networks such as Khaves’ and media buyers in the influencer marketing space.

And the explosion of faceless creators is also the result of both cultural and technological changes. As more social platforms look to emulate TikTok’s algorithm, the importance of follower numbers has decreased across the board. Additionally, the introduction of more generative AI tools for video creators has made it easier for faceless creators to quickly conceptualize and create videos, even if they are operating multiple accounts.

“One format that we made very popular on social media is ‘texting stories’ — stories with a text conversation going back and forth,” Khaves said. “We created our own bot to allow creators to create these videos instantly — they just put in a script and click ‘generate.’”

How is this different from traditional affiliate networks?

There is significant overlap between the worlds of affiliate marketing and faceless creators, per Publicis’ Berger.

“There’s a very close alignment between UGC-style content creation and affiliate marketing, because that’s essentially what it is, right?” she said. “These people oftentimes have a code, and there’s some sort of incentive tied to performance. So you’re probably going to see a lot more of that overlap in those industries.”

Due to the rate at which they can put out new content, faceless creators can be particularly effective for affiliate marketing. However, not all faceless creators participate in affiliate marketing, and not all creators who do affiliate marketing are faceless. 

For creators, what are the benefits of being faceless?

In addition to allowing creators to operate multiple accounts, going faceless gives creatives an opportunity to work as creators without putting the spotlight on themselves or becoming public figures in their own right. Jeannie Assimos, who creates social content for the water brand Mainelove, said that working as a content creator without showing her face allowed her to use the skills she developed as a managing editor for Entertainment Tonight.

“I can’t imagine being in front of the camera,” she said. “What I’ve been doing forever is creating content using other people or material.”

Where do faceless creators typically post their content?

You can find faceless creators on every social platform, but they are most prevalent on TikTok and Instagram, according to Khaves, the AffiliateNetwork.com founder. He said that TikTok’s structure favors creators with multiple accounts — including faceless ones — that can consistently deliver viral or algorithmically boosted content without needing to build a large following first. To brands, this is appealing because it lowers the barrier to testing new types of creators or formats.

“We’ve long embraced TikTok and social content creators as part of our agile, reactive social model; an approach that’s been instrumental in building social-first brands like Oreo, Nutter Butter and Sour Patch,” said Dentsu Influence EMEA managing director Julie Chadwick. “It’s about creating culturally relevant, trend-driven content that fills the feed and drives engagement.”