Why is Creator Media so tough to scale?

Whenever I read news or LinkedIn posts where the CEO of an agency announces, “We won a new client and are hiring 17 new team members,” I get a bittersweet feeling.

On one hand, it’s incredible to see a company grow, invest in the industry, and develop talent. But on the other hand, I can’t help but wonder: where will all these new hires go if the agency loses that client? Or how many agencies held back from that pitch because they didn’t want to risk having to double their size?

The Growth of Influencer Marketing

We live in an era of transformation on multiple levels. One of the most significant, and the one I resonate with most, is the ability to humanize a brand. That’s exactly what a Content Creator or Influencer does.

Instead of traditional B2C (business-to-consumer) communication, we now operate in a B2C2C model (business-to-creator-to-consumer).

A Creator fosters a personal, human connection, delivering a message that feels one-to-one, yet reaches thousands or even millions. That’s why the influencer marketing industry has grown nearly 30x in the past decade.

The Rise of Artificial Intelligence

AI has been part of our lives for over 50 years, often unnoticed. But only now are we witnessing the democratization of Artificial Intelligence (AI): with minimal investment, a laptop, and an internet connection, anyone can build a product, conduct complex data analysis, or create an assistant.

This democratization benefits everyone, especially businesses that now market themselves as AI-powered. Many went from barely understanding AI to positioning themselves as industry experts overnight. So, the real question is:

How do we separate the good from the ugly?

How can anyone in this space genuinely leverage AI?

The answer is simple. I call it the success triangle:

• Knowledge: Not everyone has it. This breaks down into two key areas: a talented team and deep expertise in the industry you’re working in. If you’re building a AI football team, it’s far more valuable to have 10 Premier League coaches training your model than 10 die-hard fans with no professional experience.

• AI: Everyone has access to it, whether it’s OpenAI, Llama3, Gemini, or others. So this went from being the most to the least important.

• Data: The most important piece, which I saved for last. What is data? I like to compare it to food. The fresher, more abundant, and organic the ingredients, the better the dish and its taste. If you don’t have data, you don’t have ingredients thus you can’t cook. Or if the data is bad quality and dirty, the result will be just as disappointing.

The Marketing Discipline Most Impacted by AI

AI is set to transform both our personal and professional lives. However, its impact won’t be uniform. While some processes will see incremental improvements, others will undergo radical change.

When applied to marketing, certain disciplines will experience a far greater impact in terms of cost reduction and efficiency gains than others. Take a look at the graph below:

In the chart, the X-axis represents MEDIA investment: the further right, the higher the spend. The Y-axis measures the staff required to deploy that media. Naturally, one might assume that as media investment increases, so does the team needed to manage it. But is that really the case?

Comparing disciplines

When we compare disciplines like TV, Digital, and even Paid Social, increasing investment from $1M to $10M doesn’t mean a 10x increase in team size. In fact, these channels are highly efficient—the number of resources required to deploy $1M versus $10M remains nearly the same. The workload scales non-linearly.

How about influencer Marketing?

Influencer Marketing tells a completely different story. The staffing needs grow at a steep, linear rate. A brand investing $1M in influencers typically requires a team of 3-6 to manage the campaign. But at $10M, that team often jumps somewhere between 15 and 30!

No other marketing discipline demands this level of heavy lifting to deploy media. Unlike traditional channels, where content is centrally created and distributed, Influencer Marketing operates at scale through individuals, each with their own voice, platform, and creative approach. A single campaign might involve hundreds of creators collaborating with a brand within days or weeks, leading to extreme fragmentation in execution.

Why traditional creative workflows can’t keep up with decentralized content creation

This dispersed, highly customized content creation model makes it nearly impossible to scale efficiently using traditional workflows. The media buy isn’t consolidated, and the output isn’t controlled by the brand or a creative agency - it’s shaped by independent voices, each with their own audience dynamics and creative outputs.

You're already seeing signs that it's too staff-intensive, too complex, and too complicated. Even when it makes sense to invest, the sheer operational load makes brands hesitant to scale up.

This is where AI will change everything: its impact on the industry will be astronomic, marking a clear before and after in how influencer marketing is managed.

A new era is here, literally

A new era is emerging, and Primetag is shaping the narrative, combining the power of creators with a more efficient, scalable approach to influencer marketing.

That new era has a name: Universe.

And it already has 3Billion+ Content Pieces worth of data.

What Does the Future Hold?
Just ask and the Universe will answer 🚀

• How long does it take to analyze last year’s Share of Influence (identifying key topics, strategies, timelines, and events)? Ask Universe and it will take 10 minutes.

• How many days do you spend compiling last month’s campaign reports for your board? Ask Universe and it will take 10 minutes.

• How many days does it take to prepare an Influencer proposal responding to a campaign briefing? Ask Universe and you’ll have it in 10 minutes. 11min if you want a pptx.

With Universe, Primetag is redefining the Industry Paradigm.

We believe the current way of working in this industry is flawed. With Universe, Growth in Creator Media will be possible, scalable and - more importantly - sustainable.

Want to know more about Universe?
Fill in this contact form and let’s talk.