Influencer Marketing

Welcome to Ad Age’s Influencer Marketing newsletter, featuring news gathered by Ad Age reporter Gillian Follett. Every week, we explore how brands are working with influencers and how the creator economy is transforming the advertising landscape. You can sign up here to get updates delivered to your inbox. A friendly heads up that this newsletter is taking a holiday break and will return in 2025. Sign up for Ad Age news alerts and visit adage.com for all of the latest news.

A 2024 social media and influencer marketing retrospective 

For this year’s final edition of Influencer Marketing Today, we’re looking back at some of the biggest social media stars, hottest internet trends and buzziest social media marketing moments of 2024.

Several new TikTok creators stepped into the limelight this year, including beauty creator Jools Lebron, of “very demure” fame; Tareasa Johnson, better known as Reesa Teesa, whose eight-hour “Who TF Did I Marry?” series fueled a surge of longer-form TikTok videos; and father-son duo A.J. and Big Justice, who “brought the boom” to TikTok with their reviews of Costco food court items.

Casey Lewis, author of youth trends newsletter After School, joined Ad Age’s Marketer’s Brief podcast yesterday to break down the most viral moments of 2024 and how they influenced brands’ marketing strategies, from “Brat Summer” to the “man in finance” earworm. She shared her biggest prediction for the social media marketing space in 2025—an explosion of livestream content, from brands collaborating with streamers to the continued rise of liveshopping streams. 

Ad Age reporter Garett Sloane rounded up 10 of the year’s most noteworthy social media campaigns, including Levi’s collaboration with Beyoncé after she named a song on her album “Cowboy Carter” after the brand and Calvin Klein’s titillating Jeremy Allen White ads. And three Gen Z marketers joined News Editor E.J. Schultz for an Ad Age roundtable yesterday in which they shared their thoughts on 2024’s marketing highs and lows.

The trio praised Marc Jacobs and Duolingo for their engaging social strategies and applauded Liquid Death’s slew of unexpected and entertaining brand collaborations. Coca-Cola’s AI-generated holiday ads and Bumble’s “tone-deaf” billboards accusing Gen Zers of supposedly choosing celibacy over dating apps were among the year’s biggest marketing mistakes, according to the panelists. 

Thanks so much for reading Influencer Marketing Today this year, and have a happy holiday season!

Check out our list of 2024’s biggest breakout creators

Listen to the latest Marketer’s Brief podcast episode, featuring Casey Lewis 

Revisit more of the year’s most viral social media campaigns and TikTok brand activations

What we’re reading

An overview of the influencer marketing agency landscape, from those acquired by holding companies to niche agencies specializing in specific platforms or industries. 

Why several brands expanded their influencer gifting strategies in 2024—and plan to continue upleveling them in 2025. 

A roundup of several creator economy hiring trends across 2024, including an uptick in marketing roles and brands and agencies bringing on in-house creators. 

Influencer agencies are introducing new AI tools to their tech platforms to attract new clients and creator partners. 

How brands are shifting their marketing strategies to meet Gen Z’s preference for niche communities over mainstream culture. 

Brand deal of the week

TikTok comedy creator Abdullah Zaidi started joking about becoming a beauty influencer about a month ago, telling his more than 800,000 followers that he wanted to “just put on makeup and yap for a living.” Several beauty and wellness brands, including Laneige, Dove, Olly and Fenty Beauty, have helped Zaidi inch closer to that goal by shipping him PR packages. On Tuesday, Milk Makeup helped Zaidi achieve another beauty influencer milestone—his first sponsored TikTok video. The brand, which was the first to send Zaidi a PR package, paid him to test and review its products.

Check out more of the latest creator trends 

Number of the week: $9.29 billion

Advertisers will spend an estimated $9.29 billion on influencer marketing in 2025, according to a new report from market research company EMarketer. If that prediction comes true, it would be a 14.2% increase from the $8.14 billion spent on sponsored influencer content in 2024, according to EMarketer data. It would also be a larger jump in spending than EMarketer’s forecasts for social ad spending (13.6%) or digital ad spending (12.5%). “That’s a signal that marketers are serious about investing in the sector,” Senior Analyst Minda Smiley states in the report.