Linqia Chief Strategy Officer and Creator Economy Live podcast host Keith Bendes believes creator marketing remains in its first inning. As Creator Economy Live East prepares to bring more than 500 brands to New York on July 29, Bendes is calling for clearer campaign goals, stronger measurement, and closer collaboration between brands and creators.
Creator marketing has grown into a serious business channel. Budgets are rising, creators play a larger role in how consumers discover products, and brands increasingly view partnerships as part of their wider marketing strategy.
According to our 2026 Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report, 87% of surveyed marketers expect their influencer marketing budgets to increase this year. More than 72% anticipate growth of at least 50%.
Keith Bendes still sees an industry at the beginning of its development.
“We’re in inning one,” the Linqia Chief Strategy Officer said during a recent podcast interview. “A lot more attention is being paid, but so much more opportunity is still there.”
That sense of untapped potential will shape many of the conversations at Creator Economy Live East, where Bendes serves as one of the hosts of the Creator Economy Live podcast.
Taking place at the New York Marriott Marquis on July 29, the event will bring together more than 50 speakers, 500 brands, and 15 sessions. Disney, Amazon, L’Oréal, American Express, Estée Lauder, AG1, Volkswagen, and the NFL are among the brands expected to attend.
The agenda covers long-term creator partnerships, campaign scale, employee-generated content, platform shifts, measurement, and return on investment.
Together, those subjects point to an industry working through a larger question: How can creator marketing turn growing attention into a larger and more accountable role within the marketing mix?
Measurement Could Unlock Creator Marketing’s Next Stage
For Bendes, the answer begins with media and measurement.
He illustrated the gap with a simple comparison. A brand investing $1 million in influencer marketing could be spending between $50 million and $100 million on paid media. Creator marketing remains a relatively small line item beside the wider media budget.
The opportunity lies in proving how that smaller investment affects the larger one.
Brands need clearer evidence that creator activity can improve media effectiveness, support connected television and out-of-home campaigns, strengthen brand equity, and contribute to sales.
Once marketers can connect those outcomes, creator marketing gains a stronger claim to future investment.
“The more we can show influencers as a line item performing well on return on ad spend, beating media expectations, helping connected television ads do better, helping out of home do better, that’s where the bigger unlock is going to come from,” Bendes explained.
Brands are advancing at different speeds. Bendes describes the category as moving through a crawl, walk, run stage. A few organizations have built mature creator programs with integrated measurement. Many are still establishing how creator performance fits alongside their established media models.
Our research reflects that challenge. Measuring return on investment and resolving attribution complexity account for a combined 15% of the challenges reported by marketers in the 2026 Benchmark Report.
The figure becomes more significant as investment grows. Larger budgets bring greater scrutiny from senior leadership, which raises the standard for attribution, reporting, and performance analysis.
Creator Economy Live East arrives as more brands reach that decision point. The next stage involves connecting creator activity with the commercial systems already guiding marketing investment.
Cultural Relevance Needs a Business Case
Creator partnerships carry value that can be difficult to capture inside a performance dashboard.
Their influence on brand perception is already visible. As much as 61% of consumers trust influencer recommendations more than advertising created by brands.
That trust gives creators an influential position in the relationship between brands and consumers. A well-matched creator can shape how an audience perceives a product, introduce the brand within a relevant cultural conversation, and give its message greater credibility.
Bendes accepts the value of that alignment, while making a clear distinction between relevance and measurement.
“Cultural relevance dictates brand value,” he said. “It’s really hard to be a growing brand without having cultural relevance, and creators are the tastemakers of cultural relevance.”
Strong chemistry between a brand and creator can lead to stronger work. Marketing leaders still need a clear explanation of the outcome they are funding.
That creates an important challenge for the industry. Brands need ways to recognize cultural impact while connecting creator activity to the business metrics that guide budget decisions. Progress in measurement will help marketers account for both immediate performance and the slower influence creators can have on brand value.
Stronger Campaigns Start With Better Conversations
Measurement represents one side of the equation. Collaboration represents the other.
Bendes believes brands and creators need a deeper understanding of the commercial pressures each party faces.
Creators invest time, audience trust, and creative judgment in every partnership. Brands carry targets, budgets, approval processes, and expectations from senior leadership. Productive partnerships emerge when both sides understand those realities and shape the work together.
Marketers are already placing greater emphasis on how those relationships are managed. Our research found that 34.6% of marketers prioritize regular communication with creators, while 15.6% emphasize exclusive collaborations.
Both approaches reflect a shift toward more deliberate creator relationships. Regular communication gives creators a clearer understanding of the brand’s goals. Exclusive arrangements can deepen alignment and give the creator a more defined role within the brand’s wider strategy.
Creators can strengthen that relationship by contributing more than execution. A creator understands their audience’s preferences, language, and likely response better than any campaign document can capture. Raising concerns, suggesting a stronger format, or refining the concept can improve the outcome.
According to Bendes, that input can also make the creator more valuable to the brand.
“The more you advise and give recommendations, the more they actually want you in the campaign and potentially helping structure the next campaign,” he said.
The same principle applies when brands use broad terms such as awareness, virality, or engagement. Each term needs a precise definition.
Virality could mean reaching a large audience, generating shares, dominating a social conversation, or producing content that performs efficiently with paid support. Asking deeper questions helps the creator understand the intended outcome and gives the brand a more useful basis for evaluation.
Every Campaign Needs One Honest Goal
Bendes identifies an even bigger obstacle: brands expecting every creator campaign to accomplish everything at once.
A single activation may be asked to build awareness, strengthen brand equity, generate reusable content, start a cultural conversation, and deliver immediate sales.
Our data shows how differently marketers prioritize those outcomes. Among brands increasing their influencer budgets, 89% select brand awareness as a key performance indicator. Conversions are selected by 35%, while 25% focus on attributable revenue or sales.
The difference reveals where many creator strategies currently place their emphasis. Brand building carries the greatest weight, while direct commercial outcomes remain part of a more selective performance mix.
Each objective requires a different strategy, creator profile, content format, and measurement approach. Combining every expectation inside one campaign can blur its purpose and make performance harder to evaluate.
Campaigns can contribute across the funnel. A clear primary objective still needs to guide the work.
“Be honest about the main goal,” Bendes advised. “Creators, be honest. Brands, be honest. Can you actually achieve it together?”
A campaign focused on brand equity will naturally behave differently from one built around conversion. Some creators excel at entertainment and cultural impact. Others have audiences that respond strongly to product recommendations and commercial calls to action.
Choosing creators according to the campaign’s primary objective gives each partnership a clearer purpose. It also gives marketers a fairer way to assess performance.
Creator Economy Live East Brings the Questions Together
Creator Economy Live East will place these issues in front of the brands, creators, agencies, and technology providers shaping the industry’s next phase.
Bendes brings a particularly useful perspective to that conversation. His work as Linqia’s Chief Strategy Officer gives him direct exposure to the measurement and performance questions brands face. His role as cohost of the Creator Economy Live podcast places him in regular conversations with the executives, marketers, creators, and platform leaders influencing the wider market.
His message ahead of the event centers on focus.
Creator marketing has room to capture a far greater share of brand investment. Reaching that point requires campaigns built around defined outcomes, measurement connected to the wider media mix, and partnerships where brands and creators contribute to the strategy together.
The creator economy may still be in its first inning. The questions being asked in New York suggest its next stage will demand considerably greater discipline.
