Marketing has turned upside down — and the ones who flipped the table are the creators.

It wasn't the advancement of AI, nor the powerful algorithms. The turning point of modern marketing has a name and ID: it's the content creator, with their camera in hand, sense of community and ability to influence not just purchasing decisions, but culture itself.

We are at the epicenter of the Creator Economy, where attention no longer belongs to major media outlets — it is conquered, daily, by those who build real, consistent, and human narratives.

But attention without structure turns to sand between fingers. And that’s where the paradox lies: the most powerful engine of current marketing still operates with the fragility of a car without replacement parts.

To understand this scenario and where it can lead us, we unpacked the 10 major insights from the study Creator POV 2025 by BrandLovers, which listened to 5,169 Brazilian creators and analyzed data from its Creator Ads platform.

1. From influencers to attention infrastructure

If the internet were a city, creators would be the avenues through which traffic flows — with more movement, more relevance, and much more conversion.

Today, these creators generate up to 18 times more views than traditional brands. They are no longer an alternative: they are the new primary channel for generating digital demand.

Investment is following this new flow: in 2023 alone, R$ 2.18 billion was invested in influencer marketing in Brazil. But more than just budget, what’s at stake is control of the steering wheel. Individuals — not institutions — are now dictating the tempo of attention.

And when the audience trusts people more than logos, the brand's path to the consumer's heart (and wallet) inevitably passes through the Creator Economy.

2. Behind the scenes of influence: the cost of being always online

The showcase shines, but the backstage is gray.

While the Creator Economy moves billions, a significant portion of creators lives a reality of chronic instability. Only 43% are able to live exclusively from content. The rest alternate between gigs, debts, and the constant fear of seeing everything crumble at the first algorithm spike.

This is not just a financial issue — it's emotional. The logic of constant attention exacts its toll in anxiety, burnout, and lack of predictability. Creators live under a system that demands performance 24/7, but offers little support.

It’s like piloting a rocket with a punctured tank: the reach is vast, but the risk of falling is daily. And without a stable foundation, no career can sustain itself — no matter how much talent, engagement, or followers one has.

3. An ocean of attention with hand-rowing boats

Influencer marketing is already a giant in relevance — but it still operates like a fair market: disorganized, manual, and with little predictability.

Prospecting, negotiation, and measurement follow archaic processes. It's like trying to climb a mountain in flip-flops: the potential is enormous, but the structure hinders movement.

Without standardization, important decisions are made based on feeling and loose spreadsheets. And that costs dearly: compromised efficiency, ROI below expected, and increasing frustration on all sides — brands, creators, and agencies.

It is urgent to replace improvisation with operational intelligence. Because while content evolves, the backstage keeps running in slow motion.

A creator is not a freelancer with a ring light — it's professional media

Stop treating creators as "freelancers for sponsored posts." The Creator Economy will only scale when we understand that we are facing a new media ecosystem that requires structure, data, and predictability.

Professionalization is not a luxury — it is a condition for existence. Creators want more than a payment for a sponsored post: they seek careers, stability, and recognition as strategic assets.

This involves three pillars:

• Career structuring: with planning, goals, and support;

• Objective metrics: that go beyond likes and followers;

• Financial security: to create with consistency and less anxiety.

Without this, the market turns into a merry-go-round of one-off campaigns, exhausted talents, and fragile results. This gives birth to a new industry — stronger, fairer, and much more scalable.

5. Small in followers, giants in conversion

If influencer marketing were a game of chess, micro and nano creators would be the pawns that cross the board and become queens.

The majority of Brazilian creators — 88% — have less than 100,000 followers. And yet, it is these smaller profiles that deliver the greatest CPView and engagement results. Campaigns with micros and nanos can triple views with the same investment.

Why?

Because the connection is real, the dialogue is direct, and the audience sees authenticity where there are not too many filters. In this game, it’s not the one who shouts the loudest that wins — it’s the one who speaks the truest.

For brands, it's time to recalibrate the yardstick: relevance is not about gross reach, it's about influence that mobilizes and converts.

6. Instagram and TikTok: the new thrones of attention

The war for attention already has defined territory — and it takes place between feeds and for you pages.

Instagram accounts for 70% of creators' followers in Brazil, but TikTok has become the arena for discovery. One represents the community built, the other, the unexpected viral.

Together, they form the most powerful axis of the Creator Economy. But the game is no longer about follower numbers — it’s about format, language, and consumption behavior. The audience doesn’t just want content: they want to be entertained, want to identify, want to feel emotional.

That’s why native entertainment formats have taken the lead. The creator who understands this dynamic is not dependent on algorithms — they create culture.

And the brand that is still thinking only in traditional metrics is talking to themselves in a crowded room.

7. Partnership is not barter — it's a value alliance

Creators don’t just want contracts: they want respect for what they’ve built.

When closing a partnership, three criteria weigh more than any spreadsheet:

• Product quality (57.8%)

• Fair remuneration (52.6%)

• Relevance to the audience (52%)

In other words, it’s not enough to pay well. If the brand doesn't deliver real value or forces rigid scripts, the creator steps back — because they know that the most valuable currency is authenticity to the audience.

This logic inverts the old advertising dynamic: now, it’s the brands that need to prove themselves. And only those who understand that a creator is not media bought — it's rented voice based on trust — will build presence.

8. Recurrence is the new reach

Forget the one-off shot. In the Creator Economy, it's frequency that generates cumulative effect — like a drop that, when repeated, shapes the stone.

92.7% of creators prefer fixed payment per campaign. And more: 64.3% value ongoing partnerships, with brands that do not pop up and disappear, but that build presence alongside them.

This constancy makes a difference. After the third publication with the same creator, curves of awareness, affinity, and purchase intent begin to rise.

In other words: recurrence is not only good for the creator — it's an intelligent brand strategy that transforms influence into familiarity, and familiarity into action.

True partnership is when the sponsored post becomes part of the story — not an interruption in the script.

9. Price without criteria is a gamble — not an investment

Today, two creators with similar numbers can charge amounts with a difference of up to 200%. The result? A market where no one really knows if they are paying too little, too much, or simply wrong.

This distortion affects all sides: devalued creators, frustrated brands, and inefficient campaigns. In some cases, the impact can reduce campaign effectiveness by 60%.

The problem is not in high or low prices — it’s in the lack of criteria. Following only the number of followers is like measuring a restaurant's quality by the number of tables: it doesn't make sense.

The solution? Multifactor pricing, based on data such as CPView, engagement rate, retention, audience fit, and performance history. Only then does influencer marketing move from being a game of chance to a science of impact.

10. When logic fails, the campaign sinks

It’s not a lack of budget that sinks campaigns — it’s the lack of criteria.

According to the report, the three most common mistakes are:

1. Choosing creators only by follower count;

2. Pricing without considering real impact;

3. Poorly aligning the creator's audience with the brand's.

Each of these failures triples the cost per result and sabotages the effectiveness of the action.

At its core, it’s simple: when we treat influencer marketing as strategic media — and not as a fad — campaigns perform better, creators engage more, and the brand stops interrupting to truly be part of the conversation.

Influence is a bridge. But without engineering, it becomes a rickety one.

The Creator Economy is already huge — but there is still a lack of solid ground to sustain this flight

The report Creator POV 2025 is a disguised alert for opportunity: the Creator Economy has everything it takes to be the cultural and economic engine of the next decade — but only if structured with intelligence, technology, and predictability.

And this is where DUX comes into play.

We are the missing gear to turn attention into value. With our receivables anticipation, we provide liquidity for creators and predictability for brands — without stifling the creative flow, without restricting the delivery.

While others see creators as temporary media, we see them as strategic long-term assets. And we are here to ensure they have the necessary ground to grow with stability.

Because if the future is made of narratives, those who finance narratives build futures.

The complete report can be found here.

Want to turn influence into real growth?

Talk to DUX and discover how to generate impact with more predictability — for you, for creators, and for the market as a whole.