Creator Economy Now Absorbs 15–25% of Brand Marketing Budgets: IIGC

Brands are now routing 15% to 25% of their marketing budgets to the creator economy, according to findings from the India Influencer Governance Council (IIGC) reported by afaqs!. The range puts creator partnerships squarely alongside paid social and search in the budget hierarchy, at least for the brands sampled.

How big is the shift?

The headline number is striking because it's not a forecast — it's reported current allocation. For marketers who have spent years treating influencer work as experimental line items, a 15% floor means it has crossed into a default channel. The upper bound, 25%, puts creators in the same conversation as performance media.

A caveat follows every promise here. IIGC did not, in the publicly available reporting, disclose its sample size, the verticals surveyed, or whether the figures include only paid creator fees or also production, agency markups, and platform spend. A 15% line on one brand's P&L can mean very different things across categories.

What does this change for marketers?

Practically, three things. First, budget review meetings should now treat creator allocation with the same rigor as paid media — meaning tracked ROI, not vanity reach. Second, procurement and legal teams can no longer treat creator contracts as one-off; they need templates. Third, agencies that previously bundled creator work into creative retainers will face pressure to unbundle and price it transparently.

The shift also raises a question few brands want to answer publicly: what gets cut to make room? If creator budgets grow, the losers tend to be traditional display, out-of-home, and event sponsorships — areas where attribution has grown harder.

Why the skepticism matters

Creator-economy benchmarks have a history of running hot. Industry surveys routinely cite 30%, 40%, even 50% shifts in spending without distinguishing between planned and actual spend, or between influencer marketing as a category and adjacent formats like UGC, branded content, and creator-led commerce. IIGC's 15–25% sits closer to the conservative end of recent claims — which is one reason it's worth taking seriously rather than dismissing.

Still, "brand marketing budgets" is a moving target. A figure that holds up in 2025 may understate reality if short-form video commerce continues to grow, or it may overshoot if measurement standards tighten and underperforming creator campaigns get reined in.

The practitioner's read

For social media managers and brand leads, the actionable signal isn't 15% or 25% — it's that allocation has stopped being the question. The question now is attribution, contract governance, and how creator performance reconciles with platform-level analytics. Until IIGC or a comparable body publishes methodology, treat the range as directional, not definitive.

Looking ahead, expect budget-share disclosures to become a competitive lever: brands that can credibly show creator ROI will defend the spend, while those running on reach alone will see their allocations tested in the next planning cycle.