For most consumer brands, creators used to be a line in the media plan. In 2026 they look more like a distribution channel. On TikTok Shop, the creator’s video is the storefront: Momentum Works estimates the platform’s US gross merchandise value at $15.1 billion in 2025, up 68% on 2024, and eMarketer forecasts $23.41 billion of US sales in 2026. The IAB projected US creator ad spend at $37 billion for 2025, with consumer packaged goods brands, including beauty and personal care, estimated at about $5.5 billion of it.
That turns a marketing question into a capability question: does a consumer company build its own creator distribution, buy it, or partner with someone who runs it? This piece sets out what each route involves, what the largest companies have said and done, and what the deal record shows. Every external figure links to its source; the market-size figures for TikTok Shop and for creator ad spend are third-party estimates and forecasts.
What the largest consumer companies have said
- Unilever has been the most explicit. PRWeek reported in March 2025 that its new CEO would raise social media’s share of marketing spend from 30% to 50% and work with twenty times more influencers. He has spoken of wanting an influencer in each of India’s 19,000 zip codes and each of Brazil’s municipalities (Barclays fireside chat transcript), and by December 2025 said the company was already working with close to 300,000 influencers (Unilever newsroom). Its 2025 results describe an accelerated shift to social-first marketing (full-year results).
- Kenvue’s CEO said the company had made “a strong pivot to social media, to influencers” while raising ad spend (MediaPost, December 2024).
- Estée Lauder’s CEO told analysts as early as 2019 that “75% of our investment now is in digital social media influencers” (The Drum).
- L’Oréal’s UK & Ireland marketing chief said the company can get 1,000 influencers posting about a trend with its products within five days (The Drum, September 2025).
The direction is clear; the operating model behind it is not. Working with 300,000 influencers is not a media buy. It is a supply chain of people, products, briefs, payments and data.
What creator distribution actually requires
Whoever runs it — the brand, an acquired business or a partner — creator distribution has the same moving parts:
- Supply: creators recruited and vetted by category, audience and on-camera ability, not just follower count.
- Activation: getting them posting, repeatedly. Samples, briefs, training and feedback on what sells. A list of creators who never post is worth very little.
- Economics: commission rates, retainers and the paid amplification of creator content (on TikTok Shop, GMV Max), managed against contribution margin rather than revenue alone.
- Data: sales by creator, product and video, fed back into who gets the next sample and brief.
- Compliance and rights: disclosure of paid relationships, claims control in regulated categories, and usage rights for the content.
- Platform standing: on TikTok Shop, the partner programs — TikTok Shop Partner (TSP), Creator Agency Partner (CAP) and TikTok Shop Affiliate Partner (TAP) — that come with platform access and support.
Most of the value sits in activation and data. Both are built over time, and both are hard to transfer.
Route 1: build it in-house
What it takes: a team that recruits, briefs and pays creators at scale; tooling for contracting, sampling and payments; analysts who read sales by creator; and people who know each platform’s rules as they change. Even at Unilever’s scale, the company says its creator program is managed through a combination of in-house teams, agency partnerships and experiential programs (Digiday, July 2026).
When it fits: companies with many brands and markets, enough volume to keep a creator team busy year-round, and the patience to build relationships before they pay off.
The risks: time to scale; creator relationships that are personal and leave with the people who hold them; and platform mechanics that change faster than an internal team can retool.
Route 2: buy a network or an operator
The acquisition record shows who has taken this route. Advertising holding companies are the most frequent repeat buyers — Publicis Groupe alone bought four creator businesses between July 2024 and October 2025, including Influential, reported at about $500M. Software and commerce platforms buy creator infrastructure. Since December 2025, commerce operators have announced at least five purchases of TikTok Shop specialist agencies, or stakes in them. Consumer brands themselves have rarely bought: one acquisition in the record is by a consumer-products company.
For a buyer, the questions that decide value are mostly operational:
- Network quality: how many creators post in a given month versus how many are listed, and how many stay year over year.
- Client book: revenue concentration by brand and by creator, and renewal rates.
- Platform standing: which partner programs the business holds, and what they require to keep.
- Data: whether creator-level sales data exists, who owns it and whether it moves with the business.
- Contracts: creator agreements, content usage rights and disclosure compliance.
- People: how much of the creator relationships sit with a few individuals.
Route 3: partner with an operator
What it takes: an agency or operator that already runs the supply, activation and data loop, working to the brand’s goals.
When it fits: when speed matters more than ownership, when a brand wants to prove a channel before building it, or in categories and markets where it lacks creator relationships.
What to secure in the contract: access to creator-level sales data; usage rights for creator content in paid media; clear definitions of performance (gross sales versus net of returns and fees); the scope of any exclusivity; and what happens to creator relationships and the content library if the partnership ends.
Choosing between them
| Build | Buy | Partner | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to first sales | Slowest | Fast once integrated | Fastest |
| Upfront cost | Team and tooling | Purchase price | Lowest; mostly variable |
| Control | Full | Full after integration | Shared, set by contract |
| What you own at the end | The capability | The capability and its client book | What the contract gives you: data and content rights |
| Main risk | Scale and speed | Retaining creators and key people | Dependence on the partner |
Many companies use more than one: partner to prove a category, build where volume justifies a team, and buy when a network fills a gap faster than either.
Where MediaLabs sits
MediaLabs is a TikTok Shop agency with a managed roster of 3,000+ vetted creators, so we work in the third route. We have tried to describe all three fairly.
Sources
- The Estée Lauder Companies (CEO Fabrizio Freda), 2019-08: The Drum
- Kenvue (CEO Thibaut Mongon), 2024-12-04: MediaPost
- Unilever (CEO Fernando Fernandez), 2025-03-06: Unilever transcript: Barclays fireside chat with Fernando Fernandez
- Unilever (CEO Fernando Fernandez), 2025-03-10: PRWeek
- L’Oréal UK & Ireland (Chief Digital and Marketing Officer Laetitia Raoust), 2025-09-25: The Drum
- IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau), 2025-11-20: IAB 2025 Creator Economy Ad Spend & Strategy Report
- IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau), 2025-11-20: IAB 2025 Creator Economy Ad Spend & Strategy Report (PDF)
- Unilever (CEO Fernando Fernandez), 2025-12-12: Unilever newsroom (extracts from J.P. Morgan interview)
- eMarketer, 2025-12-26: eMarketer
- Momentum Works (with Tabcut data), 2026-02-11: Momentum Works, The Low Down
- Unilever, 2026-02-12: Unilever 2025 Full Year Results announcement
- Unilever (via Digiday), 2026-07-30: Digiday