We’re at Cannes Lions, the annual advertising festival that is expected to draw over 13,000 people to the South of France.
This year has already felt like the biggest yet for the creator economy.
While there may only be 250 creators on the ground, per one estimate, the creator economy has outsized influence over the conference. Every company from Amazon to Forbes is hosting creator-related events and top names like Mel Robbins, Jay Shetty and Steven Bartlett are taking the stage at the new LIONS Creators Beach. Plus, many others who work in the creator economy—from managers to operators—are in attendance this year.
For us, it’s been impossible to walk down the famous Croisette boulevard without bumping into multiple people in the industry!
The draw of Cannes Lions for the creator economy isn’t just swanky parties with free-flowing rosé. Instead, everyone is here to do business. For creators, that means speaking on panels, attending events and building relationships with top brands.
Those brands are also now more interested than ever in working with creators and influencer marketing spending is soaring.
In 2026, US advertisers are expected to spend about $44 billion on creators, with growth outpacing traditional and digital media overall, according to the IAB. Roughly a decade ago, influencer marketing spending reached just $900 million in the US, according to EMARKETER.
That represents roughly 50x growth over 10 years.
The catch is that more budget is now going to paid ads on social platforms and other channels than to creators themselves.
That’s partially because the creator economy is more crowded than ever and social feeds are increasingly personalized. While recommendation algorithms can help content find the right audience, they also make reach less predictable. This is making it harder than ever for marketers to connect with people at scale.
As a result, paid ads have become one of the most predictable and reliable ways for brands to reach audiences. Paid ads also help marketers extend the reach of partnerships, ensure that they reach the right people and improve measurement.
Either way, if Cannes Lions is any indication, creators have become one of the industry's most important areas of investment. And the conversation is increasingly about how to scale influencer marketing—not whether it works.
Other happenings at Cannes…
We’ve spent our first 48 hours here doing a little bit of everything. We taped a marathon four, back-to-back podcast interviews on Monday in partnership with Sounds Profitable, which provided us with a gorgeous beachfront recording space. The Washington Post’s Dylan Wells also interviewed us about the state of the creator economy on stage at a CMO breakfast hosted by Whalar Group and 3C Ventures.
Earlier today, we produced a live Scalable podcast with two special guests: YouTube executive Kim Larson and creator Kayla Nicole as part of an event from Convergence. We also held brand partnership meetings of our own and co-hosted a dinner with our podcast network Acast! And it’s only Tuesday…
Instagram Is Bringing Back Long-Form
Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, was supposed to be at Cannes Lions this week but bowed out last-minute.
The platform still made news: Instagram is testing horizontal video on its smart TV app. The company will also experiment with longer-form videos and episodic series with creators, Tessa Lyons, Instagram’s vice president of product told the Hollywood Reporter.
Attendees of the Scalable Summit heard it first! In early May, Lyons told us on stage that she didn’t “think that short vertical content is going to be enough to succeed on TV” and that long-form content would be a part of the strategy.
Instagram’s TV push comes as YouTube has dominated living room screens and Netflix signs exclusive deals with video podcasts.
Creator Moves: Cannes Edition
Creators and celebrities also made some announcements of their own.
• MrBeast’s holding company Beast Industries announced Watchtime Studios, a new platform for creators that will launch more than a dozen new channels in the next year covering categories like food, fitness and travel.
• Will.i.am and Amazon Web Services announced a new initiative called Sound Up! to invest in creators focused on music, technology and culture.
The Round Up
Snap is spinning off an internal gen AI video team into a separate company called Dotmo due to high costs. The new company will focus on developing AI models that can create interactive gaming experiences.
Instagram now allows every slide in a carousel to have its own caption, letting creators give viewers more context about what’s happening in the post.
Reign Maker Group, a creator economy holding company, invested in Hyphen HQ, a new talent management company co-founded by Victoria Bachan and Alicia Rose. Hyphen, which was incorporated in April, offers a profit-sharing and options program that gives creators and managers a financial stake in the agency.
Hummingbirds, a platform that connects consumer brands with local and UGC creators, launched Offers, a new product that lets brands track when creator recommendations lead to in-store purchases at major US retailers.
