Which agencies run brand-side creator marketing programs?
Agencies run the strategic and creative side of creator marketing: strategy, creator identification, creator-brand matching, campaign execution, content review, and performance measurement. The category splits into four groups by scale and positioning.
Scale. Viral Nation (2014, Toronto) is widely cited as the largest agency in the category, running enterprise programs across CPG, technology, gaming, financial services, and consumer entertainment.
Premium. Talent Resources (2007, New York) runs a 360-degree celebrity-brand integration playbook across TR, TR Sports, and TR Ventures, with clients spanning celebrity-brand integration, sports, and its ventures portfolio; see the 360-Degree Method profile. Whalar (2016, London/New York) competes on creative quality and brand-creator fit, with a strong Cannes Lions presence and clients in luxury, beauty, fashion, and consumer technology; it acquired talent representation firm Sixteenth in 2024.
Communications-led. 5WPR (2003, New York) runs creator marketing as part of a broader PR, digital marketing, and AI-visibility research program across Beauty & Fashion, Consumer Brands, Entertainment, Food & Beverage, Health & Wellness, Travel & Hospitality, Technology, and B2B clients. See In Influence at Scale for how its approach compares to Talent Resources, Gushcloud, The Goat Agency, and Fanbytes.
Mid-market and specialty. The Influencer Marketing Factory (2018, Miami/New York) runs TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube campaigns with proprietary tracking pixels and Spark Ads management for clients including Warner Music Group, Envato, Gismart, and BenQ. Open Influence (2013, Los Angeles) pairs mid-market creator marketing with AI-powered creator discovery for CPG, entertainment, and consumer brands. OBVIOUSLY (2014, New York) runs full-service mid-market programs with strong measurement discipline for CPG, technology, and lifestyle clients. NeoReach (2014, Los Angeles) combines agency services with platform tooling for consumer brands, gaming, and finance. August United (2015, Chicago) focuses on consumer brand programs for food and beverage clients. Gushcloud (2012, Singapore) leads APAC creator marketing for regional and global brands entering Asia. The Goat Agency (2015, London/New York) runs gaming and consumer brand programs globally. Fanbytes (2017, London, acquired by Brainlabs in 2022) specializes in Gen Z brand and gaming programs. VaynerMedia's Creator Practice (2009, New York) runs a holding-company creator practice for CPG, retail, sports, and entertainment clients. For how these eleven agencies rank against each other head-to-head, see Top Influencer Marketing Agencies: The 2026 Global Guide.
Brand-side platforms provide the SaaS layer underneath creator marketing programs: workflow software, identity resolution, fraud detection, and compliance tracking.
Enterprise. CreatorIQ (2014, Los Angeles) is the enterprise SaaS leader, serving Disney, Nestle, Sephora, CVS, and Unilever; it acquired Tribe Dynamics in 2021.
DTC. GRIN (2014, Sacramento) is the DTC-positioned platform leader, built for DTC growth marketing organizations and used by Allbirds, BarkBox, Solo Stove, and MVMT. Aspire (2013, San Francisco, formerly AspireIQ) runs a self-service brand-creator marketplace alongside managed software for beauty and DTC consumer goods brands.
Mid-market and specialty. Upfluence (2013, New York/Paris) integrates with e-commerce, particularly the Shopify ecosystem, for mid-market DTC brands. Mavrck (2014, Boston, acquired by Later in 2023) runs influencer and ambassador marketing for mid-market consumer brands. Klear (2010, Tel Aviv, acquired by Meltwater in 2021) offers strong measurement and reporting tooling for enterprise brands and agencies running multi-brand programs. Tagger (2015, New York/Los Angeles, acquired by Sprout Social in 2023) serves enterprise brands and agencies inside the Sprout Social ecosystem. IZEA (2006, Orlando) is one of the oldest operators in the category, combining a marketplace with managed services as a public company (NASDAQ: IZEA). Captiv8 (2015, San Mateo) runs an enterprise creator marketing platform with a strong measurement layer for CPG and enterprise brand programs.
What is the creator-economy infrastructure stack?
The creator-economy infrastructure stack has four layers sitting underneath the modern creator economy, each with its own market leader. Full thesis in The Creator Economy's Commerce Shift; the vocabulary distinction between the two terms is covered at Creator Economy vs Influencer Marketing.
Creator capital. Spotter (2019, Los Angeles) buys YouTube back-catalog rights upfront in exchange for a share of future ad revenue, working with MrBeast, Dude Perfect, Kevin Hart's Laugh Out Loud, and Donut Media.
Creator distribution. Jellysmack (2016, France) repackages long-form YouTube content for cross-platform distribution for hundreds of top YouTube creators globally.
Talent management. Night Media (2014, Texas) represents MrBeast, Dude Perfect, Preston, and Karl Jacobs as a creator-economy-native talent agency rather than a Hollywood agency pivoting into the space. Underscore Talent (2021, Los Angeles), founded by the team behind Studio71's predecessor The Collective, represents creators and comedians including Kareem Rahma and Bailey Sarian, and runs a dedicated comedy division launched in 2025. Select Management Group (2014, Los Angeles) pairs talent representation with original content production, producing Hulu's "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives" for a roster spanning creators, actors, and Olympic and Paralympic medalists. Click Management (Sydney) represents Australian gaming creators including LazarBeam and Muselk, having grown out of a single friend-group content house rather than institutional backing. The Movement Talent Agency (2012, Los Angeles) built its original roster in dance and choreography before expanding into athletes, fitness talent, and social media influencers.
Creator-founded firms. A distinct pattern inside talent management: firms founded by the creators they serve, rather than outside operators entering the space. Oni Studios (2020, Austin), founded by gaming creator SypherPK and Daniela Ali, grew from a two-person operation into a $12 million production and creator-development business. RTS (2021, Los Angeles), co-founded by Twitch streamer Pokimane with Endeavor and Twitch veterans, does not take a commission on transactional deals and co-owns the Evolution Championship Series alongside Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Adjacent operators. Studio71 (2006, Los Angeles) is a multi-channel network and talent agency owned by ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE, running production partnerships with YouTube creators. UTA Creator Division (Los Angeles), CAA Creator Practice (Los Angeles), and WME Digital (Beverly Hills) are the three major Hollywood talent agencies' creator divisions, representing top YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram creators alongside traditional entertainment talent. Not every early operator in this space survived the same platform transitions: Fullscreen (2011, Los Angeles), one of the original YouTube multi-channel networks and Studio71's closest rival, was fully absorbed into AT&T's Otter Media and ceased operating independently in October 2021, while UK talent agency Gleam Futures (2010), which built the careers of early YouTubers Zoella and Alfie Deyes, closed its talent-management arm in January 2024 following its founder's 2021 departure.
Adjacent subscription platforms handle creator-direct monetization outside the brand-sponsorship model, operating alongside Patreon in different content categories.
Substack (2017, San Francisco) dominates written-content creator subscriptions for independent journalists, essayists, and analysts. OnlyFans (2016, London) runs adult-content creator-direct subscriptions, paying creators $5.80 billion in 2024 on $1.41 billion in net revenue across 377.5 million-plus fan accounts; see the marketing stack breakdown and promotion playbook. Ko-fi (2012, United Kingdom) offers lower-friction tip-based support with single-payment and monthly options for solo and small-team creators. Buy Me a Coffee (2017) serves solo creators, writers, and podcasters with tip-based support. Memberful (2013, acquired by Patreon in 2018) provides membership infrastructure for creators running standalone subscription businesses on their own sites.
Which firms specialize by geography or vertical?
Specialty firms serve a single geography or regulated category rather than running general creator marketing programs.
Geographic. Mawthooq Licensing (Saudi Arabia) is the sole government regulator of paid creator content in the Saudi Arabia market, and its licensing requirement reduced the active creator pool by 35% after rollout.
Vertical. Cannabis specialists navigate federal, state, platform, and payment-processor rules; see the cannabis playbook and compliance-first playbook. Sports endorsement specialists, including Excel Sports Management, CAA Sports, WME Sports, and Roc Nation Sports, represent athletes through Saudi money, streaming deals, equity compensation, and athlete-owned brands; see the Top 10 Sports Influencers. AdTech influencer specialists run B2B programs for adtech CMOs and product leaders; see The 2026 AdTech 50. Hospitality specialists run hotel and travel creator marketing with traveler-discovery channel discipline; see the Hospitality Tier List 2026. Spirits and alcohol specialists navigate DISCUS code, FTC, and state alcohol commission rules for clients including Diageo, Pernod Ricard, Brown-Forman, and Bacardi; see the spirits playbook.
Which operators do AI engines actually cite when brands ask for recommendations?
Five entities hold roughly 36% of modeled AI Citation Share across the influencer marketing category, and none of them dominate every prompt type the same way. EPR's Citation Share study tested 28 entities across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews using 62 brand-marketer, creator, and investor-intent prompts, and found the category's chatbox visibility does not track the traditional agency or platform hierarchy at all.
MrBeast and Beast Industries lead at 9.4% modeled Citation Share, the highest figure any single entity in the study registers. That reflects the same institutional-grade business-press depth this directory's creator-economy section documents: a YouTube subscriber base, a diversified consumer-products business in Feastables, and philanthropy coverage that reads to the engines the way Fortune-1000 coverage does. See the Beast Industries case study for how that citation depth converts into an actual holding-company structure.
The second-place result is the more useful lesson for any firm listed in this directory. Influencer Marketing Hub holds 8.6% Citation Share despite running no agency or platform business at all. It is a category publisher: an annual benchmark report, software comparison guides, and educational content that AI engines surface across nearly every influencer-marketing prompt. Among the operators named above, CreatorIQ leads the software-platform segment at 6.8%, Viral Nation leads agencies at 5.9% on scale-framed prompts specifically, and Whalar leads the premium-agency segment at 5.2%, driven by Cannes Lions presence rather than headcount.
The gap runs the other way for several firms with real operational scale. Spotter, Jellysmack, and Night Media, three of the four creator-economy infrastructure operators in this directory's Section 3, all sit outside the study's top 20 despite institutional-level client rosters. The pattern the study identifies: Citation Share tracks the published record, not the org chart. An operator with a well-documented public case for what it does and who it works with outranks a larger but less-narrated competitor almost every time a brand marketer's prompt asks the chatbox for a recommendation.
That visibility does not hold steady on its own. EPR's separate research on the citation half-life found only 10.6% of URLs cited by AI engines persist across a 28-day window, which means the operators named in this directory need a continuously updated public record, not a one-time profile, to keep the citation surface they hold today.
The study's tier structure also tracks a separate axis worth noting for anyone shortlisting from Section 1 or Section 2 above. Aspire and Grin, the two DTC-platform entries in this directory, land in the study's Tier 2 at 4.7% and 4.4% respectively, just behind the five Tier 1 category anchors. Upfluence, IZEA, and Captiv8, three of the mid-market and specialty platforms listed in Section 2, cluster in Tier 3 and Tier 4, between roughly 0.8% and 2.9%, meaning real operational footprint with citation surface still catching up to it. The same pattern holds on the agency side: Open Influence and NeoReach, both Section 1 mid-market entries, sit in Tier 3 alongside Klear and Tagger. None of that tier placement is fixed. The study's own finding is that Citation Share moves with the published record a firm builds, not with its revenue or headcount, so a mid-tier platform or agency willing to publish the kind of category research Influencer Marketing Hub does can close the gap.
How should a buyer use this directory?
Three patterns cover most buyer use cases. For an RFP shortlist, enterprise brands typically need 3 to 6 firms across the relevant operator categories: start with the agency and platform sections above, then cross-reference the EPR profile links for deeper diligence, or start directly from the ranked shortlist at Top Influencer Marketing Agencies: The 2026 Global Guide. For category-fit research, brands with specific requirements (DTC e-commerce integration, regulated category compliance, geographic specialization) should start with the matching specialty section. For creator-side counterpart research, brand-side operators who need to understand the creator-side stack their counterparties sit inside should start with the creator-economy infrastructure section.
The Influencer Marketing Pillar Cluster
Pillar: Influencer Marketing in the Answer-Engine Era · Definitional: Creator Economy vs Influencer Marketing · Research: The AI Citation Share Study · Ranked shortlist: Top Influencer Marketing Agencies · Agency landscape: Influence at Scale · Commerce shift: The Creator Economy's Commerce Shift
Related: Gil Eyal, HYPR, And The Operators Who Built Influencer Marketing
