News

Global Influencer & Creator Economy To Double Over Next 5 Years

According to Goldman Sachs, brand deals, platform payouts, and video advertising are expected to drive growth.

Published

3 years ago

April 25, 2023

global influencer and creator economy to double over next 5 years

According to Goldman Sachs, the influencer and creator economy market could double over the next five years, driven by a significant increase in digital media consumption and the rise of new technology.

With over 50 million individual creators, the total value of this market segment could rise to $480 billion by 2027, up from a current total of $250 billion.

influencer marketing forecast

“New platforms such as TikTok have emerged, while legacy platforms like Facebook and YouTube have also introduced new formats for sharing short-form video, live streaming channels and other forms of user-generated content,” says Eric Sheridan, Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs.

income sources for digital creators

Goldman Sachs expects influencer marketing, payouts from social platforms, and short-form video advertising to boost the growth of the creator economy, with the number of global content creators estimated to rise by 10-20% annually over the next five years.

Also Read: How To Permanently Delete Your Instagram Account

Social media creators and influencers earn a living by making endorsement deals with brands, through advertising revenue, and direct donations and subscriptions from followers. The Goldman Sachs report revealed that brand deals are now the primary source of creator revenue at about 70%, followed by ad sharing.

Digital platforms offering multiple ways to monetize creator content will continue attracting influential creators as competition intensifies due to economic uncertainty and rising interest rates, putting significant strains on funding and investment.

News

At I/O 2026, Sundar Pichai Concedes AI Must Deliver Real Value

Gemini 3.5, a personal agent called Spark, agentic shopping, and Android XR eyewear are all aimed at making AI feel useful, not just impressive.

Published

2 weeks ago

May 20, 2026

Nour Nasir

at io 2026 sundar pichai concedes ai must deliver real value

Google

Google’s annual I/O developer conference (I/O 2026) has recently become a status update on the same question: can the company turn its AI spending into products people use every day? This year, chief executive Sundar Pichai described Google as being in a phase of hyper progress, while conceding this is the part of the cycle where people want to see real value in the products they use on a day-to-day basis.

The strategy on display was to push agents — AI systems that act on a user’s behalf — into nearly every Google product at once. Search now has an “intelligent search box” that returns generated explainer videos alongside links. Gmail, Docs, YouTube and Maps are gaining their own agent layers, including a Docs Live feature that turns spoken instructions into drafted text with citations.

Two new models, Gemini 3.5 and a cheaper Gemini 3.5 Flash, arrived the same day. Google says 900 million people now use Gemini, and that more than 50 billion images have been generated with it. The pricing tier names are likely to confuse buyers: a new AI Ultra plan launches at $100 a month, while the older Gemini AI Ultra drops from $250 to $200.

The flashier announcements were Gemini Omni, a video generator pitched as a more realistic answer to OpenAI’s discontinued Sora 2, and Gemini Spark, a personal agent that handles recurring tasks across a user’s Google account. A new universal shopping cart lets agents complete purchases across multiple retailers from inside Google itself, placing the company between the merchant and the buyer, and also owning the checkout.

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Google also confirmed its Android XR eyewear, built with Samsung and frames from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Audio-only glasses ship this autumn; a display-equipped version, which would superimpose live translations into the wearer’s field of view, is still in development. Both sets translate, however only the display version shows you the result.

What Pichai did not resolve is the bargain underneath all this. An agent is only useful to the degree it knows your calendar, your inbox, your shopping history and your physical surroundings. Google has now confirmed that, in time, the same context may carry advertising.