Marketing leaders are typically faced with a short list of options when it comes to where to allocate our advertising budgets. Google and Meta have effectively created a duopoly that forces us to choose one or the other, and the only decision we’re left with is what we put into their ads. But a growing number of marketers are opting for a different path.

As the internet has evolved, all of the attention – and therefore the advertising opportunities – have converged to an increasingly small number of places. Meta controls the top 3 social media platforms by users (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) and Google controls about 90% of all search traffic.

That monopolization of our attention was meant to force us to give them all of our money. They enticed creators to spend their time and talent posting content that would attract increasingly more attention to their platforms in exchange for pennies on their advertising revenue dollars, believing that would lock in users, and therefore advertisers.

But this year, about 35% of marketing budgets are cutting out the middleman. Brands are going around that system and straight to the source: Content creators, in the form of platform-agnostic UGC.

Creator marketing isn’t new, but until recently it was a fringe part of the marketing ecosystem. Often, brands would work with a creator to produce content, and then use those videos as the creative for their ad campaigns.

Today, brands are recognizing that it’s actually the creators who hold the majority of the power, and the platforms have painted themselves into a corner.

What the platforms are really selling is reach. Their whole business model is that they control who sees what, therefore we have to pay them if we want our messages to appear in front of millions of people.

But creators have earned the right to connect with those same users, and the platforms are powerless to take that away because if people’s favourite creators stopped appearing in their feeds, then why would they log back on?

So What?


While it might require a bit more work to partner with a creator than it does to simply hit Boost Post, an increasing number of brands are finding that it’s worth the extra effort.

Not only do our messages get in front of more people – often at better rates – we can also use that same content for our own organic channels, which builds our ability to connect with a growing number of people in the future. Plus, people are much more likely to be receptive to content from a creator they have grown to trust than a sponsored post that interrupts their feed.

The next time that you’re planning an advertising budget, it may be worth considering: Would you be better off giving into the Big Tech duopoly, or would it be better to go straight to the source, cutting out Meta and Google, and working directly with the people who have the attention we’re looking for?