Most brands run creator marketing from a central team setting tools and strategy for the entire organization

Team structure & skills

Operating model	Mid-market brands (%)	Enterprise brands (%)	Industry Leaders (%)
A central team sets strategy and tools for the entire organization	57%	59%	61%
Each brand or division manages its program independently	29%	25%	27%
Regional teams manage programs independently of HQ	9%	13%	12%
Not sure / does not apply	5%	2%	—

Operating model of influencer marketing programs, by brand cohort

Reader Note:: This table asks how influencer marketing programs are operated. A central team that sets strategy and tools for the entire organization is the most common model in every brand cohort: 57% of mid-market brands, 59% of enterprise brands, and 61% of industry leaders. The report refers to this as a Center of Excellence. These are self-described operating models rather than independently verified org structures.
Evidence:: Self-reported behaviour
Vendor interest:: High — This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
Sample:: Survey of 1,723 respondents: 747 brands, 676 agencies, and 300 creators across 17+ industries and 9+ regions, conducted by Sapio Research in July 2025, with additional CreatorIQ research in August 2025.

Good for

A rough sense of size and direction, and deciding what to look at first.

Exact numbers, or saying that one thing caused another.
This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
The source says how much it looked at, but not how any of it was chosen.

28%

of organizations are fundamentally rewiring marketing teams and workflows for AI (March 2026)

90% of CMOs are experimenting with AI but fewer than 10% have scaled it or realized value across marketing workflows

14%

average increase in sales productivity reported from using AI in marketing by US companies (2026 survey)

Our Substack turns the data behind these cards into full breakdowns: what changed, why, and what to do about it.

72%

of brands said they manage creator marketing in house in some capacity

24–56%

of marketing tasks are currently performed using AI or ML, rising to over half in three years according to US CMOs (2026 survey)

10%

of organisations are realising significant ROI from agentic AI in Deloitte’s 2025 survey of 1,854 EMEA executives