Creator economy research from KALO IQ
Original aggregated data on the US creator economy. We publish quarterly reports drawn from real platform activity across 200+ DTC brand customers and 100 million hand-verified US creators. Free PDF downloads, no email gate, citable by journalists with attribution.
Published reports
The reports below are free to download and cite. Use the attribution Source: KALO IQ [Report Name], [Quarter/Year]. No prior permission needed.
Social Commerce 2026: The Buy Button Moved Into the Feed
How social commerce turned creator content into a checkout, the cited public numbers behind it, plus why audience verification matters more when a view becomes a sale.
From Campaigns to Programs: The Always-On Creator Shift
Why brands moved from one-off influencer campaigns to always-on creator programs in 2026, the cited IAB data behind the shift and what it means for your roster.
Why Small Creators Win in 2026
Nano and micro creators take half of US creator spend and win on engagement and trust. But scaling them is an operations and verification problem, not a discovery one. Cited public data.
The 2026 Engagement Benchmark Report
Platform engagement benchmarks for 2026 from a published 70 million post study: TikTok 3.7%, Instagram 0.48%, Facebook 0.15%. Plus why a single benchmark misleads you and hides fraud.
Who the Social Buyer Is in 2026
A profile of the 117 million Americans shopping from the feed: who they are by age, what moves them to buy and why reaching them depends on real creator audiences. Cited public data.
The Verified Creator Report 2026
US creator spend is growing four times faster than the rest of the ad market, while the rigor brands apply to verifying creators is not keeping pace. This report synthesizes public IAB, eMarketer and FTC data to size that gap and explain what it costs.
At a glance: the public numbers
US creator spend
$37B2025, +26% YoYGoing to nano and micro
49.9%of US creator spendBought on a creator's say-so
58%of US adultsHow to read this report
Public, cited data only
Every figure traces to a named public source: the IAB, eMarketer, the FTC, the National Advertising Division and Goldman Sachs. The synthesis is ours; the numbers are not.
Creator Economy Statistics 2026
The creator economy numbers that matter for 2026, each cited to a public source: market size, US creator spend, creator-tier shifts, consumer trust and fraud benchmarks.
The Creator Verification Gap
A data-led analysis of why brand spend is rising fastest in the hardest-to-verify creator tiers, what that gap costs and how to close it.
DTC Creator Spend Index Q1 2026
What 200+ DTC brands spent on US creators in Q1 2026. Aggregated, anonymized data from 47,840 verified creator deals across 8 DTC verticals.
At a glance: the Q1 2026 numbers
Total spend
$182M+34% YoYCreator deals
47,840tracked Q1 2026DTC verticals
8analyzedHow to read this report
Aggregated data only
Every statistic in the report is reported in aggregate across brand cohorts, creator tiers and DTC verticals. No individual brand or creator is identifiable.
The N≥10 bucket minimum rule explained
Before publishing any statistic, the underlying bucket (vertical, tier or brand cohort) must contain at least 10 brands or 40 creators. Buckets smaller than this are merged with adjacent categories or excluded entirely.
How our research is made
Three rules that govern every KALO IQ research report. They protect brand customer confidentiality, creator privacy and the legal posture of every published statistic.
Data source: the KALO IQ platform
Every data point we publish is derived from real platform activity, not surveys, scraping or estimates. The platform tracks creator-brand deals end to end, including discovery, outreach, deal terms, content publication and measurement.
100 million verified US creators
The creator pool is exclusively US-based and hand-verified by our team. We do not include international creators or unverified profiles in our research datasets.
Manual verification process
Every creator on the platform is checked by a human verifier before being listed. The verification step confirms US residency, real audience signals and active posting cadence.
15-person verification team
The verification team processes roughly 8,000 to 12,000 creator profiles per week. The team has approved approximately 104 million US creators since 2015 and rejected an estimated 32 million for fake-audience signals, dormancy or non-US residence.
What we never publish
The methodology page in every report names what is excluded from the data. The exclusions are not optional and they apply to every report we ship.
- Individual brand names or any statistic that could identify a specific brand.
- Individual creator names, handles or rates.
- Deal-level data that could be reverse-engineered to a specific transaction.
- Any vertical or category with fewer than 10 brands in the bucket.
- Any data younger than 30 days at publication, so the data is not actionable competitive intelligence.
Aggregation protocol
Statistics are always reported as percentile distributions, medians, percentage shares or year-over-year deltas across cohorts, never as individual data points. Year-over-year comparisons use the same cohort of brands measured in both periods to avoid composition bias.
Upcoming research roadmap
The KALO IQ research calendar publishes one major report per quarter. Each report is announced via newsletter four weeks before publication. Email [email protected] to get embargo access 48 hours before public release.
Q2 2026 publications (July 2026)
- DTC Creator Spend Index Q2 2026. Refresh of the Q1 dataset across the same 200+ brand cohort. Same methodology, new quarter. Tracks how the TikTok-vs-Instagram share crossover from Q1 plays out through Q2.
Q3 2026 publications
- 2026 US Creator Verification Report. Analysis of fake follower rates across competitor platforms versus the KALO IQ verified pool. The contrarian-data report of the year.
- Beauty Creator Pricing Index. Specialized cut focused on the beauty DTC vertical, the largest by absolute creator spend.
Q4 2026 publications
- DTC Brand Creator ROI Benchmarks. Outcome-side data. What ROAS DTC brands actually got from creator spend in 2026.
For journalists and analysts
KALO IQ research is published for industry citation. Any data point in any report is free to use without prior permission, provided the source is attributed.
How to cite our research
Use this format for any quote or data point pulled from a KALO IQ report. The format works for print, web, social and broadcast.
Attribution format
Source: KALO IQ [Report Name], [Quarter/Year]
Example: Source: KALO IQ DTC Creator Spend Index, Q1 2026
Press contact
Press inquiries get a 24-hour response during US business hours. Email [email protected] for: additional data slices not in the public reports, custom cuts for specific stories, interviews with James Carter (CEO), embargo access to upcoming research.