Good morning. It’s tiiiiiiiimmmmeeee. And no, we’re not talking about Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You.” It’s Spotify Wrapped season, our favorite time to be annoying on Instagram. 

Although the data isn’t expected to drop ’til Wednesday, you better believe we’ll be sharing ours in an upcoming edition of The Publish Press. Keep your eyes peeled.

— Hannah Doyle & Syd Cohen

As we enter the last few weeks of 2025, brands are gearing up for their year-end creator marketing pushes. Here are the trends we’re seeing from brands and marketers →

Spending with niche creators. “When I have a $200K campaign budget, I’ll spend it on 50 niche creators that get between 10K–300K impressions per video, rather than 1–2 mega influencers,” Wix’s head of influencer marketing Sarah Adam wrote on LinkedIn. Why? Because 1) niche creators align more closely with Wix’s ideal consumer profile and 2) the surface area for campaign success is bigger when spread across 50 smaller creators instead of two major names. 

And going deeper with big creators. “These are creators that brands have already proved out a win with, but we see brands wanting to use creators to host events or run paid ads or create syndicated content on their channels,” Smooth Media’s head of marketing Sarah Teich told us.

Teich told us creator campaigns vary based on the brand's goals—whether they are looking for awareness and distribution or brand storytelling.

Big picture: 2025 creator ad spend is projected to reach $37 billion (up 26% from last year). Smaller short-form creators will continue to account for a large portion of brand spend. With spend per integration down overall, more creators will get paid.

“I think smaller creators have an incredible opportunity to make content as a way of pitching themselves and put that proof of concept focused on engagement in front of brands [for future deals],” Teich said. “It doesn’t matter if someone has 500K followers if they get a smaller percentage of engagement—it’s basically putting a billboard on an empty street.”

This year, total online sales during Cyber Week are expected to grow by over 8%. A big part of that growth? Creators, who are impacting Black Friday/Cyber Monday with their own campaigns. Here are the creator highlights from BFCM → 

AI education creator CatGPT increased content output around her Bluetooth landline brand, Physical Phones, which included a revamped website, product photos, and free shipping promotion.

Beauty creator Sarah Cheung’s Sacheu Beauty put all 50+ products on sale for 25% off. For Black Friday, Cheung vlogged a new office tour and is running an integration with TikTok Shop, where Cheung will host office hours for creators who want to strategize with the brand.

Other creator beauty brands are taking a more QVC-like approach, like Canvas Beauty’s 10-hour TikTok Live featuring its founder Stormi Steele. She clipped over 20 videos from the livestream, some gaining over 30K views each. 

STEM creator William Osman put a holiday spin on his yearly creator event, Open Sauce, offering a physical golden ticket to those who use the code BLACKFRIDAY on a Super Early Bird ticket to the convention.

Mario Joos, fractional CEO at Stokes Twins and former MrBeast retention manager, recently noticed a shift in Shorts video performance across seven channels he consults—videos older than 30 days drop in viewership. Other creators like FrugalBC and Max Maher said on X they experienced the same effect.

Why? Joos has two theories:

Why it matters: “Most creators rely on their back catalog for stability,” Joos said on LinkedIn. “This change pushes everyone toward quantity over quality and makes it harder to build sustainable revenue or long term video value.”