YouTube: Follower count less relevant as paid media changes creator marketing equation

The size of a creator's following is becoming a less important factor in brand campaigns as paid media allows marketers to achieve reach independently of audience size, YouTube's Head of Creative Works UK&I Khalid Almashgari has said.

Speaking* at CreatorFest London, Almashgari said ad solutions that can boost creator content have reduced the importance of follower count, shifting attention to what he described as the "magic middle" – the balance between brand objectives and creator authenticity.

"Follower size is less important because reach is achieved by the media spend. That's healthy for the industry because you can work with more mid and smaller size creators and get greater diversity," he said.

A creator's ability to execute a brief without sacrificing authenticity is now a greater differentiator, he argued.

"We don't want to lose the magic of the creator content," he said. "Trying to find that magic middle between the two – the ability to get under the skin of a brief and understand what a brand is trying to do – is probably the most important thing."

Almashgari said successful creator campaigns typically share several characteristics: a strong opening hook, branding woven naturally into the content, the conversational style audiences expect from creators, and a clear call to action.

"It still blows my mind how few assets and campaigns are not getting the branding element right," he said.

Embedded subject matter

Members of the 90's Baby Show – a UK podcast hosted by Fred Santana, Temi Alchemy and VP – said the strongest brand partnerships are those where the subject matter is already part of a creator's world.

VP pointed to a campaign with the NHS around sickle cell blood donation as an example. The partnership worked, he said, because the show had already been discussing the issue with its audience and had previously featured sickle cell advocate Simple Sayo.

"Our audience wasn't like, 'Wait, what's going on here? Why are you all of a sudden asking for blood?'" he said. "It made perfect sense."

Temi Alchemy said marketers should remember why they approached a creator before issuing a brief that strips away the qualities that made them appealing in the first place.

"You wouldn't have reached out if they were inauthentic," he said. "Always remember why you went to that person and let them bring that out in the content."

The panel also argued that long-term partnerships outperform one-off campaigns because audiences are more likely to trust brands they encounter repeatedly than through isolated collaborations.

Fred Santana added that creators should be included in campaign debriefs rather than treated solely as media channels, arguing their understanding of audience feedback can improve future campaigns.

"During the activation phase, they may feel this isn't going the right way, and they have ideas of how to improve it," he said. "We know how to make it better based on what our audience are feeding back to us."

*From Coin Flip to Confidence: Scaling the Impact of Creator Marketing, CreatorFest London, 14 July 2026.