Budget migration to streaming/CTV accelerates as retail media gains ground, squeezing influencer spend in key verticals

Two major structural forces are converging on your deal pipeline right now. U.S. viewers aged 2–34 now spend over 60% of their TV time on streaming, and CTV reaches 77% of U.S. homes — numbers that are actively pulling brand advertising budgets away from linear and toward streaming-native formats. That's a direct tailwind for creators operating on digital platforms, but it comes with a counterweight: 68% of global marketers say retail media is more critical to their strategies than last year, and in categories like electronics, that shift is compressing the dollars available for social and influencer channels. If your creator roster or brand partnerships skew toward consumer electronics, your team should be stress-testing deal flow assumptions now. Beauty and cosmetics remain a relative safe harbor — UK data shows those brands allocate only 2% to retail media while leaning 61% on TV, a gap that almost certainly flows into social and influencer investment as a digital complement.

Key Signals

U.S. viewers 2–34 spend 60%+ of TV time on streaming; CTV reaches 77% of U.S. homes, pulling brand budgets toward digital-native formats — 3 Key Media Convergence Trends

Confirms the structural case for creator and streaming-native inventory as brand dollars follow younger audiences away from linear TV.

68% of global marketers say retail media is more crucial than prior year, threatening to compress influencer spend in electronics and performance-driven categories — 3 Key Media Convergence Trends

Operators managing brand partnerships in electronics or direct-response verticals face real budget competition from retail media channels.

Beauty/cosmetics brands allocate only ~2% to retail media and 61.4% to TV, signaling continued strong influencer deal volume in the beauty vertical — 3 Key Media Convergence Trends

Beauty creator deal activity is structurally supported as brands in this vertical use influencer spend as their primary digital alternative to TV.

TikTok Shop agencies are now primarily discovered via AI search tools including ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, concentrating visibility among top-ranked firms — netinfluencer.com

If your agency or service business isn't optimized for AI search visibility, you risk being systematically excluded from brand-side discovery at the top of the funnel.

A TikTok creator's crowdfunding campaign to acquire a defunct airline surpassed $335M in non-binding pledges, demonstrating creators' ability to mobilize mass capital attention — foxbusiness.com

Illustrates the untapped civic and financial mobilization power of creator audiences, a signal for talent managers and media investors evaluating creator-led ventures beyond content.

Creator pay compression is intensifying as platform monetization programs pay based on organic impressions that increasingly require paid amplification to generate — www.influencers-time.com

Platform-native revenue is becoming structurally less reliable, increasing creator dependency on brand deals and direct monetization — a key input for talent managers setting rate expectations.

Market Shifts

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Ad Spend: Brand budgets are migrating toward streaming and CTV at scale, with streaming accounting for 38.3% of total U.S. TV time. Creators operating in streaming-adjacent or YouTube formats are best positioned to capture this reallocation.

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Creator Monetization: Platform-native revenue programs are paying less per impression as organic reach declines without paid support, compressing baseline creator income and shifting leverage toward brand deal negotiations.

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Retail Media vs. Influencer Spend: Retail media growth is a net threat to influencer budgets in performance-oriented categories like electronics, but beauty and lifestyle verticals appear insulated, with influencer spend serving as the primary digital alternative to TV for those brands.

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AI Search & Agency Discovery: AI-powered search is becoming the dominant discovery mechanism for creator economy services, concentrating organic visibility among a small number of top-ranked agencies and vendors — a structural shift that disadvantages newer or smaller operators without deliberate AI search optimization.