TL;DR
- Digiday's 2 October 2026 briefing cites a poll of ISBA members: 42% said creator agency fees were fully transparent, 21% partially, 37% were unsure.
- TrinityP3, cited by Digiday, argues a bundled creator deal can leave as little as 35% of budget for talent, against up to 60% billed line by line.
- ANA figures cited by Digiday: agencies take about 30% of influencer spend on average, and only 39% of agreements show transparent terms.
- The briefing gives no Thai or Southeast Asian data, so the figures are questions to ask partners, not a local benchmark.
Digiday reported on 2 October 2026 that agency fees in creator deals are becoming the next transparency problem for marketers. In its Future of Marketing Briefing, Digiday cited a poll of ISBA members in which only 42% said their creator agency fees were fully transparent, and ANA figures putting the average agency take at 30% of influencer spend.
What Digiday reported on 2 October 2026
The Digiday Future of Marketing Briefing, written by Seb Joseph and Krystal Scanlon and published on 2 October 2026, looks at how agencies charge for creator marketing and how much of that charge marketers can see. The piece is behind Digiday's membership wall, and this article relies on the figures Digiday attributes to each research body rather than on any original data.
Digiday reported that William Bradley of Responsible Marketing Advisory, building a creator-management framework for the trade body ISBA, polled members of ISBA's media leaders group and creator forum. Just 42% said their creator agency fees were fully transparent, 21% said partially, and 37% said they were unsure. Those three shares add up to 100%, so fewer than half of those polled could say they saw everything their agency charged.
Digiday also cited TrinityP3, a marketing management consultancy, which argued that the structure of a deal changes what reaches creators. By its account, a bundled creator deal can leave as little as 35% of the budget for talent, against up to 60% when the work is billed line by line. And it cited the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), whose figures put the average agency take at 30% of influencer spend, with only 39% of agreements showing transparent terms to marketers.
The figures, by source
Each number in the briefing belongs to a different party and measures a different thing. The table below keeps them apart, because a figure lifted without its source is easy to misread.
| Figure | What it measures | Source named by Digiday |
|---|---|---|
| 42% | ISBA members polled who said creator agency fees were fully transparent (21% partially, 37% unsure) | Poll of ISBA members by Responsible Marketing Advisory |
| 35% to 60% | Share of budget left for talent: as little as 35% in a bundled deal, up to 60% when billed line by line | TrinityP3 |
| 30% | Average agency take as a share of influencer spend | ANA |
| 39% | Agreements that show transparent terms to marketers | ANA |
Two cautions apply to the table. First, the poll behind the 42% and the ANA figure behind the 39% are different studies with different respondents, so the two should not be combined into a single "transparency rate". Second, the 35% and 60% figures describe a range between two billing structures, not an average, and Digiday does not say how many deals sit at either end.
Why a bundled deal hides the split
This section is analysis, not reporting. In a line-by-line deal, the marketer sees separate charges: what the creator is paid, what the agency charges for sourcing and managing, and what is spent on production or usage rights. In a bundled deal, those charges arrive as one number. The marketer knows the total but cannot tell how much of it reached the creator and how much stayed with the agency.
That is the mechanism behind the TrinityP3 range. When the budget is bundled, the same total can hide a talent share as low as 35%. When the same budget is itemised, the talent share can reach 60%. The total does not change. What changes is how much of it a client can inspect, and the figure shows that the structure of an invoice can matter as much as the headline rate.
Darren Woolley, founder and global CEO of TrinityP3, told Digiday that marketers are trading convenience and ease for a fee, which he called fine as long as they know what the fee is and can justify it. Digiday added that often they cannot. The point is a fair one for a market where creator work is bought quickly, across many small contracts, and where one agency invoice is far simpler to approve than twenty individual creator agreements.
The comparison Digiday draws with programmatic and media buying
Digiday frames the problem as the latest in a series of agency-transparency disputes, noting that programmatic had its reckoning a decade ago and that principal media deals face similar accusations today. The comparison points to a pattern: a channel takes a growing share of budget, and clients find they cannot pick apart what the agency keeps.
Digiday says it is too early to say how this will shake out and that a transparency crisis on the scale of the earlier ones is still some way away, although the rhetoric is starting to sound familiar. This article does not predict what follows.
Alex Tait, founder of Entropy Consulting, also quoted by Digiday, added a second dimension. He said marketers should absolutely know where every pound went, but that the ultimate transparency is knowing both where the money went and what incremental value the whole investment produced. In other words, a clean fee breakdown answers the cost question and leaves the results question open.
What a marketer can ask for in a creator contract
The following checklist is analysis built from the issues Digiday raised. It is not a list of steps Digiday recommended, and it is not a legal template.
- Ask whether the quote is bundled or itemised, and if it is bundled, ask for the split between talent payments and agency charges for the same campaign.
- Ask what share of the budget is paid to creators and when, so the figure can be set against the 35% to 60% range TrinityP3 describes.
- Ask what the agency fee covers: sourcing, contracting, management, reporting, or all four. A fee that covers four jobs reads differently from one that covers one.
- Ask for invoices or creator contracts to be available on request, which is how a marketer checks the breakdown independently.
- Agree on a result measure before the campaign starts, so the incremental value Tait describes can be compared with the spend afterwards.
None of these items needs a particular platform or a particular agency. They are questions a marketer can put to any partner that bills for creator work, including a partner the marketer has used for years.
What the briefing did not say
A transparency story invites over-reading, so the limits are worth stating plainly. A bundled deal can be an honest commercial choice, and a 30% average take is not, on its own, evidence of overcharging, because the briefing does not publish what agencies deliver for that share. Digiday itself notes that the consultants raising these warnings would also like to be paid to fix the problem.
The figures also come from a mix of sources. The poll and the ANA figures come from trade bodies, and the TrinityP3 range comes from a consultancy. Digiday does not give sample sizes or the market each study covered, so the numbers should be read as directional indicators and not as a single dataset. And the briefing gives no figures for Thailand or for Southeast Asia.
What this means for Thai marketers
This section is analysis. The figures Digiday reported come from British and US trade bodies and a consultancy, and the briefing does not say the same shares apply in Thailand. A Thai marketer should treat the numbers as questions to put to their own partners, not as a benchmark for the local market.
The structural point does carry across. Wherever creator work is bought through an agency, the marketer faces the same choice between a single bundled price and an itemised one. A brand that buys creator posts on TikTok, Instagram or YouTube through an agency can ask which of those two structures it is paying, and what share of each baht reaches the creator.
For brands running paid social, the question links to measurement. If a creator campaign is judged by reach alone, a high agency share is hard to evaluate. If it is tied to a result such as leads or sales, the cost can be set against what it produced. Relevant Audience runs paid social through its paid social advertising service and covers the platform side in its TikTok Ads service, and the same principle applies to both: set the result measure first, then judge the cost.
FAQ: creator agency fees
How many marketers have full transparency on creator agency fees?
42% of ISBA members polled by Responsible Marketing Advisory, as cited by Digiday, said their creator agency fees were fully transparent. Another 21% said partially and 37% said they were unsure.
How much of an influencer budget does an agency take?
The ANA figures cited by Digiday put the average agency take at 30% of influencer spend. The same figures say only 39% of agreements are transparent to the marketer, so the 30% average sits alongside limited visibility of how it is charged.
How much of a creator budget reaches the talent?
TrinityP3, as cited by Digiday, argued that as little as 35% of the budget can be left for talent in a bundled deal, against as much as 60% when the work is billed line by line. The range depends on how the deal is structured, and Digiday gives no single average.
Does this data apply to Thailand?
The briefing does not say. Digiday's figures come from ISBA members, TrinityP3 and the ANA, and nothing in it points to Thai or Southeast Asian data, so Thai marketers should use them as prompts for questions and not as a local benchmark.
What should a marketer ask an agency about creator fees?
Start by asking whether the quote is bundled or itemised and what share goes to the creator. Then ask what the agency fee covers and agree a result measure in advance, which addresses Alex Tait's point to Digiday about knowing the incremental value of the spend as well as where it went.
Where to go from here
The Digiday briefing is a prompt to ask for a breakdown before the next creator budget is approved. Marketers who want to review how their paid social and creator spend is structured can start with Relevant Audience's paid social advertising service, and the full briefing is available from Digiday to members.
