Influencer Marketing Strategies: How Enterprise Brands Split Creator Budgets

Jonathan Claydon, Chief Strategist at Acceleration Partners (the world's largest partner marketing agency), breaks down how enterprise and DTC brands are fundamentally rethinking creator budgets. Large brands spending seven to eight figures annually with creators are now splitting that spend, keeping a portion for awareness and upper-funnel branding while carving out a separate budget for growth and acquisition teams to drive direct response through influencer work.

Meanwhile, mature DTC brands, long obsessed with CPA and ROAS targets, are shifting the opposite direction and starting to measure brand lift and audience sentiment even inside their acquisition campaigns. Claydon argues that influencer marketing strategies should never be treated as purely upper or lower funnel because creators touch every stage, and brands that measure only last-click attribution are missing a much larger halo effect.

Watch to understand exactly how he recommends structuring campaign measurement so you can prove value across the full funnel, not just the conversions you can directly attribute.