Black creators drive higher media value for marketers, study finds

Black creators across the lifestyle, fashion and gaming content niches consistently outperform their non-Black counterparts in overall engagement and follower growth, along with media value for brand sponsors, according to a new study from Group Black and Nielsen. 

Between 2020 and 2022, Black creators largely drew in higher engagement rates and grew larger online followings than their non-Black peers across Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Twitter, per the “Black Power: The impact of Black creators for brands” report. But these creators have gone “largely unrecognized” by brands and marketers and are often overlooked—and underpaid—for influencer marketing campaigns, Kerel Cooper, president of advertising at Black-owned media collective Group Black, wrote in the report. 

“Black creators offer levels of impact and influence that consistently outstrip their non-Black peers—and yet, their remuneration lags behind the market norms by as much as 35%,” he said, referring to a 2021 study from Publicis Groupe PR agency MSL U.S. and The Influencer League, which revealed Black creators earn 35% less than their white peers.

The Group Black and Nielsen report found that the social media content uploaded by 300 Black influencers in the lifestyle, fashion and gaming spaces carried a much higher “media value”—which the report bases on the total audience a creator’s social media content reaches and the average amount of engagement that content receives—than content posted by the same number of non-white creators over the two-year period analyzed. 

For example, in comparing 100 Black creators in the lifestyle niche to 100 non-Black creators who post similar content, the group of Black creators delivered more than 10 times higher media value from 2020 to 2022 than their non-Black counterparts, per the report. This trend continued across content categories, with Black gaming creators’ media value exceeding that of non-Black gamers by over $91,000 and Black fashion creators generating an average of $71,000 more in media value than non-Black influencers in the same niche, per the report. 

“With limited transparency into influencer pay, media value provides an important indicator for brands and creators to understand the potential impact of their partnerships,” the report states. “It makes the pay gap for Black creators even more stark. More equitable investment by brands with Black creators can start to close the gap.”

Additionally, Black creators across the three content categories increased their followings at higher rates than non-Black creators in the two years analyzed by Nielsen and Group Black. The total follower count of the 100 Black lifestyle creators studied grew by 194% between 2020 and 2022, whereas that growth rate was just 53% among the 100 non-Black creators analyzed. 

A key factor behind this enhanced performance of Black creators is the online behaviors of Black consumers. According to the report, Black adults are 71% more likely than the general population to purchase a product or service based on an influencer’s recommendation and are also more than twice as likely than U.S. adults as a whole to talk about brands on social media. And Black consumers are 50% more likely than the general population to seek out both diverse-owned media—including TV shows and social media accounts—and diverse creators, Nielsen found in a 2022 report.

Also read: Black-owned media favors direct sales over programmatic advertising

Despite spearheading many viral social media trends over the past few years, Black creators have repeatedly had their work appropriated and have received unequal treatment in influencer marketing campaigns. For example, cosmetics brand Tarte recently found itself at the center of a TikTok firestorm after Bria Jones, a Black influencer, posted a now-deleted TikTok video in which she said the brand treated her as a “second-tier person” by inviting her to participate in a brand trip to Miami for a Formula One race but not inviting her to the actual day of the race. Several other non-Black creators, however, were invited. (In a follow-up TikTok, Jones said there was a “miscommunication on both ends;” Tarte CEO Maureen Kelly in her own TikTok video said that “I acknowledge that we have fallen short in matters of diversity, inclusion and equity in the past.”)

And, earlier this year, several Black creators reported they were seeing brands pulling back from their investment in Black History Month influencer campaigns after receiving a rush of opportunities in 2022. 

“As social media consumers and creators, Black people are at the forefront of digital media influencing culture and trends,” the report states.