In August 2023, Beacons published the first ever Top Creator Agencies of 2023 list showcasing the leaders in creator management globally. Today, we’re excited to publish an updated Top Creator Agencies of 2024.

We also surveyed these top 240+ agencies to learn more about the businesses they run and the creators they serve, giving us a snapshot of the creator talent management industry today.

This year’s list features more categories, more information on each agency, and more insight into how the industry is growing. Most importantly, we wanted to put the spotlight on what truly makes each of these talent agencies unique and valuable: the creators they manage and the testimonials of those who work with them.

Most importantly, we wanted to put the spotlight on what truly makes each of these talent agencies unique and valuable: the creators they manage and the testimonials of those who work with them.

The Top Creator Agencies List of 2024 features the agencies who are leaders in this fast-growing industry. Like creators, many top agencies have their niches: some are known for 360-degree management, some work exclusively with diverse creators, others focus on social platform-specific creators. Many have notable highlights to celebrate, such as being women-led or being in business for 10+ years.

What do agencies leading the industry today have in common, and what do they do differently? We analyzed information about these 240+ creator agencies to learn what these trends say about the creator industry as a whole.

Understanding the creator agency ecosystem

As more and more creators grow their businesses and find greater economic opportunities, finding a strong manager becomes even more important. Managers are often a creator’s first and most crucial teammate. They become responsible for overseeing the majority of a creator’s revenue streams.

To more effectively grow their businesses, creators need to find a manager that is the right fit for them—aligning with the kind of content they make, the kind of audience they have, the way they monetize, and their long-term goals.

But to decide which factors are best to consider, it’s helpful to understand the context of the creator-manager dynamic within the influencer marketing ecosystem.

Creators hire talent managers to help them get paid sponsorships with brands and manage the lifecycle of those brand deals. Depending on the creator and the agency, this could involve some or all steps of the brand deal process:

• Pitching
• Negotiating rates and deliverables
• Reviewing creative briefs
• Creating and/or reviewing contracts
• Sending drafts and fielding comments and edits
• Posting/Sharing deliverables
• Sending a campaign report or wrap-up
• Tracking payment
• Turning one-time partnerships into longer-term relationships

For their part, creator managers either work directly with brands to pitch their talent and source deals, or work with with influencer marketing agencies who run campaigns on behalf of brands.

However, there are so many ways that these parties can interact and work together—for example, creators may work directly with influencer marketing agencies or brands themselves, without a talent manager.

We created a map of this ecosystem and how the various players interact: creators and managers, who primarily pitch and get hired for new business, and brands and marketing agencies, who primarily source hire for campaigns.

Some of these interactions involve direct business transactions as a part of the partnership, while others are more about making the right connects between talent and brand.

Yet as creators grow their business and take on more brand deals, many find that it makes more sense for them to work with a manager than to run these deals alone:

• Managers help source deals through existing relationships and strategic pitching
• Managers help creators secure the best rates and contract terms by having a wide view of what the standards are across the industry
• Managers may handle communications with brands, especially the back and forth regarding contract negotiations and editing, which can be extremely time consuming
• Managers provide campaign reporting to help a creator highlight the impact of their paid content

Simply put, managers save creators time and help them make more money.

As creator Raine Emery says about their agency, Digital Fox Talent Network, "The team is friendly, dedicated, and extremely supportive... they have connected me to multiple opportunities, answered any questions I may have, and addressed my concerns with a professional approach. I have worked with clients that have complimented Digital Fox Talent and their diligence."

"The team [at Digital Fox Talent Network] is friendly, dedicated, and extremely supportive... they have connected me to multiple opportunities. I have worked with clients that have complimented Digital Fox Talent and their diligence." - Raine Emery, content creator

The state of the creator talent industry in 2024

In 2024, there are constant murmurings about how the content creator industry is evolving.

LinkedIn is becoming increasingly popular as a platform for paid sponsorships, a TikTok ban is looming, and Meta is releasing frequent updates to their platform. Standards for measuring the successes of paid content are always evolving, and it’s becoming increasingly popular for creators to supplement brand deals on social media with other monetization streams like digital products, affiliate partnerships, and newsletters.

How does the talent agency space reflect these changes, and what does the current state of this industry say about what might be coming in the future? We took a look at the data from our 240+ creator talent agencies to find out.

Lifestyle content is one of the top creator content niches among top agencies

We asked the agencies represented on our list what niche of content creators they work with. Lifestyle content was the most popular niche with 163 agencies reporting to work with lifestyle creators, with fashion, beauty, gaming, and entertainment content following in that order.

The companies in these spaces are often known for their brand awareness campaigns and splashy consumer product launches. It makes sense that these teams have the resources and the motivation to hire creators with larger audiences and higher rates—the same demographic of creators that often hire managers.

Brands like Nike, Amazon, and Netflix partner with top agencies

To that end, we surveyed the top creator agencies on brands that they’re partnered with in the past. These brands fall in the lifestyle, entertainment, and consumer packaged goods spaces. Nike was named as the most frequently partnered brand, having partnered with 11 of the agencies on our list, followed by Amazon, Netflix, Dove, and Coca Cola, in that order.

The fact that these are all household, consumer brands speaks to the power of influencer marketing in 2024 as a brand marketing channel. These brands trust creators as strong, effective marketing partners to convey their brand messaging and educate their audiences.

This list of brands speaks to the professional successes of managed creators and their trust in these agencies to broker such partnerships.

This list also speaks to the professional and economic success of the creators managed by these agencies, and the trust the creators have in their agencies to broker such partnerships.

Most top agencies are under 5 years old and identify as "boutique" in team size

To learn more about the operations of these agencies themselves, we asked agencies included in our top agencies list to classify themselves as “solo” (an agency of one individual), “boutique” (less than 10 agency team members total), “midsize” (10-50 agency team members total), and “enterprise” (agencies with 50+ team members total).

Of these four categories, the majority of agencies fell into the “boutique” category (150 agencies). In fact, more agencies identified as “boutique” than the other three categories combined.

We also asked these agencies how many years they had been in business. The majority of the creator talent agencies on the list have been in business for 3-5 years (75 agencies), followed by 1-2 years. The smallest group represented was of agencies who have been in business for 16+ years (18 agencies).

This indicates that many of the creator agencies on the top agencies list are running relatively small teams and have been in business for less than 5 years. There is still a lot of green space for these agencies to grow—whether it means taking on new team members and/or managing more creators.

Many creator agencies are running relatively small teams and have been in business for less than 5 years. But several have been in business for 16+ years, showing the potential for longevity.

Furthermore, the fact that some agencies on the list have been in business for 16+ years (from before the explosion of influencer marketing on short form video platforms like TikTok and Instagram) shows the potential for longevity in this business.

When we looked at the breakdown of creator content niches across these size buckets (boutique, midsize, and enterprise), we found that lifestyle and fashion were the top first and second content niches respectively across each size category.

Explore the full Top Creator Agencies List of 2024

Looking ahead, we believe the economic opportunities for creators are only going to continue to grow and creator managers will continue to play a big role in that. The Top Creator Agencies List of 2024 is a group that includes both young and hungry agencies and powerhouse, established agencies.

We expect to continue seeing creative work and innovative partnerships from all of them. We also expect creator talent managers to becoming increasingly prevalent and important in the influencer marketing industry, and expect to see more traditional entertainment talent agencies beginning to manage content creators.

With many of the agencies identifying as "boutique" in size and in business for less than 5 years, there are many dimensions along which these agencies could grow. They may choose to hire bigger teams and/or take on more creator clients. They could diversify across content niches or double down on their specialties.

One way in which we expect to see agencies growing is by expanding the management services they offer to creators across multiple platforms.

One way in which we expect to see agencies growing is by expanding the management services they offer to creators across multiple platforms. With many creators realizing the importance of long-form content and building a sustainable community, we are already seeing creators who started making content on Instagram and TikTok now building out monetizable channels on YouTube or in their own email newsletter.

These agencies could accelerate this by continuing to work within highly marketable consumer niches like lifestyle and fashion to build out more complex, multi-channel partnerships with top brands.

This type of expanded service would emphasize the value that creator managers can bring to their talent: helping them build and manage more streams of income from new partner channels, without needing to sacrifice the time and effort that they want to spend on content.

What are your thoughts on the future of the industry? Explore the full Top Creator Agencies List of 2024 yourself, and let us know what you think.

What stands out to you? Tag us on Instagram, X, and LinkedIn to start the conversation—we can’t wait to hear your thoughts.