Win the
holidays with
creators.
What actually won Holiday 2025, and the five plays that will win Holiday 2026 with creators. Exclusive data from Traackr's US market analysis and Lumanu's creator payment index.
Q4 2025 was more crowded and more expensive than ever.
more creator content YoY across industries
median December 2025 payout, the year's high
rise in creator spend from Mar to Dec 2025
Holiday 2026 won't be won by showing up. It will be won by cutting through.
More creators, more content, and softer attention have raised the bar for the highest-stakes quarter in creator marketing. To find what actually breaks through, we went deeper than volume.
A view of what actually drives a save.
This report draws on Traackr's proprietary creator marketing data platform and multimodal AI content analysis, layered with payment data from Lumanu. We benchmarked creator marketing performance across Beauty, Fashion, Personal Care, Food & Beverage, and Adult Beverage to understand how the leaders are winning during the holidays.
- 770K+creators
- 12Mpieces of content
- 5categories
- 10,279posts AI-analyzed
- 140K+creator payouts (Lumanu)
- $600M+in tracked spend
Leaders don't start holiday from scratch.
The Top 25 brands earned 57% of their holiday attention from creators they already had relationships with — versus 51% for everyone else. In Beauty, that gap widened to 18 points.
of leader attention came from retained creators
Beauty leaders' retention gap vs the rest of the market
Relationships built in Q3 compound in Q4. Treat creator marketing as a year-round investment, not a holiday activation.
Grow the base without hollowing out the top.
Top brands grew attention at every tier, from VIP down to nano. The rest of the market went backward at the top, losing VIP, MEGA, and MACRO. Leaders widened the base without giving up the peak: VIP and MEGA still drove about 59% of their attention, versus 51% for everyone else.
Leaders' attention growth from nano creators
Rest of market's VIP attention loss
Leaders aren't trading the top for the bottom. They're expanding both — layering nano and micro reach on top of a strong VIP base.
Boosting at scale doesn't guarantee payoff.
Leaders more than tripled boosted-post volume (+216%), but returns swung sharply by category. Personal Care lifted saves and shares per view by 121%, while Adult Beverage boosted the hardest and saw losses YoY in saves and shares.
Personal Care's gain in saves and shares per view
Adult Beverage's YoY loss in saves and shares
Leaders build a real organic foundation before the paid layer turns on. They boost creator content that's already resonating with its own audience.
Close-up, warm, multi-brand content wins the save.
Multimodal AI analysis of 10,279 posts found glossy single-brand exclusives underperformed. Close-up, warm-toned, multi-brand frames earned 2.44x more saves. Peach tones alone drove 3.54x.
more saves when multiple brands share the frame
more saves for content with peach tones
The holiday save isn't a polished ad. It's an intimate, warm, believable moment that reads like a recommendation.
TikTok Shop and ShopMy are eating LTK's lunch.
Affiliate now drives 1 in 8 holiday creator posts. TikTok Shop and ShopMy are surging in attention while LTK and Amazon decline. A budget still weighted toward the old platforms means you're spending where attention is leaving.
holiday creator posts now include affiliate
TikTok Shop attention growth, vs LTK down 19%
The affiliate stack you built years ago isn't the one that wins in 2026. Re-evaluate platforms every quarter.
Win This Holiday Season With Creators.
Join us for a live walkthrough of the five plays, what top brands did differently in Q4 2025, and how to build your Holiday 2026 playbook.
SPEAKERS FROM TRAACKR, LUMANU, SHOPMY, AND ICYMI
Download the full 2026 State of Holiday Season Report.
Get the full five plays you should be running this holiday season, plus:
- How to brief your creators for content that converts
- What a creator post costs during the holiday season
- How the creator landscape has already changed in early 2026