- Companion, the proprietary tech platform of Billion Dollar Boy, announces the launch of Creator Investment Intelligence – the creator economy’s first comprehensive creator pricing tool designed to establish fair market value and bring spend governance natively in one platform.
- Informed by pricing intelligence aggregated from more than 180,000 creator quotes totalling $173m, Creator Investment Intelligence combines two new features – Benchmark Algorithm and Budget Tracker – to help brands negotiate with confidence and optimise investment.
- The launch is supported by new independent research, revealing that almost half (45%) of marketers and procurement professionals admit their organisation has mispriced creator fees.
- Despite rising creator investment, a lack of expert guidance and formal systems is preventing efficient industry investment. Four in five (81%) manage creator negotiations in-house and 73% still track creator spend manually using spreadsheets and email.
- An independent audit by a global retail brand found creator fees were 69% above benchmark, highlighting the opportunity for significant savings through better pricing intelligence.
London UK, 30 July 2026 – Companion, the proprietary tech platform of Billion Dollar Boy, the social agency with Creator Instinct®, is today launching Creator Investment Intelligence – the creator economy’s first comprehensive pricing tool designed to establish fair market value and bring governance to creator spend.
Creator Investment Intelligence is informed by pricing intelligence aggregated from 180,000 quotes, final deals, and deal data-points totalling $173M in real creator campaign spend with Billion Dollar Boy. Available to direct Companion clients, it helps brands negotiate with confidence, reduce overpayments, govern creator spend more effectively and optimise investment, while supporting fair remuneration for creators.
Crisis of Confidence: Half of Marketers Are Mispricing Creator Fees
The launch resolves a growing challenge for marketers. While creator investments continue to rise, the systems used to fairly price, track and manage those investments haven’t kept pace. Without formal pricing benchmarks, organisations are left with inconsistent pricing, overpayments and inefficient negotiations.
New research of 1,000 senior marketers and procurement professionals across the US and UK found that almost half (45%) of all marketers and procurement professionals admit their organisation has mispriced creator fees, rising to 58% in the UK. As a result, less than half (44%) have full confidence that their organisation is equipped with the intelligence needed to negotiate fair market rates for creators.
The challenge is particularly acute for the four in five (81%) organisations who manage creator fee negotiations in-house without specialist external support, up-to-date market knowledge and often with limited negotiation training and little access to reliable benchmarks.
Creator Investment Intelligence is Companion’s solution to restore certainty and transparency. It introduces two major new features:
Benchmark Algorithm: Establishing Fair Market Value
Benchmark Algorithm is Companion’s proprietary pricing intelligence tool, informed by $173 million dollars worth of verified creator deals – spanning 180,000 quotes, final deals, and deal data-points covering more than 50 regions worldwide.
Unlike traditional tools that rely on public rate cards or simplistic follower-based pricing, Benchmark Algorithm flexibly adapts to factor in a range of variables to accurately reflect the craft, production scale, and complexity behind a creator’s work. Benchmark Algorithm’s ‘Suggested Fee’ model evaluates format and platform specifications, region, usage rights, exclusivity, seasonality, production timelines, and creator niche. It dynamically adapts to predicted performance which Companion helps to calculate.
By uniting historical negotiation insights – including quotes and contracts – into a single dashboard, Benchmark Algorithm also gives brands complete transparency over fees previously agreed with specific talent and can adapt the Suggested Fee to reflect existing relationships.
Budget Tracker: Improving Governance of Creator Spend
Creator spend is increasingly fragmented across teams, markets and business units, making governance difficult. Nearly half (49%) of marketers and procurement professionals cite managing creator budgets across teams, markets and regions as one of their biggest operational and strategic concerns when budgeting and pricing creators.
Without a unified view of historical quotes, active negotiations, and finalised agreements, organisations can struggle to benchmark creator fees and optimise spend appropriately. Nearly three-quarters (73%) still track creator spend manually using spreadsheets and email, including one in four (24%) who rely on email chains alone to manage budgets, quotes and deal terms.
Budget Tracker centralises creator investment into a single dashboard, allowing organisations to manage budgets, negotiations and performance consistently across markets. It unifies a Fee Calculator, a secure Budget Group and Optimisation Workflows so teams can track every quote, negotiation and deal, and model permutations using Companion’s predicted impressions to forecast and optimise creator partnerships against budget and campaign KPIs.
Independent Audit Reveals Potential Savings of 69% on Creator Fees
An independent audit of recent creator campaigns conducted by a global retail brand across ten markets – including Italy, Germany and the UK – found that its internal teams had overseen an overall creator fee spend 69% above benchmark. The brand identified $4 million in potential savings lost over a nine-month period due to limited access to pricing intelligence and specialist negotiation expertise.
Protecting Creators From Underpayments
Creator Investment Intelligence is designed not only to improve budget efficiency for brands but also to support fairer outcomes for creators.
By introducing structured pricing, the tool provides vital protections for niche and emerging creators who may not have established the market intelligence to price their work with confidence.
The launch builds on Companion’s recently introduced Early Pay feature, which gives creators greater control over cash flow through flexible payment options, including instant payment upon completion of content deliverable.
Thomas Walters, Chief Innovation Officer and Co-Founder, Billion Dollar Boy Group, comments: “For too long, brands and creators have had to guess what a partnership is worth because the industry has lacked a definitive benchmark. But, as the creator economy increasingly professionalises, the demand for accountability and transparency has grown.
“This tool gives our clients the data they need to maximise their budgets and invest with absolute confidence, while keeping the market stable and healthy; And it protects creators from underpayment, championing the value that belongs to their work, not just their follower count.
“By combining Companion’s deep data intelligence with the strategic and creative expertise of Billion Dollar Boy and our proximity to creators through our FiveTwoNine creator community, our clients have 360 knowledge of the market. This clarity and guidance ensures brands can hit peak performance with confidence while respecting every single marketing dollar and every creator’s craft.”
Research Methodology
The research was conducted by Censuswide, among a sample of 1000 (Aged 18+) Procurement professionals and marketing directors at brands (not marketing agencies) that work with content creators across the UK and USA. The data was collected between 10.07.2026 – 16.07.2026. Censuswide is a member of the Market Research Society (MRS) and the British Polling Council (BPC), and a signatory of the Global Data Quality Pledge. Censuswide adheres to the MRS Code of Conduct and ESOMAR principles
About Companion
Companion is the AI-powered platform built to help brands deliver consistent and predictable creator-led growth. Developed by Billion Dollar Boy Group (BDB), global leader in creator-led brand building, it uses smart technology to turn cultural energy into commercial impact.
Built to streamline the end-to-end campaign process, Companion allows brands and agencies to discover the right creators, plan with precision and truly measure impact. The platform provides real-time performance insights, analyzes audience data, automatically tracks content and facilitates creator payments through a single dynamically updated dashboard, helping teams feel in-control and confident at scale.
Leading global brands and agencies, including Mercedes-Benz, LUSH, EA Games, Lululemon, and Heineken use Companion to drive growth and scale their creator strategies.
Companion was recognised as the Best Influencer Marketing Platform or Technology at the Global Influencer Marketing Awards 2025. It is also one of the few influencer marketing platforms that is B Corp certified, reflecting its commitment to building technology that supports brands and agencies efficiently, fairly and responsibly
About Billion Dollar Boy
Billion Dollar Boy (BDB) is a global social agency with Creator Instinct®, delivering award-winning social-first and creator marketing campaigns.
Founded in 2014, BDB has partnered with the world’s most iconic brands, including Heineken, Nike, Unilever, PepsiCo, and L’Oréal, to deliver best-in-class, social-first advertising at scale with creator energy at its core. Powered by its proprietary, AI-powered technology, Companion, and data-driven insights, our end-to-end solutions span strategy, creative, production, paid media, and execution across content, community, and commerce.
Our client work has been awarded by Cannes Lions, Campaign Awards, The Drum, Webby Awards, and Shorty Awards.
In 2025, Billion Dollar Boy was named Social and Creator Agency of the Year by Adweek, AdAge and The Drum, and Companion was recognised as the Global Tech Platform of the Year at the Global Influencer Marketing Awards. The agency also became the first and only creator marketing agency to achieve the prestigious IPA Effectiveness Accreditation.
The agency’s rapid global growth also earned Billion Dollar Boy recognition in both the Financial Times’s list of the 1000 fastest-growing companies in Europe and Adweek’s Fastest Growing list for a fifth consecutive year.