After working in the content creator space for so long, especially since I was growing day-traders/investor-types, I started getting good at it. What I didn’t understand then was the difference between an audience and a business. They feel identical when things are going well; one is an asset, the other is a distraction. Attention is easy to rent, while trust takes years to build. With trust, you need to be somewhat careful. You can lose it if you abuse it. Most founders confuse the two until it costs them something they can’t get back. The influencer industry is thriving, but every creator isn’t equal: The trust layer The global influencer market has already hit US$32.55 billion in 2025, and brands continue to spend more on it despite how much more convenient it is to pay for digital press. Why? Because it works. 92 per cent of consumers trust peer recommendations over advertising, and word-of-mouth drives somewhere between 20-50 per cent of all purchasing decisions, according to McKinsey. That being said, trust in influencers specifically dropped five percentage points between 2023 and 2024, the market starting to price in what anyone close to the creator economy already knows: reach and credibility are not the same thing, and audiences are getting better at telling the difference. In finance especially, this is a structural problem. What the finance creator model actually looks like, from the inside The majority of trading creators on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube aren’t even traders; it’s content businesses that use trading aesthetics and terminology. They show you charts, terminals, P&L screenshots, etc. to signal success, while actual revenue comes from courses, memberships, affiliate broker deals, and sponsorships. Trading performance doesn’t exist most of the time, and even if it does, it’s typically secondary to the business. Also Read: Creators, not impressions, will decide the next growth wave in gaming Maybe this used to be a secret in the early days, but today it’s an open structure that most audiences already suspect. A CFA Institute study found that only two per cent of financial influencers are registered with a relevant regulatory body, yet 33 per cent provide explicit investment recommendations. A separate study found 76 per cent of finfluencer content is misleading or outright harmful. Per FINRA’s Investor Education Foundation, finfluencer followers who reported being targeted for fraud lost money at a rate of 69 per cent, versus 26 per cent among non-followers. The trading education market is worth US$1.35 billion, and it’s projected to grow to US$3.72 billion by 2033. At the same time, between 74 per cent and 89 per cent of retail traders lost money across every major market event from 1998 to 2025, across platforms and education levels. These day-trading courses aren’t closing that gap; in fact, they’re only widening it. Barclays found that 48 per cent of Gen Z investors felt pressured to act quickly based on finfluencer advice, and it’s only getting worse. I’m in the industry personally; I was in it from behind the scenes, and now I’m a creator seeing it degrade even more. What that looks like in practice Once a KOL has a financial audience of any real size, the deals and business models come up, and content creators (most still aren’t financially literate) start making money. Broker sponsorships, affiliate arrangements, platform integrations, courses, signals, etc. The companies that come to these creators offer it as an opportunity; in reality, it’s someone offering money to spend audience trust on their behalf. As a business, do not work with content creators who promote everything. Personally, I turned most of it down, not out of principle, but because I understood what I would be trading away. Once you rent your audience’s credibility to something that underdelivers, you do not get a refund. It takes far more time to rebuild it, and it’s just not a financially viable model. Referred customers spend 16 per cent more and stay longer, per Harvard Business Review and Wharton research, and companies running referral programs see revenue grow up to 86 per cent year-over-year. Brands with strong word-of-mouth advocacy grow 2x faster than competitors. Goodwill and trust are a huge, untraceable force in marketing, and it’s what the business looks like when the audience actually trusts you. It’s also completely unavailable to anyone who burned that trust for a sponsorship deal that closed last quarter. Where most brands get this wrong The deals that destroy a creator’s credibility rarely look dangerous from the outside; they look like a reasonable sponsorship. A relevant product, a creator with solid numbers, and brands that optimise for reach metrics and niche alignment run the campaign and move on. The problem doesn’t show up in that cycle, but it shows up in the next one, when conversion is softer, and nobody can explain why. Also Read: From chatbots to creators: Indonesia’s AI startups to watch What brands are actually buying when they partner with a creator is borrowed trust. When that trust has already been spent on multiple broker affiliates, signal services, courses, and three other sponsors that month, the brand is paying for an asset that isn’t there anymore. The audience stopped trusting them. Follower count, engagement rate, and content category tell you about reach, but none of it tells you whether the audience still trusts the person talking to them. How businesses should move forward Finance is an extreme case where bad actors are sophisticated, the stakes are financial, and the harm to retail audiences is well-documented. That being said, the underlying problem runs through every vertical where brands use creators to reach an audience. Health, edtech, consumer software, anywhere, trust does work that paid advertising cannot. The brands that consistently get returns from creator partnerships are not spending more. They’re selecting better, working with creators who have a visible history of turning things down, because that history is evidence that the credibility is still intact. An audience that genuinely trusts a creator converts differently, retains longer, and refers more. Referred customers spend 16 per cent more and stay longer; word of mouth drives 20–50 per cent of purchasing decisions. — Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. You can also share your perspective by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of e27. Join us on WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, X, and LinkedIn to stay connected. The post Why reach doesn’t equal credibility in the creator economy appeared first on e27.
Author: Ivan Patriki
Source: e27