393. IJRM. How Creators Capture Value.
January 8, 2026
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In this episode, Pierre-Yann Dolbec, associate professor of marketing at Concordia University's John Molson School of Business, and Andrew Smith, associate professor of marketing at Suffolk University, discuss their research on how creators, adept at capturing attention, capture revenue.
The researchers studied over 100 person brands across 11 markets, identifying three distinct value capture modes that determine how creators monetize attention. Understanding these modes helps explain the vast income gaps between different creators and provides frameworks for brand partnerships beyond traditional sponsored content.
Key points from the discussion:
Creators must master two separate skill sets: attracting attention and engagement, then converting that attention into revenue.
Three Value Capture Modes were identified:
Advertiser mode monetizes audience attention through brand partnerships and platform affordances, requiring creators to develop value propositions for both audiences and commercial partners while maintaining authenticity.
Entrepreneur mode identifies and exploits market opportunities through product launches, apps, and restaurant chains, with masses of creators in specific categories potentially reshaping entire industries when they recognize opportunities simultaneously.
Professional mode packages expertise for direct sale to customers or through employment, with creators leveraging public personas to command higher rates or reach larger audiences through classes and consulting.
Mode-spanning creators operating across multiple monetization approaches demonstrate greater resilience against platform algorithm changes and offer brands more strategic partnership opportunities beyond reach metrics.
Authenticity struggles emerge when commercial content violates audience relationship expectations rather than from commercialization itself, with talent incubation programs providing resources for better storytelling and analytics while maintaining creator autonomy.
The industry is shifting from single-mode influencers selling attention to multi-mode creators building sustainable businesses with assets, driven by burnout prevention and desire for economic stability.
The researchers emphasized treating creators as long-term strategic partners rather than tactical communication channels, involving them early in campaign development and sharing performance data beyond engagement metrics.
Click here for the Research Article
The Up Next podcast’s access to this content is courtesy of the International Journal of Research in Marketing, an international, double-blind peer-reviewed journal for marketing academics and practitioners. IJRM aims to contribute to the marketing discipline by providing high-quality, original research which advances marketing knowledge and techniques. As marketers increasingly draw on diverse and sophisticated methods, IJRM‘s target audience is comprised of marketing scholars, practitioners (e.g., marketing research and consulting professionals) and policymakers.
IJRM aims to be at the forefront of the marketing field with a particular emphasis on bringing timely ideas to market. The journal embraces innovative research with the potential to spur future research and influence practice. Hence, it welcomes contributions in various aspects of marketing. The editors, while accepting a wide array of scholarly contributions from different disciplinary approaches, especially encourage research that is novel, visionary or path breaking.
Interviewees
Pierre-Yann Dolbec is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business, where he studies how markets change due to complexity—how people and organizations navigate a world shaped by shifting values, cultural tensions, and transforming technologies. His research spans markets for products such as artificial intelligence, coffee, education, and fashion. It has been published in leading journals and has been widely featured in the media. As an engaged educator, he has written open textbooks on digital marketing and artificial intelligence in marketing.
Andrew Smith (Ph.D.) is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Sawyer School of Business, Suffolk University. He started his career as an advertising researcher, consulting for clients across a variety of categories. Since then, he has served in program director, associate editor, and editorial review board roles. Andrew’s research is both grant-funded and award-winning. It broadly focuses on phenomena at the intersection of marketing, technology and culture, answering questions such as how do consumers make trust judgments about online reviews? How can influencers attract engaged attention from audiences? How do influencers monetize? And how can marketers develop engaging augmented reality experiences? Andrew brings a wealth of academic and applied experience into the classroom, delivering experiential courses on research and insight generation (marketing research, qualitative research & insights, consumer behavior) and the intersection of marketing and technology (social media marketing, marketing with AI).
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International Journal of Research in Marketing
Pierre-Yann Dolbec
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