At The Media Shift Summit in Nairobi, Carole Abade, chief executive of EXP Group, urged Kenyan digital content creators to formalise their operations as brands shift advertising spend toward influencer marketing.
She said Kenya’s youthful population and rising internet penetration create opportunities for creators to build businesses around their audiences, adding that “There’s money shifting to them. And they need to be responsible. They need to be responsible for the business and they need to be responsible for the brands that are trusting them to be able to leverage influence.”
Abade likened content creation to running a conventional store, warning that “If you open a store and you say I’m selling the following items but you’re always out of stock you’re not in business,” and stressed the need for creators to meet deadlines and fulfil content commitments.
The shift follows global growth in influencer marketing, with Grand View Research projecting the market to reach $45 billion in 2026, up from $34 billion in 2025.
David Boone, chief executive of Expressions Influencer Agency, said companies worldwide are directing more advertising budgets to digital platforms and creators to achieve better returns, and cautioned that traditional media still has relevance, urging a balanced media mix.
Boone said brands are now looking beyond follower counts, likes and video views, focusing on whether spending translates into sales and other commercial results, and urged creators to understand the business objectives behind campaigns instead of focusing solely on online engagement.
He added, “It’s about trying to push it further now to really drive attribution for the brand. So what are the business outcomes that the brand can get as opposed to just awareness?”
Expressions Influencer Agency, launched under EXP Group, aims to bring greater discipline to the sector by linking brands with creators and improving how influencer campaigns are planned, executed and measured.
Abade said the agency is “trying to figure out how do we fix that thing that’s broken and how do we make brands actually be able to say this is the amount of money I spent. This is what the return was. That’s the equation that we need to solve.”
Organisers of the summit also announced a new tool for Kenyan marketers, though details were not immediately disclosed.
Discussing technology, Boone argued that artificial intelligence will assist creators but will not replace the trust and credibility that human creators provide, saying “AI will simply help us to do things better but AI will not replace trust and credibility. That’s what the creators have.”
