At the World Cup, celebrity did not disappear. It simply stopped being enough.

New campaign data reported by Digiday found that 10 of the 15 highest earned-media-value posts came from creators rather than celebrity endorsements. The median top-performing sponsored creator post received 929,000 views, compared with 573,000 for celebrity posts. Its median value was $62,000, against $56,000 for the celebrity work.

The figures come from Nectar, a social-listening company that analyzed World Cup partnerships across TikTok, Reddit, and Instagram. They should be read as event-specific marketing data, not as a permanent conversion rule for every brand and every creator. A World Cup is an unusual cultural moment. The sample is not a randomized test of all advertising.

But it does clarify a mistake that still costs businesses money: treating reach as if it were trust.

A famous person can deliver attention in a single, concentrated burst. A good creator brings something more difficult to buy: a known relationship with a particular audience and a format that audience has already chosen to watch. The difference is not cosmetic. It changes whether an ad feels like an interruption or a useful piece of the feed.

Digiday’s examples make the point. Kalshi’s top post with a sports-betting creator reached 126 million views. Polymarket worked with a smaller but trusted voice and recorded 2 million views. Airbnb used a creator’s established feel-good format and received 1.3 million likes. These are not three identical campaigns. They are three cases where the distribution matched the subject.

That is the part a smaller business can use. You do not need a World Cup sponsor budget or a creator with millions of followers. You need to know what job the content is supposed to do. Introduce a product? Explain a confusing service? Give a local business credibility? Reach a niche that does not respond to polished brand advertising?

Then assess a potential partner on evidence, not follower count. Look at the comments. Look at whether the audience asks questions and gets answers. Look at the last ten sponsored posts, not the one viral success in the media kit. Ask whether the creator can show the product in a way that fits their normal work without pretending it is an organic discovery.

That approach also produces a more disciplined test. Give a small group of carefully chosen partners distinct links, codes, landing pages, or a stated action that can be measured. Compare qualified inquiries, repeat purchases, and cost per useful customer—not just views. A modest audience that moves the right people is more valuable than a large audience that merely notices.

There is a caution here for creators too. A trusted audience is not an inexhaustible asset. It survives only while the recommendations remain selective, clear, and relevant. The moment every post becomes a sponsored post, the distribution advantage starts to evaporate. That is precisely why a credible recommendation is worth more than borrowed celebrity in a crowded commercial social feed.

The World Cup numbers are not an argument against celebrities. They are an argument against buying fame when what a business actually needs is fit. The right audience, in the right format, with a reason to believe the person speaking to them, is still the harder—and more valuable—thing to build.