Forget AI influencers. Major brands are spending more than ever on human talent to star in their ad campaigns.
US brands spent more than $1 billion on securing top celebrities to feature in their ads in 2025, surpassing pre-pandemic levels, according to a report published Monday by XR, an advertising operations platform that tracks campaigns and talent compensation. Spending on pay guarantees — the upfront cost to secure top talent to appear in ads rather than hourly rates — grew 47% since 2019, per XR.
The increasing use of recognizable faces reflects a shift in how advertisers operate. Chief marketing officers are under increased pressure to demonstrate the effectiveness of their advertising amid a protracted period of macroeconomic uncertainty. Celebrities can be seen as a safe bet when it comes to metrics like ad recall — a measure in surveys that determines whether people remember seeing an ad.
Graham McKenna, chief marketing officer of XR, said in an interview that there’d been a “paradigm shift” in the use of celebrities in ad campaigns. A decade ago, the larger share of talent pay went toward non-celebrity actors, but that’s now flipped.
“When you have cross-platform media and lots of different ways to consume series, videos, and now sports across different streaming platforms, celebrities, known faces, and recognizable talent just break through, and they resonate with audiences,” McKenna said. Additionally, he said, appearing in ads has become less of a taboo among the celebrity class than it was in decades past.
The trend was noticeable at the most recent Super Bowl. The big game’s commercial breaks featured appearances from well-known faces, including Matthew McConaughey, Martha Stewart, and Charli XCX for Uber Eats, as well as Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan recreating the classic deli scene from “When Harry Met Sally” for Hellmann’s Mayonnaise. Advertising experts at the time told Business Insider that Super Bowl advertisers were leaning into humor, nostalgia, and celebrity to provide levity — and play it safe — in a politically charged year.
Athletes and creators are raking in the ad money
About a quarter of the $1 billion in payment guarantees from advertisers to celebrities last year went to athletes, which XR’s report said is reflective of sports stars’ “cross-generational appeal” and visibility in American culture. NFL players are the most popular and have seen a 145% increase in premium pay guarantees from brands between 2019 and 2025. The WNBA is also having a moment. Payments to women’s basketball players grew 176% between 2024 and 2025, and more than 300% since 2019, XR said.
Creators are also feeling the advertiser love. Content creator payment guarantees have jumped 103% since 2022, with many top-tier influencers now commanding multimillion-dollar fees, equivalent to those of Hollywood A-listers, according to XR. Social media personalities, lifestyle creators, and food and home influencers are the most desired creator categories advertisers are tapping into, the report said.
The business of producing ads has also shifted in recent years. There were 25% fewer commercial production shoots in 2025 compared with 2019, XR said. But despite there being fewer unique productions overall, production lengths are generally stretching longer in terms of days as brands look to squeeze more content from each one, from TikToks to internal presentation videos.
Jon Williams, CEO of The Liberty Guild, a network of advertising professionals, said brands are making fewer, bigger bets in a risk-averse environment — and celebrities are often viewed as a shortcut to capturing attention.
“A known face does a lot of work upfront: recognition, credibility, cultural shorthand,” Williams said. “When the tolerance for failure drops, brands reach for things that reduce the number of unknowns.”
However, he said such tactics could backfire in the long run.
“If everyone consolidates around the same playbook — big name, big spend, fewer moments — it gets very samey very quickly,” Williams said. “Safe starts to look risky in a different way.”
