It’s a busy week for conferences touching various areas of the creator economy, from advertising at the Cannes Lions Festival in France to crypto topics at NFT NYC and, of course, the Super Bowl of the influencer industry, VidCon in Anaheim, Calif. While I’m at VidCon, my colleague Mark Di Stefano is on the ground in Cannes and Mahira Dayal is hobnobbing with the NFT crowd. 

A somber reality hanging over all of these conferences: how a potential recession will set back the creator economy, which has been on a tear during the pandemic. Most creators rely on sponsorship deals with brands as their top revenue sources. Advertisers often scale back during economic downturns, although it’s still unclear to what extent they’ll lower their spending on influencers. 

“We are in uncertain economic times right now. There are questions about [a] recession and brands spending on marketing,” said Debra Aho Williamson, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence. “We don’t have a perfect lens on it yet.”