Campaigns and political groups paid social media creators anywhere from a few dollars to $30,000 or more per post this election cycle, according to an October report from the Center for Democracy & Technology and the University of Pittsburgh’s Communication Technology Research Lab.
The researchers interviewed more than 30 creators, middlemen, platform staff and political operatives, and found that much of the money moves in ways voters can’t trace.
California’s primary for governor produced the clearest receipts, largely because state law makes campaigns report who they pay.
Tom Steyer’s campaign paid at least $123,400 to eight influencers between January and mid-April, according to campaign finance filings, plus more than $870,000 to Group Project Digital, an agency that recruits creators to post daily videos. Culture account The Shade Room got $25,000 for one post to its more than 28 million followers. Carlos Eduardo Espina endorsed Steyer to his 14 million TikTok followers after the campaign hired him as a consultant for $100,000.
The named deals sit at the top of the market, while the Steyer campaign also offered creators as little as $10 a post, according to The Wall Street Journal. That bottom tier is where most of the volume lives.
Project Bullhorn, a Democratic-aligned venture, paid creators up to $30 per video to talk about affordability, later dropping the rate to $25, and recruited them through the creator marketplace SideShift. A New York Times investigation identified more than 100 accounts in the campaign and found that only about a third of the creators appeared to live in the states they were posting about. One self-described Texan was based in England.
Clipping, the cheapest format of all, pays accounts to repost cut-down candidate footage instead of filming their own takes, and it prices political speech per 1,000 views.
ADVERTISEMENT
Some listings offered as little as $1.50 per 1,000 views. Spencer Pratt’s unsuccessful run for Los Angeles mayor paid two clipping firms more than $55,000 combined. Because the account holder never appears on camera, the work travels easily overseas, and clipping accounts pushing U.S. candidates have been traced to Pakistan, Nigeria, India, Turkey and the Philippines.
Party committees buy creator content too, and their filings tend to say much less than California’s. The National Republican Congressional Committee paid more than $120,000 to the conservative creator network Creator Grid across 2025 and 2026, logging the payments as “media.” Under federal rules, a political committee generally has to report only the intermediary it pays, not the creators who end up posting or what they post, the CDT report notes.
No federal rule requires a creator to tell followers that a campaign paid for a post. The Federal Election Commission’s 2023 internet disclaimer rule covers ads “placed for a fee” on a platform, which catches a boosted post but generally not a sponsored video on a creator’s own account. The Federal Trade Commission’s endorsement guides, which push creators to label a paid skincare post, don’t extend to political speech. A sponsored lip gloss gets a label, and a sponsored Senate endorsement usually doesn’t.
California and Texas have stepped into part of the gap at the state level. California has required paid creators to disclose since 2024, and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law in September allowing fines of up to $5,000 per post for creators who don’t. Texas requires disclosure on paid political posts when the payment tops $100. California’s campaign watchdog is investigating posts from the governor’s race that allegedly ran without the required label, and the Steyer and Xavier Becerra campaigns have each accused the other of paying creators without disclosure.
In Congress, Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., introduced the Promoting Authenticity with Influencer Disclaimers Act in June, and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., filed a Senate version. Neither has received a vote. As written, the bill covers political committees, which leaves nonprofits that don’t disclose their donors free to keep paying creators with no label.
Voters say they want transparency, though the same polling shows why creators skip it. In a 2026 Rainey Center survey of registered voters cited in the CDT report, 48% said campaigns shouldn’t be allowed to pay influencers to promote candidates even with disclosure, and 47% said they would trust a creator less after a disclosed paid political post. Disclosure costs a creator credibility, and in most states, skipping it costs nothing.
ADVERTISEMENT
Some creators disclose even where nobody is checking, including Shaka Smith, a Los Angeles influencer who opened his paid Steyer video to more than 700,000 Instagram followers with, “This is an ad, and honestly, I wish more political content said that first.”
