At IBC, Evan Shapiro and Shira Lazar launched The Affinity 100, a ranking of the most impactful creators—based not on vanity metrics but on key indicators of fandom and engagement.
Sponsored by the global creator company Whalar Group and its digital operating system, Foam, the ranking goes beyond follower counts and industry relationships to understand a creator’s affinity with audiences. Foam, led by CEO Simon Moss, provided the data infrastructure to explore creator stats across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Snap.
The list comes ahead of the release of the 2026 Creator Map—also from Whalar Group, Shapiro and Lazar—at the Jupiter Festival next month.
Featured in the top ten are Blair Imani, B. Dylan Hollis, Ash Baber, De’arra Taylor, Chris ‘Speedy Morman’ Morman, Eric ‘Rico Taquito’ Sedeño , DeMarcus Shawn, Tineke Younger, Jackie Aina and Quenlin Blackwell.
“The creator industry has spent years relying on scale because it was the easiest thing to measure, but the relationship between a creator and their community is far more nuanced than a follower count,” said Neil Waller, co-founder and co-CEO of Whalar Group. “Evan and Shira are leading an important conversation about how we recognize and measure creator influence, and what this means for the industry. The Affinity 100 puts this thinking into practice. Through Foam, we’re able to bring the data and rigor needed to support their vision and help the industry better understand which creators are building the deepest relationships with their audiences.”
“For too long, media and marketing have confused reach with relevance, and scale with influence,” Shapiro added. “Mainstream media and the creator economy are both being disrupted, and last year’s metrics no longer matter. Bigger is no longer better, and a massive ‘follower count’ does not equate to an invested audience. We are now in the Affinity Economy—where creators, studios, movie stars, and brands coexist and compete for hearts, minds, and money, on every platform and device every day. We must stop asking, ‘How many followers do they have?’ and start asking, ‘Do people actually give a shit?’”
“Creators have always understood intuitively that audience size doesn’t necessarily reflect the strength of the community behind it,” added Lazar. “After more than two decades of both building audiences and reporting on digital culture, I’ve seen that the creators with the greatest impact aren’t always those with the largest followings. They’re the ones people trust, return to and take action because of. The Affinity 100 gives the industry a more meaningful way to recognize cultural relevance, community strength and long-term creator value.”
Lazar is the founder and CEO of What’s Trending, a digital news brand reaching more than 3 million followers. The full Affinity 100 is available on her site as well as on Shapiro’s Substack.
