When we created Share the Land, the idea was pretty simple: get Cleveland’s creator community in a room together.
What it has become is much bigger.
This year, Share the Land brought together creators, brands, media, local businesses, and community partners who, in very different ways, are helping shape the stories being told about Cleveland and the communities being built here.
For Adcom, that was exactly the point.
We work with creators as part of integrated marketing programs for our clients, and we've watched their role in the marketing ecosystem evolve dramatically. At the same time, we saw something missing locally: a natural place for creators to connect not only with brands, but with one another.
Share the Land was created to help fill that gap.
Creator marketing isn't a niche tactic anymore
The business case for creator marketing has changed significantly.
According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), U.S. creator advertising spending is projected to reach nearly $44 billion in 2026, up from $37.1 billion in 2025 and $29.5 billion in 2024.
Even more telling, 48% of creator ad buyers now consider creators a “must buy,” behind only social media and paid search. And on the consumer side, more than half of shoppers say online creators shape what they buy.
Creators have evolved from an experimental social media tactic into a legitimate media channel.
And it makes sense when you consider what a creator can bring to a brand.
Creators combine audience, content, trust and distribution. They've built communities around particular interests, experiences and points of view, often developing relationships with their audiences over years.
The most effective creator partnerships tap into that trust.
It's also why follower count is becoming a less meaningful measure on its own. Brands are increasingly looking at audience fit, engagement, credibility, content quality and, ultimately, what happens as a result of the partnership.
In many ways, creators have become small media companies with their own audiences, content engines and distribution platforms.
Cleveland has its own creator ecosystem
We saw the scale of that firsthand when we held the first Share the Land. The creators represented at that event had a combined digital audience of more than 15 million.
That doesn't represent 15 million unique people. Audiences overlap, and many extend well beyond Northeast Ohio. But it gives you a sense of the reach represented by just one gathering of Cleveland creators.
What we've found even more interesting, though, is what happens when you bring those creators together in person.
Creators spend their days building communities online, but creating content can be surprisingly solitary work. There's no obvious trade association or natural gathering place for Cleveland's creator community.
They want relationships with brands, but they also want relationships with each other.
That's one of the reasons Share the Land has resonated.
Building Cleveland's connective tissue
This year's event expanded well beyond creators.
We had brands. Media. Local businesses. Community organizations. A local charity. And people from across Cleveland's marketing ecosystem.
We saw introductions happen that probably wouldn't have happened otherwise. We saw conversations turn into ideas and potential collaborations. And we saw people who may know one another through a screen finally meet face-to-face.
And the conversation didn't stop when the event ended.
More than 50 posts were shared by creators and brands from Share the Land, extending the experience into their own communities and a combined social following of more than 5 million. On Adcom’s owned channels alone, Share the Land content generated more than 100,000 impressions and 2,400 engagements, while our Instagram following grew by 20.5%.
While the full reach of attendee-generated content can’t be measured across every platform and account, the response reinforced something we believe strongly: when you create an experience people genuinely want to be part of, they don’t just attend—they help carry the conversation forward.
That's what we want Share the Land to become.
Not simply an influencer event, but connective tissue between the people and organizations helping shape Cleveland's culture and tell its stories.
It's also very intentionally Cleveland.
Adcom is an independent, Cleveland-based agency, and this city means a lot to us. We have the space, relationships and opportunity to bring people together, and Share the Land is one way we can use those things to strengthen a community we're proud to be part of.
Why human voices may matter even more in an AI world
There's another reason we believe creators will become increasingly important.
Marketing is rapidly becoming more driven by technology and artificial intelligence. AI can now produce enormous amounts of content at extraordinary speed.
But abundance creates a different problem: What do people trust?
A creator's value isn't simply the ability to produce another piece of content.
Those signals may become even more important as search itself changes.
Consumers are increasingly asking questions directly of AI platforms and receiving generated answers rather than simply scrolling through traditional search results. That means brands have to think beyond ranking a website. They also need to think about the broader digital footprint that helps search engines and AI systems understand who they are.
Creator content can become part of that ecosystem alongside PR, earned media, reviews, social content, authoritative journalism and a brand's own digital properties.
It doesn't mean hiring a creator automatically improves a brand's visibility in AI-generated answers. But it does mean credible, authentic third-party conversations about brands are becoming increasingly valuable as digital discovery evolves.
More technology. More need for humanity.
There's an interesting tension happening in marketing right now.
Technology is advancing incredibly quickly. AI is changing how we create, search, analyze and communicate.
At the same time, people are still looking for voices they trust.
That's ultimately why we believe so strongly in the creator community.
And it's why Share the Land isn't really about influencers.
It's about bringing together creators, brands, media, businesses and organizations that are shaping our community — and giving them an opportunity to build relationships with one another.
To everyone who helped make this year's Share the Land possible, thank you.
We're incredibly proud of what this event is becoming.
And we're just getting started.
About the Author:
Anne is the Vice President of Integrated Marketing at Adcom. She has 25 years of experience in E-Commerce and Digital Marketing, working with brands like Pennzoil and Michaels before moving to the agency side. There, she has worked with clients in tools and trades, higher education, fitness, healthcare, grocery, manufacturing, financial, and non-profit. A proud graduate of The Ohio State University, Anne is passionate about following the latest trends in digital marketing and takes a special interest in helping clients adopt AI.
