What are the latest influencer marketing statistics and trends?

Last updated · by Hüseyin Kaplan

Influencer marketing is still growing fast. The industry was worth an estimated $32.55bn in 2025, and 87.49% of marketers expect bigger budgets this year. Spend is concentrating on TikTok, on nano and micro creators and on social commerce, and AI creator matching tops brands' plans. The figures below are grouped by theme.

Where are brands putting their influencer budgets?

Brands are putting their money into TikTok, smaller creators and content tied to sales. In the same survey, nano, micro and UGC creators show the strongest growth intent and plans for macro creators are flat. Promo codes are the most used way to measure results (45.9%), ahead of affiliate links (26.0%) and native shop features (25.0%).

#Collabz suits brands making this shift: vetted UGC and influencer creators, with briefs, usage rights and payments handled in one place.

Nano and micro creators

51.43% of marketers plan to expand nano-creator work and 52.83% plan to expand micro-creator work. Only 10.00% and 7.55% plan to cut back. For both tiers, the most commonly reported fee band is under $500 per creator, so programmes grow by adding more creators rather than signing a few big deals.

UGC creators

Half of respondents (50.00%) plan to grow their work with UGC creators, and none plan to reduce or stop it. Around 80% of reported UGC fees fall under $500, which makes UGC the cheapest tier to test at volume. It also feeds paid ads, product pages and email.

Macro and celebrity

Macro creators are flat: 20.59% of marketers plan to expand this tier and 20.58% plan to contract it. Celebrity work shows 33.33% expansion intent and no planned cuts. That points to big names being kept for launches and reach spikes, while smaller creators produce the day-to-day content.

Social commerce

53.33% of marketers are not using social commerce yet, and 46.67% plan to test it. Among current users, TikTok Shop takes 66.17% of platform selections, far ahead of Instagram Checkout (13.16%) and YouTube Shopping (9.02%). Most brands learn social commerce on TikTok before trying anywhere else.

How big is the influencer marketing industry now?

The influencer marketing industry was worth an estimated $32.55bn in 2025, up from $24bn in 2024, according to Influencer Marketing Hub's 2025 benchmark. That is 35.63% growth in a single year, and a 33.11% compound annual growth rate since 2014, when the market was $1.4bn.

The supply side grew too. The same dataset counts 6,939 influencer marketing service providers and platforms in 2025, up from 1,120 in 2019. This figure measures brand spending on influencer marketing. The creator economy is a much larger measure, because it also counts platform payouts and other creator income, so compare like with like.

Survey mood has swung over the same period. The share of marketers planning a dedicated influencer budget fell to 75.6% in the 2025 survey, down 10.2 points on the year before, as brands questioned ROI. A year later, budget plans had turned sharply upwards again.

What is the creator economy and how big is it

Influencer marketing by the numbers

  • 87.49% of marketers expect their influencer budget to increase; only 5.55% expect a cut.
  • 72.22% expect budgets to rise by 50% or more, a step change rather than steady growth.
  • 65.9% expect influencer activity to pay back within a month, and 48.4% within two weeks.
  • 31% include TikTok in their influencer plans, more than double Instagram's share.
  • 52.83% plan to expand micro-creator work, while just 7.55% plan to cut it.
  • 66.17% of social commerce platform selections among adopters go to TikTok Shop.

Source: Influencer Marketing Hub, Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report 2026

What do the UK, US and Canadian numbers show?

The UK is one of Europe's most bullish markets. In Kolsquare and NewtonX's late-2025 survey, 81% of UK brands plan to raise influencer budgets and 84% expect to work with more creators. US and Canadian forecasts (Statista Market Insights and eMarketer, via TechnologyChecker) also show growth.

For UK and US DTC brands, the takeaway is the same: budgets are moving to smaller creators, longer partnerships and paid promotion of creator content. The 39% of UK marketers who struggle to measure ROI show where the gap is.

UK spend and creator tiers

28% of UK brands spend under £75,000 a year on influencers, 32% spend £100k to £499k, and 14% invest more than £1m. 93% work with micro-influencers (10k to 100k followers) and 60% with nano-influencers (1k to 10k). 38% use a dedicated influencer marketing platform.

UK platforms and priorities

Instagram (92%), TikTok (80%) and YouTube (59%) are the top UK campaign platforms. Investment is rising in paid media (66%), long-term partnerships (61%) and UGC (55%). In-person events (20%) and affiliate marketing (16%) are the areas UK marketers most often plan to cut.

UK pain points

The top UK pain point is balancing creator freedom with brand control (42%). Next come measuring ROI (39%) and rising costs with unclear pricing (33%). 55% say engagement rate is the most important factor when choosing creators, and 63% say the creator's content matters most.

United States

US creators' revenue from sponsored content is put at $10.52bn in 2025, with forecasts of $12.17bn in 2026 and $13.74bn by 2027. That is roughly double the 2022 level of $5.97bn, and the US remains the largest single market for creator spend.

Canada

Canadian influencer advertising spend was $579m in 2024 and is forecast to reach $1.05bn by 2030. Canadian brands can follow the UK pattern: rosters weighted towards micro creators, long-term partnerships, and paid promotion of the creator content that performs best.

How are influencer marketing agencies changing?

Agencies are moving away from running campaigns and towards supplying strategy, specialist skills and access to talent, because most brands now run influencer work themselves. In the 2026 benchmark, 66.3% of marketers run their programmes entirely in-house. The UK survey above found 39% combine an in-house team with agency support.

Analysts quoted in the 2025 benchmark expect three shifts to continue. The first is consolidation, as holding groups buy influencer agencies (Publicis Groupe buying Influential is the example given). The second is niche agencies with a distinct creative offer holding their ground. The third is more investment in talent management as creators build bigger businesses.

The agency of the future looks less like an execution team and more like a partner for strategy, paid promotion and rights management. Our separate agency guide explains what an agency does day to day and how it compares with a platform or marketplace.

What do the numbers say about creators?

Most creators run small businesses that take a lot of time, not celebrity operations. In NeoReach survey data compiled by TechnologyChecker, 26.8% of creators spend 10 to 20 hours a week making content and 21.3% spend more than 40 hours. 53.1% published between 0 and 10 sponsored pieces in 2025, and only 6.4% published more than 50.

Creators judge their own posts by likes (31.4%), comments (27.4%) and shares (20%), which is close to how many brands still judge them. For brands, low sponsored volume means most creators have room for repeat work. That supports the shift to long-term partnerships and always-on rosters in place of one-off posts.

What is the creator economy and how big is it

What will influencer marketing look like in 2027?

Three things are set to shape 2027: AI creator matching, social commerce and AI-assisted content. These are the focus areas marketers named most often. Roughly one in four chose AI creator matching as their single biggest focus, ahead of social commerce at about one in five.

AI matching becomes standard

Discovery is already the main use of AI in influencer marketing. The next step is matching creators on audience fit and past results instead of follower count. Expect shortlists to arrive already vetted, and expect closer checks for fake followers and AI-generated content.

Social commerce beyond TikTok Shop

Most brands learn social commerce on TikTok Shop first. As Instagram Checkout and YouTube Shopping mature, the clearest proof of sales will go to brands that can feed creator content into shoppable posts, catalogue listings and retargeting.

Licensing and paid amplification

Creator licensing and Spark Ads rank fourth among focus areas, and paid promotion tops the European investment list at 62%. Budgets increasingly pay for usage rights as well as posts, so contracts, rights windows and whitelisting access will matter more.

Measurement catches up with budgets

Budgets are growing faster than tracking. Brands planning increases of 50% or more account for a smaller share of measurement-tool use than of planned budget growth. The teams that do well will fix KPIs, promo codes and attribution windows before spending goes up.

Long-term partnerships over one-offs

Long-term creator partnerships are a top-five focus area worldwide and a top-three UK investment priority. Always-on rosters lower the cost per asset and build audience trust that a single sponsored post rarely achieves.

What are the best influencer marketing campaign examples and case studies

How did influencer marketing become an industry?

Influencer marketing grew out of brands paying or gifting bloggers, YouTubers and early Instagram creators, and it became a measurable industry in the late 2010s. The market-size series quoted above puts it at $1.4bn in 2014, $6.5bn in 2019 and $9.7bn in 2020, before it more than tripled by 2025.

Regulation followed the money. The ASA and CMA published the first edition of their influencers' guide on 28 September 2018, and the third edition came out in March 2023. In the US, the FTC's Disclosures 101 (November 2019) treats free or discounted products as a material connection.

So gifted posts count as ads too: label them '#ad' in the US and 'Ad' in the UK. Our disclosure guide covers the full rules.

Sources and further reading

Frequently asked questions

Where do these influencer marketing statistics come from?

Most figures on this page come from annual marketer surveys published in the last two years, plus market-size estimates and regulator guidance. Every number is listed with its report in the sources block. Survey figures show what marketers plan to do, not audited spend.

How up to date is this page?

This page was last updated on 22 September 2026. It reflects the benchmark published in May 2026, which was the most recent edition at that date. We refresh it when a major benchmark or regulator guidance changes.

What did the late-2025 data show?

Surveys run in autumn 2025 already pointed to a jump in budgets: 81% of UK brands planned to increase influencer spend and 84% expected to work with more creators. The spring 2026 benchmark confirmed the direction, with 87.49% of marketers expecting increases.

Which influencer marketing trends matter for outdoor brands?

Outdoor brands benefit from the same move to micro creators and long-term partnerships, because people trust gear that they see used repeatedly in real conditions. YouTube suits long-form reviews and trip content that keeps earning views, while short-form clips on TikTok and Instagram drive discovery.

What are the latest B2B influencer marketing stats?

55% of B2B marketers already use influencer marketing and another 29% plan to start (Ipsos, via TechnologyChecker). Brands tend to pick LinkedIn for a specific audience rather than as part of broad budget growth. Our B2B influencer marketing guide covers how these programmes work.

Which platform do brands use most for influencer marketing?

TikTok is the platform marketers most often include in their influencer plans, at 31%, with Instagram used to scale what already works. In the UK, Instagram is still the most used campaign platform (92%), ahead of TikTok (80%) and YouTube (59%).

How quickly do brands expect influencer marketing to pay back?

65.9% of marketers expect payback within a month, including 48.4% within two weeks. Short measurement windows can understate results, so set your attribution window before launch.