Imagine you're selecting an influencer to work with on your new campaign. You've narrowed it down to two, both in the right area, both creating the right sort of content. One has 24.6 million subscribers, the other 1.4 million. Which do you choose? Now imagine you could find out the first had 8.7 million unique viewers last month, while the second had 9.9 million. Do you want to change your mind?
Influencer marketing has become one of the most effective ways for brands to reach new audiences, build trust, and drive sales. But for new brands, getting started can feel overwhelming. How do you find influencers? How much should you pay? And how do you know if it's working? This guide breaks down influencer marketing step by step, so even brands with no prior experience can launch their first campaign with confidence.
Beyond the chart: The demand for AI guidance comes as consumer sentiment sours. The share of US/UK consumers who view genAI as a negative disruptor in the creator economy has nearly doubled, from 18% to 32% since November 2023, according to a November 2025 report from Billion Dollar Boy and Censuswide. Meanwhile, transparency gaps are fueling distrust. 52% of consumers are concerned about brands posting AI-generated content without disclosure, according to a September 2025 report from Sprout Social.
Last year was a roller coaster ride for e.l.f. Beauty (NYSE: ELF), but also a transformational one. The company continued to take market share, but it did see its swift revenue growth stall after running into some industry headwinds and tariff pressures. E.l.f. also acquired the prestige skincare brand Rhode, which helps set it up for its next leg of growth.
"This is a great opportunity to reach new audiences by harnessing the power of Instagram to help fashion-forward women tell their stories through this inspirational platform. Our audience is one of career women, whose networking is mobile and on-the-move. It's important for them to keep up with the brands that inspire their ambition for life and this campaign firmly places Radley as a leader in this category."
"Human-generated content is quickly becoming the most valuable driver of brand discovery, but influencer- marketing solutions weren't built to scale for the enterprise," said Kristen Wiley, chief executive officer and founder of Statusphere, who began her career as a creator.
By utilising Brave Bison's data tools and direct relationship networks, we recruited influencers with the perfect profile to reach our intended audience and worked with them throughout the entire creative process, directing and producing video content featuring them within the pop up environments. We then shot a series of 22 videos raising awareness of and showcasing the immersive, artistic and technology-driven nature of the SK-II Wonderland activation.
Consumers increasingly rely on social-media personalities to recommend products and signal what to buy, avoid, and trust. This relationship rests on a fragile premise: that influencer opinions reflect genuine experience, not undisclosed commercial orchestration. While early regulatory attention focused on covert product promotion, a parallel practice has quietly taken hold. Brands are now deploying influencers to undermine competitors by casting doubt or discouraging purchase under the guise of independent opinion.
Consumers have grown so weary of AI-generated content and straight-up slop, they're taking extra time to find work made by real people. And some brands are going even further. Instead of airbrushing flaws, they're celebrating them - even going so far as to seek out imperfections in the influencer marketing deals they're planning. The dirty countertop or overflowing garbage can in the background is no longer grounds for a reshoot; it's a way to let viewers know that what they're watching is, well, real.
At $8 million for a 30-second Super Bowl spot, celebrities are expected to maintain their monopoly on Big Game commercials this year, keeping influencers and creators in the wing for social and experiential campaigns. "It's just viewership demographics. You cast a really wide net of people watching it, and you want as many people as possible to recognize the person you're putting on the screen," said Jerry Hoak, chief creative officer at The Martin Agency.
Brooke Meister and Alex Dochter have unveiled new digital creator talent firm Link Management, which reps digital creators including social media personality Danielle Walter, NFL Majorette and lifestyle creator Chloe Holladay, viral TikToker Yolanda Diaz, and "Love Island USA" Season 7 vet Jalen Brown. Link Management, which began operations in 2025, was created to "go beyond transactional brand deals and offer personalized, holistic representation that helps talent diversify revenue streams, strengthen personal brands and build sustainable, long-term careers."
Even a casual mention of online lottery tucked into lifestyle chatter feels normal because influencers blend interests so effortlessly across posts, creating a steady flow of conversation that pulls you in. Fashion content has a now-or-never feel. Fashion choices are seen as they happen, rather than in a presentation. Fashion influencers are turning mundane environments into instant fashion displays. This authenticity inspires a whole new generation of fashion with a fresh look.
The payout the richest influencers earn for a single post on Instagram is staggering - often rivaling the price of a luxury home or what many people earn over a lifetime. And leading brands with big marketing budgets are more than willing to pay the fee to gain access to their millions of followers and high engagement levels reported by the site's metrics, while influencers become the face of their brand.
Certainly people's use of social media continues to increase, accelerated by the recent lockdowns. According to a recent report from Datareportal, the number of social media users worldwide increased by 13.2% between January 2020 and January 2021, nearly double the rate of growth in the previous year (7.8%). User numbers grew another 10% to January 2022, to a total of 4,623m. And people are spending more time on social media; the worldwide average is now two hours and 27 minutes a day.
In March, Fernández unveiled a new "influencer-first" strategy. He said the consumer-goods company would work with 20 times the number of influencers it had previously worked with. The owner of well-known brands such as Dove, Hellmann's, and Vaseline also said that it would spend half of its ad budget on social media, up from 30%. The result has been a galvanizing event for the influencer marketing space, according to marketing consultants and executives, talent agents, and influencer marketing insiders.
These storefronts promote products, yes, but they also anchor creators within the brand ecosystem by providing measurable, trackable links between content and sales. Both moves have ignited intense interest among marketers because they signal a clear shift: Ad dollars are flowing rapidly away from traditional paid channels and into creator-driven commerce. The Structural Shift In Ad Spend Creator marketing has evolved from a niche experiment into a core growth engine.
Advertising giants like Publicis, WPP, and Omnicom aren't the only companies deploying roll-up strategies and shaking up influencer marketing. Humanz, an Israeli influencer marketing platform that expanded to the US in 2024, is going "full acquisition mode" through 2026, CEO Liran Liberman said in an interview. The company exclusively told Business Insider that it recently raised $15 million from an undisclosed group of venture capital investors to fuel several M&A deals.
WPP Media will receive access to more data on YouTube creators and content as part of an expanded partnership with the Google-owned video platform, according to a press release. Proprietary creator insights will be used to help WPP Media match clients with the right talent on YouTube and drive more measurable campaign outcomes. The offering is available across the agency's marketing technology stack and through its dedicated influencer shop, The Goat Agency.
45% of creators prioritize working with high-quality brands above all else when evaluating brand deals, according to a July survey from Ipsos and Publicis Media. Beyond the chart: Authenticity is driving real results on both sides of the partnership. 58% of consumers have made a purchase because of an influencer endorsement, according to a National Advertising Division of BBB National Programs report. Meanwhile, 55% of marketers now use influencer marketing specifically to build credibility and trust, according to a January survey from Sprout Social
Affiliate marketing - a way to drive sales through links posted by creators or publishers - is expected to drive $216 billion in US e-commerce sales this year, according to data from EMARKETER. These links are a direct way to track the shopping that is actually inspired by influencers. ShopMy, a social commerce platform, enables creators to build shoppable landing pages and earn commissions from sales driven by their links on social media.
Though its origins are religious, you probably know the advent calendar as a humble grocery-store product that features chocolates hidden behind 24 perforated cardboard doors. That sugary countdown to Christmas dates back to the 1950s when the first chocolate versions came on the scene. Cadbury started mass marketing them in 1971 as tools to engage children with the Christian tradition of Advent, says Canadian marketing expert Robert Warren, who closely follows Christmas trends.
