The growing influencer marketing landscape
Over the past decade, the influencer marketing industry has exploded worldwide, spanning millions of creators and thousands of brands across a myriad of consumer and B2B categories.
Massive opportunity championed by brand leaders
Influencer Marketing Hub projects that total worldwide influencer marketing investment will hit $32.55 billion in 2025, up 35% over 2024.
Market Size in Billion US Dollars
Further, it states that 75% of brands have a dedicated influencer marketing budget, a 10% decrease from the previous year due to economic uncertainties and heightened pressure to clearly demonstrate ROI and scalability.
A study conducted by Forrester Consulting surveying 650+ senior marketers mirrors these findings, with 54% of respondents listing influencer marketing as a top three priority investment, with 30% listed it as their number one priority. These were the highest figures for any channel or initiative.
The rise of social commerce
Social commerce is set to experience significant expansion in 2025, fueled by platforms such as TikTok Shop and the growing influence of affiliate marketing. An overwhelming 97% of Gen Z turn to social media for shopping ideas, while affiliate creators are increasingly driving widespread product discovery. Brands that focus on social commerce stand to benefit by connecting with this highly engaged audience that’s ready to convert.
Brands’ preferred platforms in 2025
According to the 2025 Influencer Marketing Hub Benchmark Report, a majority of brands, 57%, identify Instagram as their favored platform for influencer marketing, while TikTok closely trails at 52%. Meanwhile, 37% of brands opt for YouTube, 28% choose Facebook, and 12% prefer LinkedIn.
2025 Influencer Marketing Spending Share, by Platform
% of total influencer marketing spending
Micro-influencers: Critical for sales performance
When people think of influencers, they often conjure images of top celebrities with enormous followings. While such creators are an important part of the ecosystem, expert voices with smaller but more focused followings are playing an increasing role in the industry.
Influencers are generally categorized based on the size of their followings.
- 1 million-plus followers: Key Opinion Leaders
- 500,000 to 1 million followers: Macro-Influencers
- 100,000 to 500,000 followers: Mid-Influencers
- 10,000 to 100,000 followers: Micro-Influencers
- 10,000 followers and below: Nano-Influencers
Influencer Follower Tiers
Micro- and nano-influencers have been critical to transforming the space from a channel primarily used for building awareness to one equally successful at generating large sales volumes. This is because they have extremely high credibility for a specific topic (like a recognized authority on the best laptop computers or a person with a highly-refined personal style) resulting in an audience more engaged and therefore quicker to buy than from a celebrity.
Micro-influencers are critical to driving strong brand awareness and sales conversions for retailers.
Another benefit to smaller creators is they are often more flexible with the compensation models they accept. Virtually all influencers aim to work on a flat fee or pay-per-post basis versus on performance. However, many micro-influencers are open to hybrid or performance compensation once it has been established that they can drive sales and make money with a program. For example, a micro-influencer might work on a per-post basis for the first program with a brand but move to a hybrid fee plus performance compensation model for the second initiative. As payment models are redefined, brands gain better ways to ensure accountability.
These benefits and more are why many retailers are able to get large numbers of transactions through creator programs leveraging micro- and nano-influencers. At Awin we see this trend playing out as well, with these groups making up more than 90% of creator campaigns.
At the end of the day, though, whether you choose to work with micro-influencers or the biggest celebrities, it’s important to remember these brackets aren’t mutually exclusive and shouldn’t be viewed as a ‘growth mountain’ to climb. You can just as successfully work with key opinion leaders on an affiliate basis as you could with a micro-influencer on a flat fee, upfront payment.
More money flowing to more categories
In the early years, influencer marketing was primarily focused on beauty and fashion categories, where many creators had large, loyal followings. These categories continue to perform extremely well, but many other industries now have sizable creator communities. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, the top categories by the number of marketers leveraging influencer marketing are:
- Fashion and Beauty
- Gaming
- Sports
- Travel and Lifestyle
- Family, Parenting, and Home
- Health and Fitness
Other popular categories include Electronics, B2B Software, and DTC Subscription Services.
Multiple types of measurement
Influencer marketing began as an extension of public relations (PR) and was primarily focused on top-of-funnel activities like brand building and differentiation. At that time, the channel was seen as a cost-effective way of reaching audiences using highly-credible content, recommendations and endorsements from prominent figures.
While top-of-funnel metrics remain an important source of value for influencer marketing, many brands are now pursuing direct sales through these unique partnerships. That makes affiliate-style performance measurement a critical part of influencer marketing.
As more investment has entered the space, brand objectives have diversified and broadened. While top-of-funnel metrics remain an important source of value for influencer marketing, many retailers are also pursuing direct sales through these unique partnerships. To enable this transition, affiliate-style performance metrics and tracking are increasingly key parts of creator performance measurement, and in 2025 popularity for full-funnel measurement continues to grow.
This chart outlines some example influencer marketing metrics for each stage in the customer journey.
Influencer Measurement Hierarchy
In addition, many creator programs now incorporate unique affiliate links so that brands can measure traffic and sales driven by influencers. Affiliate technology solutions like Awin have created proprietary measurement solutions and also partner closely with leading influencer platforms and sub-networks to deliver maximum insight.
Insights summary
It is clear the influencer marketing industry is massive and incredibly diverse. With millions of potential creator partnerships spanning virtually every lifestyle and product category, brands can easily find powerful influencer collaborators to help achieve any of their marketing goals.
With affiliate tracking and measurement tools, brands can drive strong ROI from influencer marketing.
Influencer marketing measurement has improved dramatically and retailers can now track the impact of a campaign for any stage in the customer purchase journey, driving strong, measurable ROI from this channel.
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