Influencer Marketing Statistics (2026): 57 Sourced Figures

Influencer marketing pays people who publish on social media to promote a brand, product or service. This page collects 57 figures on how much brands spend on creators, how audiences use creator content and how well influencers follow advertising disclosure rules. Every figure links to the regulator, research body, platform or company filing that first published it. One source is a public influencer marketing company that reports its own results in SEC filings. For a comparison of the software brands use to run creator programmes, see the StatWharf comparison of influencer marketing platforms.

Key figures at a glance

Ad spend on creators

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is the US trade body for digital advertising. It released its 2025 Creator Economy Ad Spend and Strategy Report on November 20, 2025. The projection measures the ad dollars brands intentionally invest in creators in the United States.

IAB says the 26% growth in 2025 is about four times faster than the media industry overall. Spend more than doubled between 2021 and 2024. The same release reports how ad buyers treat the channel.

• 48% of ad spenders consider creators a “must buy”. Only social media and paid search rank higher.
• 40% of buyers rank overall return on investment as their top measure for creator campaigns.
• 58% of brands name creator reputation among the top criteria for choosing a creator.
• 95% of advertisers have concerns about using AI in creator marketing.

Brand awareness is the most common campaign goal in the IAB survey. Driving online sales ranks fourth. A buyer that sets return on investment as the main measure needs tracking that links creator posts to sales, not only to reach.

Size of the wider creator economy

Goldman Sachs Research published an estimate of the global creator economy on April 19, 2023. It is the oldest source on this page. It is included because it is the bank’s own published estimate, not a re-quote.

Goldman Sachs names brand deals as the main source of creator revenue. It expects spending on influencer marketing and platform payouts to drive most growth. The total addressable market is a wider measure than IAB ad spend. It includes platform payouts and other creator income. The two figures are not directly comparable.

Platform payouts and reach

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan published his 2026 letter on January 21, 2026. It gives company-reported figures on payouts and economic impact.

• YouTube paid over $100 billion to creators, artists and media companies in the past four years.
• YouTube’s ecosystem contributed $55 billion to US GDP in 2024.
• The same ecosystem supported more than 490,000 full-time US jobs in 2024.
• YouTube Shorts averages 200 billion daily views.

Pew Research Center measures which social platforms US adults use. Its latest report, published November 20, 2025, is based on a survey of 5,022 US adults conducted from February 5 to June 18, 2025.

Instagram and YouTube reach most US adults. TikTok reaches fewer adults overall, but Pew finds roughly half of adults aged 18 to 29 use it daily. Platform choice for a campaign depends on the age of the target buyer.

How audiences use creators

News influencers

Pew Research Center studied US news influencers in a report published November 18, 2024. It surveyed 10,658 US adults and analysed 500 news influencers drawn from a review of 28,266 accounts.

News influencers are a narrow group. The figures still show two points that apply to brand work. Younger adults rely on individual creators far more than older adults. Most creators in the sample earn money from their audience through subscriptions, donations or merchandise.

Creators in AI shopping

IAB published a global study on September 9, 2026. It surveyed 2,200 consumers in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Mexico and India. All respondents had used an AI tool for shopping research in the previous three months. The survey ran in May 2026 through the IAB Insights Engine, powered by Attest.

• 72% of consumers use general-purpose AI assistants for shopping-related decisions.
• 56% prefer AI shopping recommendations that include creator or influencer perspectives.
• 65% are more confident in AI recommendations informed by credible creator reviews.
• 52% name everyday consumers as the most trusted creator type, ahead of professional reviewers.

The sample covers only people who already shop with AI. The results do not describe all consumers. They do suggest that creator reviews now reach buyers through a second route, as source material inside AI answers.

Disclosure and compliance

Regulators in the EU, the UK and the US require influencers to label paid content as advertising. Their own monitoring shows that many do not.

European Union

The European Commission published the results of a screening, or “sweep”, on February 14, 2024. Consumer protection authorities from 22 Member States, Norway and Iceland took part. They checked posts from 576 influencers on major social media platforms.

As a result of the sweep, 358 influencers were earmarked for further investigation by national authorities.

United Kingdom

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) regulates advertising in the UK. It published its report on influencer ad disclosure on Instagram and TikTok in May 2025. The ASA captured over 50,000 pieces of content from 509 UK-based accounts run by 390 influencers between July 2 and July 23, 2024. It then assessed a representative sample by hand.

The ASA found no statistically significant difference between the Instagram and TikTok rates. Influencer ads made up 6% of all complaints to the ASA in 2019 and 10% in 2024.

In May 2026 the ASA published a snapshot report on travel influencers. It reviewed Instagram and TikTok posts from November 2025 and classed 276 of 531 posts as travel ads. Only 20% of those ads were adequately disclosed. The remaining 69% made no attempt at ad disclosure. A further 11% tried to disclose but used an inadequate or insufficiently prominent label.

United States

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforces truth-in-advertising law in the United States, including its Endorsement Guides. On August 14, 2024, the FTC announced a final rule on consumer reviews and testimonials. The rule prohibits buying or selling fake indicators of social media influence, such as followers or views generated by bots. The ban applies where the buyer knew, or had reason to know, that the indicators were fake.

In February 2025 the FTC adjusted its maximum civil penalties for inflation. The maximum for violations of Sections 5(l), 5(m)(1)(A) and 5(m)(1)(B) of the FTC Act rose from $51,744 to $53,088 per violation.

Influencer marketing companies

Most influencer marketing platforms are private. IZEA Worldwide is listed on Nasdaq and files results with the SEC. It describes itself as having launched the first influencer marketing platform in 2006. Most of its revenue comes from managed services, in which IZEA runs campaigns for brands.

IZEA attributes $3.4 million of the 2025 revenue decline to Hoozu, a subsidiary divested in late 2024. Second-quarter 2026 revenue compared with $9.1 million a year earlier, a decrease of 36%. The figures describe one company. They are not a measure of the influencer platform market.

Method

• Data window. Figures date from 2019 to September 2026. The 2019 ASA complaint count serves as a baseline. The Goldman Sachs estimate from April 2023 is the oldest release on the page and is labeled with its date.
• Primary sources only. Each figure links to the body that first published it. Three are regulators: the European Commission, the UK Advertising Standards Authority and the US Federal Trade Commission. The others are Pew Research Center, IAB as the publisher of its own surveys, the YouTube blog, IZEA Worldwide SEC filings and a Goldman Sachs research note. Statistics aggregators, roundup posts and articles that re-quote figures were not used.
• Checks. StatWharf Editorial opened each source in October 2026 and confirmed the figure and its date appear there. Figures not confirmed on a primary source were left out. Two sets were dropped for this reason. The first is the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission influencer sweep. The second is an FTC count of warning letters from December 2025. Their primary pages were not reachable at the check date.
• No modeling. The page reports published figures only. Chart bar lengths are scaled from the published values. No value is calculated or estimated by StatWharf.

Using these figures

The figures point to three conclusions. Brand spend on creators is large and still growing, with IAB projecting $44 billion in the United States in 2026. Audiences, especially adults under 30, rely on individual creators for news and product views. Disclosure remains the weak point, with regulators in the EU and the UK finding that many influencers still fail to label paid posts.

For a brand, this makes contract terms, disclosure checks and performance tracking part of the buying decision. Influencer marketing software handles creator discovery, briefs, content approval and reporting in one place. Products are compared by fit, pricing disclosure and buyer type in the StatWharf comparison of influencer marketing platforms. Other StatWharf data pages are listed in the research directory.

Factual corrections are free: editorial@statwharf.com.