Maximizing value amid rising influencer content rates

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It’s no secret: the cost of influencer marketing has skyrocketed. But why do some brands believe the increase is justified while others complain that influencers are too big for their boots?


Less than a decade old, social media influencer marketing is still in its infancy . But as content creators have transformed the many hours they spend on platforms into viable, standalone businesses, the industry — brands, creators, platforms and audiences — is being forced to throw off its training wheels and grow up.

Today, brands and platforms no longer need to be convinced of the value of entertaining and authentic social media content to achieve their business goals, whether it is to increase awareness and drive sales, or to attract and retain more and more young users on the platforms.

YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat are all locked in a fierce battle to attract top creators to their sites, and have all set up large creator funds to pay influencers to offer exclusive content on the platform.

Brands, meanwhile, are increasing their spending on influencer marketing, with as many now paying influencers a flat fee for content as they are paying in product or samples, according to the State of Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report 2022.

The rise in demand for content has helped boost the number of creators hoping to make a living from the hours they spend online. Alongside them, influencer management agencies have flourished, and micro-influencers are now more likely to be courted not just by brands but also by agencies looking to cash in on the growing market.

“In Spain, on TikTok, people are becoming very popular, they are reaching a lot of people and they are earning crazy amounts of money. We worked on a campaign with Nivea two months ago and some people were asking for 15,000 euros for a TikTok. It’s crazy,” says Cristina García, campaign director of the Spanish influencer marketing agency Native Talents. “They are very young and have millions of views, and they are using this to defend their side and ask for more money. It’s not like that on Instagram, where you can do a lot with 5,000 euros.”

The price boom and rapid development of influencer marketing are accompanied by a lack of transparency as to who gets what in the value chain, says Livia Dolle, founder of creator marketplace platform Takle.io. She points out that the CMP in Germany, for example, has almost doubled in two years, from €15 to €28, and says that brands often struggle to understand the reasons for price increases, especially in cases where there has been no corresponding increase in a creator’s social media statistics.

"The market is still in its infancy and there is a lack of transparency in prices," says Livia Dolle. "There are now many middlemen and everyone wants to make a profit, but it is never clear who gets what."

Managing demand, maintaining authenticity
There are currently around 50 million people around the world who define themselves as content creators, according to Influencer Marketing Hub’s State of the Creator Economy 2022 report. More than 2 million of them are professionals, meaning they make enough money to support themselves full-time.

Half of all professional creators – one million – make money on YouTube , a quarter make their income on Instagram, while there are hundreds of thousands of professional streamers on Twitch, and many influencers also make money from activities such as podcasting, writing, acting and music.

However, while many dream of striking it rich by becoming influencers, many are also c australia accountant email database aught off guard by the intense demands on their time and creativity. The pressure to produce more content, combined with the need to monetize while remaining authentic, has creators increasingly looking for revenue streams outside of brand collaborations.

“From my perspective of the influencer market right now, content creators are all very wary of Instagram . They complain a lot that Instagram forces them to post too much content, too many videos, and they can’t keep up,” says Juliette Orain, social media manager at Razorfish (Groupe Publicis).

Orain says professional content creators are increasingly willing to share those struggles with their audiences as they seek to protect their authenticity and bring their audience along with them on their journey.