Influencer Marketing Report 2026: 87% of Brands Boost Budgets

Survey intentions are running ahead of measured spending

Influencer Marketing Hub's 2026 Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report is the most widely quoted survey of the creator economy this year, and its main finding is easy to state. Among brand respondents, 87.49% expect their influencer marketing budgets to grow, and only 5.55% expect a cut27. The size of the planned increases stands out even more: 72.22% of respondents say they will raise influencer spending by 50% or more27.

Those numbers are now everywhere in trade coverage. Read next to independent spending forecasts and platform earnings, though, they suggest a different conclusion. Influencer marketing is growing quickly and taking share from other channels. The growth is real, but it is far smaller than the survey's appetite implies. The more important change is that creator content is being absorbed into the wider social advertising machine, and that machine is having an unusually strong year.

What the benchmark says

The survey drew more than 600 respondents, and secondary write-ups describe the sample as unusually bullish243. Expected payback is short. Nearly two-thirds of marketers (65.9%) expect influencer activity to pay for itself within a month, and 48.4% expect it within two weeks27. The tools used to prove that payback are still basic. Promo codes are the most common tracking method at 45.9%, ahead of affiliate links at 26% and native shopping features at 25%27.

Brands are also moving toward smaller creators. The report finds much stronger plans to expand nano- and micro-influencer programs than macro or celebrity work24. One summary puts it at 51.43% of brands expanding their use of nano and micro creators against 10% cutting back, while macro creators are effectively flat, with 20.59% expanding and 20.58% contracting28. Artificial intelligence shows up mainly in back-office tasks. Creator discovery is the leading AI use case at 36.67%, followed by content generation at 21.11%27. AI-driven creator matching is the top area of future investment24.

Fraud has not gone away. Fake or bot followers make up 56.5% of the fraud and quality problems respondents reported27. Measurement is still a structural weakness: ROI measurement and attribution complexity together account for about 15.84% of reported challenges24.

Where the coverage diverges

On closer reading, several of the most-repeated figures don't line up.

Market size. Many outlets give $32.55 billion as Influencer Marketing Hub's estimate of the 2025 global market37. At least one benchmark aggregator presents the same number as the 2026 market size21. Forecasts for 2026 range widely. One roundup cites a narrower Influencer Marketing Hub baseline of $34.1 billion29, another gives a range of $34.1 billion to $38.7 billion7, and Mordor Intelligence projects $40.51 billion3. Some growth-focused summaries go as high as $47.8 billion1. The gap between the low and high estimates is roughly the size of the entire US influencer market, which shows that nobody has settled on a standard definition.

Platform priorities. This is the biggest inconsistency. One detailed write-up of the survey says TikTok was named by 31% of respondents as an investment target, with every other platform grouped between 8% and 15%24. Other summaries say TikTok leads on brand adoption at 68.8%, with Instagram at 57%29. One even gives Instagram the 57% figure while putting YouTube and Facebook in the 8–15% band28. Adoption, investment intent and preference are different questions, and secondary sources seem to be mixing them up. All versions agree on one point: TikTok is at or near the top of brand attention. Behind TikTok, the order changes depending on which source you read.

Publication date. Even the release date varies in coverage, with references to January, 3 March and 4 May 20266283. Each of these citations may reflect a different edition or update, so the precise timeline should be treated with caution.

The measured-spend reality check

The sharpest contrast is between survey intentions and analyst estimates of actual spending. eMarketer puts US influencer marketing spend at $10.52 billion in 2025 and forecasts 15.7% growth to about $12.17 billion in 2026, then $13.7 billion in 202764. Growth was 23.7% in 2024, so the market is settling into a steady mid-teens pace rather than speeding up6.

Even Aspire's survey, which is less extreme than Influencer Marketing Hub's, shows how far planned spending sits from actual growth. Aspire found that 74% of marketers plan to increase influencer budgets, and that brands put an average of 23% of total marketing budgets into creator partnerships last year2. If seven in ten brands really raised budgets by half, the market would grow far faster than 15.7%. The likeliest explanation, and this is an inference, is that the survey sample leans toward creator-focused marketers and agencies, and that planned increases often start from small budgets.

The headline returns figure also needs some caution. The commonly cited $5.78 return per $1 spent appears across aggregators, sometimes with a range of $5.20 to $6.502229. It mixes several underlying sources and should be read as a directional estimate, not a measured market average.

Wider definitions, bigger numbers

The more useful story may be how the category's boundaries are widening. eMarketer's broader measure of US social media creator marketing reached $21.10 billion for 2026 after a February revision. It cites brands extending creator budgets into retail media networks, connected TV and podcasts8. IAB and PwC data reportedly show creator advertising spend rising from $37 billion in 2025 to a projected $44 billion in 202615. Retail media made up 17% of creator spend in 2025, compared with 9% in 202328.

The money is also coming out of existing budgets. CreatorIQ data indicates that nearly two-thirds of new creator marketing spend is moved from traditional paid and digital channels rather than added on top26. Aspire found that 77% of marketers reuse creator content in paid social campaigns25. Taken together, these data points indicate that the line between influencer marketing and paid social is fading. Creator posts increasingly act as ad creative, bought and boosted through the same platforms as any other ad. This shift explains brand enthusiasm better than the survey's growth projections do.

The social ad market is the real tailwind

That context matters because social advertising is running hot. In its Q3 2026 Global Ad Spend Forecast, released on 8 October, WARC Media raised its estimate for 2026 global social media ad spend to $394.6 billion, up 21.3%. That makes social the fastest-growing channel in a $1.343 trillion market growing 11.9%17. The same forecast had put total market growth at 8.9% in June, so the upgrade is significant. Social alone accounts for 29.4% of global ad spend this year17.

Other forecasters agree on the direction but differ widely on the level, mostly because they define the market differently. Statista projects $338.75 billion in global social ad spend for 202612. Mordor Intelligence estimates a narrower $227.88 billion16. Dentsu's December 2025 forecast had social growing 11.4%, second only to retail media13. In the US, the IAB's September update raised its 2026 social growth projection to 16.5%, up from 14.6% in January, and lifted its overall US ad growth forecast to 12.3% from 9.5%15. US social ad revenue grew 32.6% in 2025 to $117.7 billion, faster than digital video, search and display18.

Platform results support these forecasts. Meta's Q2 2026 ad revenue rose 27% to $59.36 billion. Ad impressions grew 14% and the average price per ad rose 12%, which means demand is growing faster than ad inventory11. TikTok Shop reportedly generated $50.3 billion in gross merchandise value in the first half of 202618. That is a reminder that social commerce gives creators a direct route to sales that didn't exist a few years ago.

What it means

The 2026 benchmark is best read as a measure of brand sentiment, not a spending forecast. The sentiment is clear: marketers think creators work, want more of them, and are moving toward cheaper, higher-engagement smaller accounts. Measured spending tells a more modest story, with US influencer budgets growing in the mid-teens. The overall social ad market, by contrast, is growing at more than 20% globally by WARC's latest estimate.

This suggests the platforms, not independent creators, are capturing most of the advertising boom. Creator content increasingly serves as fuel for paid social, and money is moving out of older channels, so the category's growth will depend more on Meta, TikTok and YouTube ad systems than on rising sponsorship fees. Two weaknesses noted in the benchmark could slow that trend if marketing budgets tighten: thin attribution, much of it still based on promo codes, and persistent follower fraud. Until then, the gap between what brands say they will spend and what they actually spend is likely to persist, and the platforms gain either way.