Essential data on EMV performance, creator ROI, and measurement trends shaping modern influencer marketing strategy
Key Takeaways
- The influencer marketing industry has reached $32.55 billion in 2025: Influencers generated $236 billion in EMV during 2024 alone, making accurate social listening and measurement capabilities essential for brands seeking competitive advantage in creator marketing.
- Average ROI reaches $5.78 per dollar spent on influencer marketing: Top-performing campaigns achieve $20 or more in returns per $1 invested, yet 67% of marketers still struggle to measure ROI accurately—creating opportunities for brands with automated campaign reporting capabilities.
- Nano-influencers deliver 3x higher engagement than macro-influencers: With engagement rates of 1.7% compared to 0.6% for larger creators, 70% of brands now prefer working with small-scale influencers—making AI-powered creator search tools critical for identifying high-impact partners.
- 92% of consumers trust earned media over all other advertising forms: This trust premium explains why 56% of influencer campaigns prioritize generating user-generated content as their primary goal, elevating the importance of capturing every piece of community-created content.
- Major brands generate massive EMV during key moments: Nike earned $238.8 million in EMV during the 2024 Olympics, demonstrating the scale of value available to brands who capture and measure their creator ecosystem effectively.
- Budget allocation continues shifting toward creator marketing: 26% of marketing agencies now devote over 40% of their budget to influencer marketing, with 59% planning to partner with more influencers in 2025 than 2024.
Never miss another story
Market Size and Industry Growth
1. The global influencer marketing market reaches $32.55 billion in 2025
The influencer marketing industry has grown from $1.7 billion in 2016 to a projected $32.55 billion in 2025, representing nearly 20x growth in under a decade. This expansion reflects fundamental shifts in how consumers discover and trust brand recommendations, with creator-driven content now central to marketing strategy across virtually every consumer category. Source: Statista Global Influencer Market Size
2. Influencers generated $236 billion in Earned Media Value during 2024
The collective EMV produced by influencers in 2024 reached $236 billion, quantifying the massive advertising-equivalent value brands receive through creator partnerships. This figure underscores why tracking and measuring EMV has become a priority for marketing teams seeking to demonstrate the true impact of their creator programs. Understanding how EMV is calculated helps teams build credible reporting frameworks. Source: IMH Benchmark Report
3. The public relations industry is on track to become a $112.98 billion global market by 2025
Earned media extends beyond influencer marketing into broader PR activities, with the industry approaching $113 billion globally. This growth creates increased demand for measurement tools that can quantify the value of brand mentions, creator content, and organic coverage across platforms. Source: PR lab Public Relations Statistics
4. Global digital advertising spending is projected to surpass $740 billion by 2025
With digital ad spending reaching unprecedented levels, EMV provides essential context for understanding the relative efficiency of earned versus paid media investments. Brands that can accurately measure their EMV against paid equivalents gain clearer visibility into marketing efficiency and budget allocation decisions. Source: Marketing LTB Digital Advertising Statistics
ROI and Performance Benchmarks
5. Businesses earn an average of $5.78 in EMV for every $1 spent on influencer marketing
This ROI benchmark provides a baseline for evaluating creator marketing performance, though actual returns vary significantly based on creator selection, content quality, and campaign execution. Brands consistently exceeding this benchmark typically leverage data-driven creator selection and comprehensive content tracking to optimize their programs. Source: IMH Benchmark Report
6. The top 13% of influencer campaigns generate $20 or more per $1 invested
Elite-performing campaigns deliver returns more than 3x the industry average, demonstrating the significant upside available through optimized creator programs. These top performers typically share common characteristics: precise creator-audience fit, authentic content, and robust measurement infrastructure that enables continuous optimization. Source: IMH Influencer Marketing Report
7. Over 70% of businesses generate at least $2 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing
The vast majority of influencer campaigns produce positive returns, though the spread between average and top performers remains substantial. This baseline profitability explains sustained budget growth in the category, while the performance gap motivates investment in better measurement and optimization capabilities. Source: Sociallyin Influencer Marketing Statistics
8. Instagram influencer campaigns yield approximately $4.12 per $1 spent
Instagram remains a primary channel for influencer marketing, delivering solid returns despite platform maturation. Understanding platform-specific benchmarks helps brands set realistic expectations and compare performance across their multi-platform creator strategies through comprehensive reports. Source: Sociallyin Influencer Marketing Statistics
9. 80% of marketers now consider influencer marketing highly effective
Marketer confidence in influencer marketing has reached an all-time high, validating years of budget growth in the category. This consensus creates competitive pressure for brands that haven't yet established sophisticated creator programs or measurement capabilities. Source: IMH Benchmark Report
Creator Selection and Tier Performance
10. Nano-influencers achieve 1.7% engagement on Instagram versus 0.6% for macro-influencers
Smaller creators consistently deliver higher engagement rates, with nano-influencers (1K-10K followers) outperforming macro-influencers (500K-1M followers) by nearly 3x on Instagram. This engagement premium makes nano-creator identification and management increasingly valuable—though finding them at scale requires moving beyond obvious influencer searches. Source: IMH Benchmark Report
11. 70% of brands prefer working with small-scale influencers over mega-influencers
Brand preference has decisively shifted toward nano and micro-influencers, with 44% specifically favoring nano-creators and 26% preferring micro-influencers. This preference reflects both superior engagement metrics and cost efficiency, though it increases the operational complexity of managing larger creator rosters through creator leaderboards and tracking systems. Source: Sociallyin Influencer Marketing Statistics
12. Brands are working with 33% more micro-influencers each year on average
Annual growth in micro-influencer partnerships creates scaling challenges for brands managing expanding creator networks. This growth rate means teams working with 100 creators this year may manage 133 next year—intensifying the need for automated content detection and performance tracking. Source: Clear Voice Influencer Marketing Statistics
13. Nano-influencers make up 75.9% of all influencers on Instagram
The sheer volume of nano-influencers—comprising over three-quarters of the Instagram influencer ecosystem—creates both opportunity and discovery challenges. Finding the right nano-creators who align with brand values and audience requires sophisticated search capabilities beyond follower counts. Source: Sociallyin Influencer Marketing Statistics
Platform Performance and Engagement
14. 78% of TikTok users have purchased a product after seeing it in an influencer's video
The purchase intent generated by TikTok influencer content demonstrates the platform's commerce potential. This conversion power makes comprehensive TikTok content capture essential for brands seeking to understand which creator content drives sales outcomes. Source: Sociallyin Influencer Marketing Statistics
15. 57% of brands chose Instagram as their preferred channel for influencer campaigns
Despite TikTok's engagement advantages, Instagram maintains its position as the most popular influencer marketing platform. Multi-platform strategies remain standard, requiring brands to track creator content across both Instagram and TikTok to capture their full earned media value. Source: Sociallyin Influencer Marketing Statistics
16. 69% of brands were using TikTok for influencer efforts by 2024
TikTok adoption among brands has accelerated rapidly, with more than two-thirds now including the platform in their influencer strategies. This growth creates demand for TikTok-specific content tracking and measurement capabilities that traditional social tools weren't built to handle. Source: Sociallyin Influencer Marketing Statistics
Content Strategy and UGC Trends
17. 56% of influencer campaigns have generating user-generated content as their primary goal
More than half of all influencer campaigns prioritize UGC creation over other objectives, reflecting the value brands place on authentic, repurposable content. This UGC-first approach demands comprehensive content capture to ensure brands receive and can leverage every piece of creator content their campaigns generate. Source: Sociallyin Influencer Marketing Statistics
18. 87% of content that brands request from micro-influencers is short-form video
Short-form video has become the dominant content format in creator marketing, with nearly 9 in 10 micro-influencer briefs specifying video deliverables. This video-first reality requires AI that can watch and understand video content—not just read text—to properly categorize and value creator output. Source: Sociallyin Influencer Marketing Statistics
19. 63% of marketers say influencer-generated content performs better than brand-directed content
Creator content outperforms brand-produced content for the majority of marketers, validating investment in influencer partnerships. This performance advantage makes content capture and repurposing through usage rights management increasingly strategic for extending campaign impact. Source: Sociallyin Influencer Marketing Statistics
20. 92% of consumers trust earned media over all other forms of advertising
Consumer trust in earned media—including word-of-mouth, recommendations, and editorial content—far exceeds trust in paid advertising. This trust premium underlies the entire EMV framework and explains why brands invest heavily in generating and measuring organic creator content. Source: Nielsen Global Trust In Advertising
Case Studies: EMV at Scale
21. Nike generated $238.8 million in Earned Media Value during the 2024 Summer Olympics
Nike's Olympic EMV demonstrates the scale of value available during major brand moments when creator content and organic coverage align. Capturing this level of EMV requires real-time content detection across platforms, athlete partnerships, and user-generated content from millions of fans—impossible to track through manual methods. Source: Luxurimag EMV Report
22. LeBron James' Olympic involvement generated over $21 million in EMV driven by 9.6 million interactions
Individual creator partnerships can generate eight-figure EMV when properly activated and measured. Understanding which creators deliver outsized value—and capturing evidence of that impact—enables smarter partnership investments and more compelling reporting to leadership. Source: Luxurimag EMV Report
What These Statistics Mean for Your Creator Program
The data paints a clear picture: influencer marketing delivers strong returns, but most brands struggle to measure and optimize their programs effectively. The gap between average performers ($5.78 per $1) and top performers ($20 per $1) represents significant unrealized value.
Three patterns emerge from these benchmarks:
Content capture determines measurement accuracy. You can't calculate EMV for content you never knew existed. With 87% of creator content now in short-form video format—including ephemeral Instagram Stories that disappear in 24 hours—manual screenshot workflows miss significant portions of campaign output. Archive's Social Listening detects Stories 24/7 and captures 100% of tagged Instagram content, ensuring complete EMV visibility.
Creator selection drives performance variance. The 3x engagement difference between nano and macro-influencers explains much of the ROI gap between average and top-performing campaigns. Finding the right nano-creators at scale—rather than running into the same influencers every time—requires AI-powered creator search that goes beyond follower counts to identify authentic fit.
Automated reporting builds leadership confidence. Archive's Campaign Reporting automates the manual work of tracking seeding results, calculating EMV, and building period-over-period comparisons that demonstrate real impact.
The brands generating elite returns aren't working harder—they're capturing everything their creator community posts, automating their reporting workflows, and proving ROI with trusted metrics their leadership believes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a good Earned Media Value (EMV) benchmark for my industry?
The industry average ROI sits at $5.78 per $1 spent on influencer marketing, but top performers achieve $20 or more per $1 invested. Your specific benchmark depends on creator tier, platform mix, and content format. Nano-influencers typically deliver higher engagement rates (1.7% vs 0.6% for macro-influencers), which can translate to stronger EMV per dollar when you can identify and manage them effectively at scale.
How can I accurately calculate EMV for my influencer marketing campaigns?
EMV calculation requires capturing all creator content (including Stories and short-form video), measuring engagement metrics, and applying consistent valuation methodology. The biggest accuracy challenge isn't the formula—it's capturing 100% of content. With 67% of marketers struggling to measure influencer ROI, the gap usually stems from missed content rather than calculation errors.
What role does user-generated content play in improving EMV?
UGC is central to EMV, with 56% of influencer campaigns prioritizing content generation as their primary goal. Creator-generated content outperforms brand-directed content according to 63% of marketers, and 92% of consumers trust earned media over paid advertising. Capturing and repurposing UGC extends your EMV investment beyond initial creator posts.
Why do so many marketers struggle with EMV measurement despite its importance?
The core challenge is operational: manual tracking can't keep pace with ephemeral stories, short-form video across multiple platforms, and expanding creator rosters. Teams working with 33% more micro-influencers each year face exponentially more content to track.
How does creator tier affect my EMV outcomes?
Nano-influencers (1K-10K followers) deliver 1.7% engagement on Instagram compared to 0.6% for macro-influencers—a 3x difference that directly impacts EMV. This explains why 70% of brands now prefer small-scale influencers. However, managing larger rosters of smaller creators requires systematic tracking to capture all their content and measure aggregate EMV accurately.
