Influencer Marketing Market Size (2016–2023)
Influencer marketing stands among the most popular ways to grow a business. Whether it’s through an Instagram influencer or a YouTube influencer, it’s a strategy that has helped many companies raise brand awareness, increase their reach, and boost sales.
Given its popularity and effectiveness, it should come as no surprise that the influencer marketing market size has been experiencing tremendous growth over the past few years.
Growth of influencer marketing
In 2023, the influencer marketing industry is valued at $21.1 billion. This is a 28.7% annual increase from the $16.4 billion at which the industry was valued in 2022. This growth rate marks an acceleration of the increase in the influencer marketing market size from the past year.
In 2022, the influence marketing industry grew 18.8% year over year, a significant slowdown from the previous few years, when the market expanded annually by over 40%.
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To really understand how impressive the growth of influencer marketing has been, we only need to look at data from as recent as 2016. That year, the influencer marketing market size was $1.7 billion, less than one-tenth of its current size. In other words, in just seven years, the influencer marketing industry has managed to grow more than ten-fold.
The biggest annual growth was registered in 2017, when the industry grew by 76.5%, year over year, to $3 billion. The following year, it grew by 53.5%, to hit $4.6 billion. The industry continued to grow at rapid rates of over 40% annually, and eventually surpassed the $10 billion milestone in 2021, to reach $13.8 billion.
From 2016 to 2023, the average annual growth rate of the influencer marketing industry is 44.3%. According to industry analysts, the COVID-19 pandemic was a driving force behind the growth experienced in 2020 and 2021, and the data shows that this trend is expected to continue.
As the industry grows, so does the number of companies that have a dedicated budget for their influencer marketing efforts. In 2017, just 37% of businesses said they had money especially set aside for influencer marketing. This rose to 77% in 2022. This year, the percentage of companies planning on dedicating a budget to influencer marketing rose to 82%. In other words, more than four in five businesses this year have a standalone budget for influencer marketing.