influencer-marketing · campaigns
Influencer Marketing Campaigns 2026, 189K Real Deals
An operator's read on planning an influencer marketing campaign in 2026, with real rates from 30 priced creators and repeat-buyer signal from 35,183 brands.
MrBeast Gaming sits at 55.8M subscribers, the biggest channel in our influencer marketing campaigns set, and almost nobody reading this can afford a single post on that channel. That is fine, because the math that matters for an actual campaign runs four bands lower, where 50K to 250K subscriber creators quote a median of $1,800 (n=11) and 10K to 50K subscriber creators quote a median of $2,000 (n=10). This post is for the brand-side marketer who has run three to twenty campaigns, wants to run more, and is tired of the lottery feel. If you came here for a generic checklist, the back button is right there. What follows is what I would do, in what order, with the numbers I would defend to a CFO.
Where I am
The field I am writing from is 189,607 paid brand integrations across 35,183 brands and 568,821 video transcripts, indexed across 158,555 YouTube channels and 77,835 TikTok accounts (n=189,607). Inside the campaigns niche we track 7,137 YouTube channels and 10 TikTok accounts. That sample lets me say things about rates and repeat-buyer behaviour with a sample size attached, rather than vibes. Sanity check. Most of what passes for influencer-marketing advice in 2026 is written by people who have never priced a deal, or have priced one and called it a hundred. The thing I keep watching is repeat purchase. Across 35,183 brands in our paid-integration index, 15,113 have run more than one deal, a 43.0% repeat rate (n=35,183). That number is the whole game. A campaign that does not earn a second deal with the same creator is a one-night experiment, and one-night experiments do not compound.
Rates
Here is the priced data, plain. In the campaigns niche we have 30 creators who have quoted us a rate. The 1M+ subscriber band has 2 priced creators with a median of $3,375 and a p90 of $112,500 (n=2). The 250K to 1M band has 6 creators, median $3,500, p90 $8,000 (n=6). The 50K to 250K band has 11 creators, median $1,800, p90 $7,500 (n=11). The 10K to 50K band has 10 creators, median $2,000, p90 $3,000 (n=10). The under-10K band has one creator at $550.
Read that again, because it is counter-intuitive. The median quote in the 10K to 50K band is slightly HIGHER than the median in the 50K to 250K band. $2,000 against $1,800. That is what happens when the small-creator pool is self-selected for the ones confident enough to send a rate card, and the mid-pool includes a long tail of creators who price low to win the deal. For a first campaign, that means a $10,000 budget buys you roughly three 50K to 250K subscriber creators OR five 10K to 50K subscriber creators at the median. The first option gives you bigger swings. The second gives you better signal. Pick by goal first, and ignore which option sounds more prestigious. Three to five creators. Real signal.
If you want me to pull a band-matched shortlist for your category from our 7,137-channel set, that is a twenty-minute conversation, and it should never become a project.
Vetting
This is the section where most campaigns die quietly. A creator with the right subscriber count and a clean rate card can still be the wrong pick. What I check, in order.
- Audience overlap with your buyer (+45 min). Read the last ten comments on three recent videos. If your buyer talks like the commenters, you have a match. If not, the subs are the wrong people.
- Rate sanity against the band (+10 min). A 50K to 250K creator quoting $7,500 is at p90 in our set. They might be worth it. They might be guessing. Compare to the band median of $1,800 (n=11) and ask why the premium.
- Sponsor history (+20 min). Pull the channel's last twenty videos and count integrations. A creator running BetterHelp, Squarespace, and Surfshark in the same month has trained their audience to skip sponsor reads. BetterHelp alone runs 2,728 deals across our index, the top sponsor brand on YouTube.
- Disclosure history (+15 min). Search the captions for "paid", "sponsored", "partner". A creator with zero disclosure history is FTC liability you will inherit. The disclosure gap is the brand's problem too.
- Posting cadence (+5 min). If the last video shipped six weeks ago and the one before that nine weeks ago, you are buying into a creator's side project. Side-project creators ghost halfway through the integration.
Five checks. Roughly an hour and a half per creator. For a five-creator pilot, that is a full day of work that nobody on your team has scheduled. That is the gap we close before the brief goes out.
Platforms
YouTube and TikTok run on different clocks, and a campaign that ignores that runs into the wall in week three. The biggest TikTok account in our campaigns set is @fleetingfilms at 8.3M followers, followed by @kingbrightmediaa at 1.77M and @kamille0422 at 1.60M. Those are creator-economy scale numbers, but the half-life of a TikTok view is days, where a YouTube integration earns long-tail watch for months. That difference is the planning lever. If your buyer searches for a solution before they buy, YouTube wins because the transcript indexes and the comment thread becomes a sales asset. If your buyer scrolls, TikTok wins because the reach is faster and the cost-per-view is lower at the same band. Most brands I work with want both. The honest read is that one platform earns the renewal data, and the other earns the volume, and which is which depends on the category.
Sanity check. Most "do both" plans I see are 70% YouTube budget, 30% TikTok budget, and the TikTok side is run as an afterthought. A three-creator TikTok wave with @ggupaicat-band 500K-follower creators is its own thing, briefed differently, measured differently. Treat each platform as a real program. Two real programs.
If your buyer already opens one of these more than the other, that is your platform. Pick first. Defend the choice later, with data from the first wave.
The platform choice also shapes the rate card you should believe. A YouTube quote at $1,800 from a 50K to 250K subscriber creator is comparable to our band median (n=11). A TikTok quote at the same band can read very different because creator economics on that platform skew toward post-volume rather than per-post pricing. Ask for a three-post bundle on TikTok and a single-post quote on YouTube, and compare the per-view cost across both.
Cadence
A campaign is a cadence rather than a single event. The brands that compound across 2025 and 2026 are running the same creators on a quarterly clock instead of bouncing across new names every month. The repeat-buyer math is the proof. Of the 35,183 brands in our paid-integration index, 15,113 have run more than one deal (43.0%, n=35,183). Inside that 43%, the brands that hit four-or-more renewals are the ones with a written program, a standing brief template, and one human who owns the relationship.
What that looks like in practice.
- Month 1. Brief and ship three creators in the 50K to 250K band. Median spend around $5,400 at $1,800 each (n=11).
- Month 2. Watch the data. Conversion from one creator usually clears the other two combined. Pick that creator's audience signal and find two more like them.
- Month 3. Re-book the winner from month 1 plus the two new picks. Standing brief, faster turn, lower friction.
By month six you have run nine to twelve creators, repeated three of them, and have the start of a roster. That roster is what the next $50,000 of spend buys against, instead of starting cold every quarter. This is what a working program feels like. Quiet. Compounding. Repeatable.
The thing the cadence buys you is contract memory. Second-deal briefs are shorter because the creator knows your buyer. Third-deal briefs are a paragraph because the disclosure phrase is already in the template. The repeat-buyer math from our index is the proof, 15,113 of 35,183 brands have run more than one deal at a 43.0% repeat rate (n=35,183). Top spenders run hundreds, with BetterHelp at 2,728 deals, Skillshare at 2,027, and Squarespace at 1,768 across our YouTube index. Those are not brands that are getting lucky. They are brands that have built the program.
Bottlenecks
I will name the four bottlenecks I see most often, and what I would do about each. This is the worry-peak section, the one where a brand-side marketer reading this is supposed to feel the friction they are already living with.
Shortlist. Building a shortlist from scratch eats two weeks and produces a list nobody on the team trusts. The fix is a database with rate data already in it, our 7,137-channel campaigns set being one of them. Buying time here pays for itself on the first deal that does not happen.
Pricing. Most creators do not publish a rate. Asking gets you a number that depends on the day and the brand asking. The fix is a comparable set, three priced creators in the same band, so the quote you get can be checked against $1,800 in 50K to 250K (n=11) or $3,500 in 250K to 1M (n=6).
Disclosure. This is the one that becomes a real problem on a one-year horizon rather than a one-month horizon. A program with zero disclosure language across captions becomes a brand-name in an FTC letter the next time the agency does a sweep. The fix is a one-line disclosure phrase in every brief and a 48-hour archive of the published post. This is where I would keep the brand out of trouble before it becomes trouble.
Renewal. A campaign that does not renew is a one-night experiment. The fix is a single owner inside the brand who is measured on roster depth at quarter-end rather than on individual-post performance. Roster depth is the metric that predicts spend efficiency two quarters out.
The bottlenecks compound. A weak shortlist produces bad pricing, bad pricing produces low confidence, low confidence kills the renewal, and the next quarter starts cold again. Four bottlenecks. One pattern.
Here is what I would do this quarter, in order. Pull a band-matched shortlist of fifteen creators in your category, three each at 1M+, 250K to 1M, 50K to 250K, 10K to 50K, and a small pool below. Price all fifteen against our percentile bands (n=30 in our priced campaigns set). Pick five for the pilot, three at 50K to 250K and two at 10K to 50K. Brief them with a standing disclosure phrase in the contract. Ship the first wave in month one, the second wave in month three, and re-book the winner in month four. By month six you will have a roster.
If that sequence sounds like a project you do not have time to run, that is what we exist for, the part where I take it off your plate and you read the result at quarter-end.
Related reading on the same cluster, the agency-versus-direct comparison, the FTC enforcement read, and the YouTube rates pillar. The hub map for this cluster is our agencies guide.
If you are running fewer than three creators per quarter, you do not have a campaign yet, you have a test. That is fine, just price it as a test.
Three good picks. Real compounding.
Frequently asked
How much does a single influencer marketing campaign cost in 2026?
Across 30 priced creators in our campaigns set, the median 50K to 250K subscriber creator quotes $1,800, and the median 10K to 50K subscriber creator quotes $2,000. A 3-creator pilot at the 250K to 1M band sits around $10,500 at the median quote of $3,500 each.
How many creators should a first campaign include?
Three to five. That gives you enough signal to read which audience clicks while keeping the spend under $15,000 at typical 50K to 250K subscriber rates. Anything below three is one creator's bad week dressed up as a campaign.
Do brands keep working with the same creators?
Often. Of 35,183 brands we track running paid integrations, 15,113 have run more than one deal, a 43.0% repeat rate (n=35,183). Renewals are where the math actually works.
Which platform should the first campaign run on?
Pick the one your buyer already opens. YouTube indexes well for long-tail intent and gives you a transcript you can search later. TikTok hits faster but the half-life is shorter, so plan the cadence around that.
What does Influencer Advisory do that an in-house team does not?
We pull the shortlist from a database of 158,555 YouTube channels and 77,835 TikTok accounts, then vet rate sanity, audience match, and disclosure history before the brief goes out. The in-house version of this is a contractor and three weeks.