Who Actually Sponsors YouTube Creators in 2026? A Data Report from 176,223 Real Deals

Most public analysis of influencer marketing cites the same three or four industry reports. The Influencer Marketing Hub State of Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report is the flagship, and it's useful for spend forecasts. But those reports are built on brand-side surveys. They tell you what 3,000 marketers said they did. This report is different. It's built on what 21,997 YouTube creators actually got paid to post.

We run Influencer Advisory's sponsor tracking system against every major YouTube channel in our coverage universe. As of April 22, 2026, our database holds 176,223 tracked sponsor deals across 32,731 distinct brands and 21,997 distinct YouTube channels, with coverage running continuously from February 9, 2017 through March 10, 2026. Every number in this post is either pulled from that database (with the sample size disclosed inline) or cited to a named external source. There are no industry estimates.

What "tracked sponsor deal" means

A row in our sponsor database represents a confirmed paid brand integration in a YouTube video we've indexed. We capture the company name, the channel name, the date, the specific video, and (where available) the view count and reported rate. We do not include pure affiliate links without a flat fee, product gifting that is not disclosed as a paid partnership, or pre-roll Google-served ads. The number is a conservative lower bound on paid sponsor activity.

The 10 Most Active YouTube Sponsor Brands in 2026

Ranked by total deal count in our database. These are brands that have returned to creators dozens or hundreds of times.

Rank	Brand	Deals tracked	Distinct creators worked with
1	BetterHelp	2,612	1,319
2	Skillshare	1,819	721
3	Squarespace	1,524	332
4	NordVPN	1,334	620
5	Surfshark	1,230	640
6	Brilliant	1,128	404
7	Incogni	1,127	692
8	Hostinger	947	367
9	Raycon	916	485
10	Aura	880	457

Source: Influencer Advisory sponsor database, aggregation date 2026-04-22.

BetterHelp alone accounts for 1.48% of every sponsor deal we've ever tracked on YouTube, and has worked with 6.0% of the creators in our coverage. That is a staggering share of the market for one advertiser.

What this tells you as a brand: the brands that get scaled results on YouTube are the ones that treat creator sponsorships as a repeatable media line, not a PR stunt. Eight of the top ten are digital-first businesses selling subscription or e-commerce products where incremental attribution is trackable. That is not an accident.

How Often Do Sponsors Come Back?

This is the single most important metric in the whole dataset, and it's one you won't find in any public industry report.

A brand-creator pair means one specific brand buying from one specific creator. A "repeat" is any pair that appears two or more times in our data.

Metric	Count	% of all pairs
Unique brand-creator pairs	87,793	100%
Pairs with 2+ deals	27,084	30.85%
Pairs with 3+ deals	13,412	15.28%
Pairs with 5+ deals	5,804	6.61%
Average deals per pair	2.01
Most deals in a single pair	235

Source: Influencer Advisory sponsor database, n = 87,793 brand-creator pairs.

Roughly one in three brand-creator relationships becomes a repeat relationship. That number is the real benchmark a brand should measure against. If you've run three campaigns with a creator and they haven't converted to a fourth, you're operating below market. Conversely, if you close a sponsor on a third integration, you've already outperformed 85% of the market.

What drives repeat: from the single pair that ran 235 deals together down through the top decile, the common pattern is a digital-product brand with strong creator-first landing pages and a native ad format the creator can deliver without heavy production load. The 235-deal pair is one mid-tier creator reading a script-light house ad for a long-running SaaS advertiser.

What YouTube Creator Rates Actually Look Like

We have confirmed, negotiated per-post rates for a subset of creators in our database (n=294 out of 158,555). A larger sample (n=2,414) has a model-estimated rate. Here is the distribution from both samples.

Confirmed rates (n = 294)

Tier	Sample	Mean	p25	Median	p75	p90
All tiers	294	$6,451	$900	$2,500	$5,363	$12,640
Micro (10K-100K)	100	$2,706	$480	$1,000	$2,500
Mid (100K-500K)	103	$5,071	$1,100	$2,500	$4,900
Macro (500K-1M)	42	$6,235	$1,500	$3,500	$7,875
Mega (1M+)	48	$17,426	$2,875	$8,625	$21,175

Model-estimated rates (n = 2,414)

Tier	Sample	Mean	Median	p75
Micro (10K-100K)	1,005	$1,307	$1,100	$1,601
Mid (100K-500K)	777	$3,186	$2,835	$3,824
Macro (500K-1M)	244	$5,176	$4,649	$6,561
Mega (1M+)	386	$12,148	$9,277	$14,800

Source: Influencer Advisory youtube_creators table, cost column (confirmed) and estimated_cost column (model). Aggregation date 2026-04-22.

Both samples agree: the real mid-tier median is around $2,500 to $2,835 per integration, not the $5,000 to $10,000 most public rate cards quote. The gap is large enough that a brand relying on industry averages to size budgets will overpay by 50 to 100%. This is the single highest-leverage correction a brand can make on its first YouTube campaign.

Important methodology note: these are per-integration rates, not per-video. A dedicated video commands a multiple of an integration rate, which explains the long tail at p90 and max. And we're not separating Instagram or TikTok here; our cost column currently reflects YouTube integration pricing primarily.

Creator Supply: How Many Creators Live in Each Tier

Knowing the supply distribution matters because rates follow scarcity. Here is the full tier breakdown of our YouTube creator universe.

Tier	Range	Count	% of total
Nano	under 10K	5,138	3.2%
Micro	10K-100K	87,351	55.1%
Mid	100K-500K	42,228	26.6%
Macro	500K-1M	10,121	6.4%
Mega	1M+	13,717	8.7%
Total		158,555	100%

Source: Influencer Advisory youtube_creators table, 2026-04-22.

58.3% of tracked creators are under 100,000 subscribers. That's where most of the workable sponsorship inventory lives. The widespread marketing-blog claim that "most brands prefer under 100K" isn't exactly right, because it's framed from the brand side; the truer statement from the creator-supply side is that four out of five addressable sponsor slots on YouTube sit in the micro and mid tiers.

For TikTok, the same schema gives a different shape: 29,476 nano, 28,784 micro, 12,835 mid, 3,046 macro, 3,694 mega, for a total of 77,835 creators tracked. TikTok's tier distribution is flatter at the top, which is part of why rates are lower.

What This Means for Brands

Three takeaways, all falsifiable from the data above.

1. If your first-campaign CAC target is $40-$60, target mid-tier creators at $2,500-$3,500 per integration, not the $5K-$10K industry quote. Our confirmed-rate median at this tier is $2,500; paying $3,500 for a top-quartile creator still leaves you ahead of the inflated rate cards.
2. Your goal on campaign three with the same creator is closing campaign four. 30.85% of relationships repeat at least once; you want to be in the 15.3% that run three or more. Brands that build that cadence get the majority of their compounding ROI.
3. The brands out-executing on YouTube in 2026 are repeat-cadence digital brands, not prestige advertisers. If your competitor is not in our top-50 deal-volume list, you have a first-mover advantage in the channel.

For rate benchmarks in a specific niche or creator shortlist, including where your shortlist sits against our real-deal medians, speak with us. For related reading on how these rates compare to agency pricing, see How Much Does Influencer Marketing Cost in 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the top YouTube sponsor brands in 2026?

In our database the ten most active YouTube sponsor brands by deal volume are BetterHelp (2,612 deals), Skillshare (1,819), Squarespace (1,524), NordVPN (1,334), Surfshark (1,230), Brilliant (1,128), Incogni (1,127), Hostinger (947), Raycon (916), and Aura (880). Every one is a repeat sponsor across hundreds of creators.

How often do YouTube sponsors come back to the same creator?

In our database of 176,223 sponsor deals, 30.85% of brand-creator pairs repeat at least once, 15.3% repeat three or more times, and 6.6% repeat five or more times. The average brand-creator pair runs 2.01 deals together, maximum 235.

What do YouTube creator rates actually look like?

From our confirmed-rate sample (n=294 creators), the all-tier median is $2,500. Tier medians: $1,000 for micro, $2,500 for mid, $3,500 for macro, $8,625 for mega. A larger model-estimated sample (n=2,414) gives consistent medians of $1,100 micro, $2,835 mid, $4,649 macro, $9,277 mega. These are materially lower than most public rate cards.

Which tier of YouTube creator gets sponsored most often?

Of the 158,555 YouTube creators tracked in our database, 58.3% sit under 100,000 subscribers. The micro tier alone (10K to 100K subs) accounts for 55.1% of all tracked creators and is where the majority of sponsor activity runs.

How comprehensive is the underlying data?

This report is built on 176,223 sponsor deals covering 32,731 distinct brands and 21,997 distinct YouTube channels, with coverage from 2017-02-09 through 2026-03-10. Our full creator database includes 158,555 YouTube channels and 77,835 TikTok creators tracked for category, subscriber count, and sponsor history as of April 22, 2026.

Methodology

Data source: the Influencer Advisory Supabase project, tables youtube_creators, tiktok_creators, and sponsor_deals. Sponsor deals are detected via a combination of creator-video transcript analysis, manual verification, and paid partnership disclosures. Rate data is stored in two columns: cost (confirmed from creator or brand report) and estimated_cost (model output). Every aggregate in this post was computed by direct SQL against the live database on 2026-04-22, and sample sizes are disclosed inline for every rate-related claim.

For questions about the methodology or to request a niche-specific cut of the data, contact us.