Why Small Creators Are Eating the Marketing World

The billion-dollar shift from celebrity endorsements to your neighbor's TikTok

Here's something that might surprise you: by 2025, influencer marketing will hit $32.55 billion globally, according to Influencer Marketing Hub's 2025 benchmark report. But here's what's really interesting—the people driving this growth aren't the celebrities you'd expect.

Three out of four Instagram influencers (75.9%) have fewer than 10,000 followers, and these so-called "nano-influencers" are getting significantly higher engagement than mega-influencers. Nano-influencers maintain the highest engagement rate across influencer categories on Instagram at 6.23%, while mega-influencers average just 0.92%. We're watching a complete flip in how people decide what to buy, and it's happening right under our noses.

When Cristiano Ronaldo Costs More Than Your Entire Campaign

Cristiano Ronaldo charges $3.4 million for a single Instagram post, making him the highest-paid influencer. Nano-influencers generally charge between $10-$100 per post in 2024, and brands can work with dozens of them for that same budget (and probably more product sales).

The numbers don't lie: nano-influencers generate 49.7% higher engagement than micro-influencers, and micro-influencers outperform mid-tier influencers by 46%. It's like paying premium prices for a worse product.

Take Glossier, the beauty brand worth $1.2 billion. Instead of hiring celebrities, they built their entire marketing strategy around micro-influencers and everyday customers. The result? 70% of their online sales and traffic come from peer-to-peer referrals, with 8% directly traced to their Instagram ambassador program. They turned customers into salespeople.

Your Brain on Small Creators

There's science behind why smaller accounts work better. Nano-influencers cultivate strong personal bonds with followers and engage more. When someone has 50,000 followers instead of 5 million, they can actually engage with their audience. They respond to comments, remember regular viewers, and build real relationships.

Nano-influencers see engagement rates averaging 4.39%, and brands working with nano-influencers saw 30% higher conversion rates compared to those using larger influencers.

What's Working Right Now

Beauty brands are all over this trend. According to the 2024 Influencer Marketing Report, 64% of marketers work with micro-influencers, and 47% experienced the most success with them (Sprout Social, 2024). One reason the strategy is working is because 29% of consumers are likely to share product feedback with influencers (*41% for Gen Z consumers) (Sprout Social, 2024).

B2B companies are catching up fast. 75% of B2B companies already use influencers according to recent data, and 93% planned to increase usage (Influencer Marketing Hub, 2025). This makes sense when you consider that more than half of B2B purchases are influenced by word-of-mouth (Influencer Marketing Hub, 2025).

TikTok dominates the small creator space. TikTok is dominated by nano-influencers, representing 87.7% of all influencers on the platform, and nano-influencers had a 10.3% engagement rate on TikTok in 2024 (eMarketer, 2024). A whopping 78% of TikTok users said they bought a product after seeing it featured in creator content (Dash, 2025).

The Platform Breakdown

Instagram remains the go-to platform for 46.7% of marketers who consider it the most important influencer marketing hub for their business (Shopify, 2024). However, Instagram has dropped in popularity from 76% last year to 47% in 2024, while TikTok leads with 69% of brands using it in their influencer campaigns (Shopify, 2024).

Nano-influencers achieve 2.71% engagement rates, followed by micro-influencers at 1.81%, while larger influencers struggle to break 1% (Social Cat, 2025).

The Real Cost of Influence

The cost difference is staggering. Nano-influencers charge $10-$100 per post in 2024, while micro-influencers cost $200+ per post, and macro-influencers demand $15,000-$49,000 per post (Scrumball, 2024; Impact, 2024).

Businesses gain an average of $5.78 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing, with brands achieving $4.12 for every dollar spent on Instagram influencer campaigns (ClearVoice, 2024). 22% of marketers say influencer marketing is their most cost-effective customer acquisition channel, and campaigns with nano-influencers can cost 60% less than those with micro-influencers (ClearVoice, 2024; Influencer Hero, 2024).

The math is simple: you get better engagement rates at a fraction of the cost. While a single macro-influencer post might reach more people, nano-influencers deliver higher conversion rates because their audiences actually trust their recommendations. 84.8% of brands find now find influencer marketing effective and the most sophisticated brands are going toward authentic connections over expensive celebrity endorsements (ClearVoice, 2024).

The Psychology Behind the Shift

Here's why people trust a TikTok creator over a Super Bowl ad: over half of Gen Z and Millennial consumers (53%) say they would consider buying products based on their favorite influencers' recommendations (Traackr, 2024). The trust factor is real — 92% of consumers trust recommendations from influencers more than traditional advertisements or celebrity endorsements (Scoop Market, 2025).

It all comes down to authenticity. 86% of consumers believe that authenticity is an important factor when deciding which influencers to follow, and 71% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase based on a social media recommendation from an authentic influencer (Scoop Market, 2025). When someone with 15,000 followers talks about their morning skincare routine, it feels like advice from a friend. When a celebrity with 50 million followers does the same thing, it feels like an ad.

Where This Is All Heading

The trend toward smaller creators is picking up speed. 84.8% of marketers saw influencer marketing as effective in 2024, and 63% of marketers plan to use AI in their influencer campaigns to better identify and manage these relationships (ClearVoice, 2024; Traackr, 2025).

But here's what's interesting: the proportion of brands planning to increase influencer budgets dropped from 59.4% in 2024 to 49.2% in 2025 (Influencer Marketing Hub, 2025). This signals a shift toward more strategic, targeted spending rather than throwing money at celebrity partnerships and hoping something sticks.

How Big Agencies Are Betting on Small Creators

The move toward nano/micro-influencers isn't just happening at scrappy startups — the world's biggest marketing firms are placing billion-dollar bets on this trend. The "Big Six" (soon to be "Big Five" after Omnicom's acquisition of Interpublic), are rapidly building influencer marketing capabilities to serve their enterprise clients.

Publicis Groupe has been the most aggressive. The French holding company acquired Influential, the world's largest influencer marketing platform by revenue, for approximately $500 million in 2024, followed by the acquisition of Captiv8 for $150 million in 2025. Combined, these platforms give Publicis access to more than 15 million creators globally, covering 95% of influencers with over 5,000 followers. Arthur Sadoun, Publicis' CEO, called this "the world's most powerful influencer platform," integrating it with their Epsilon (and Lotame) data capabilities that track over 2.3 billion people globally.

WPP has taken a different approach. The British holding company acquired Obviously, a tech-powered influencer marketing agency and integrated it into their VMLY&R network in 2023. WPP also picked up Village Marketing in 2022 to accelerate their creator economy growth. CEO Mark Read noted that "the creator economy has experienced huge growth in recent years, and it plays a pivotal role in shaping consumer behavior".

Omnicom, which soon will become the world's largest holding company through its $13.25 billion acquisition of Interpublic, has been building influencer capabilities quietly. The company will likely leverage IPG's Acxiom data platform to address its competitive disadvantage and to strengthen its media ecosystem. This gives them the data infrastructure needed to compete with Publicis' more integrated approach.

Dentsu, Havas, and the newly combined Omnicom-IPG are all scrambling to build similar capabilities and are investing billions into data platforms and advanced analytics to gain competitive advantages as the space becomes increasingly data-driven.

What makes this shift significant is that these holding companies work with the world's biggest brands — the same Fortune 500 companies that built their empires on celebrity endorsements. When McDonald's, Coca-Cola, and Nike start getting pitched micro-influencer strategies instead of traditional celebrity campaigns, something fundamental has changed. Working with nano/micro-influencers is no longer some scrappy startup hack. It's becoming the preferred strategy of the most sophisticated marketing operations in the world.

The Bottom Line

With nano-influencers achieving average engagement rates of 7% compared to 1.7% for mega-influencers, the data is clear: smaller creators deliver better results (New Target, 2024). 57% of Gen Z people would want to start influencing as a job if given the opportunity, creating an endless supply of authentic voices for brands to work with (Shopify, 2024).

The world's largest marketing holding companies are betting billions on this trend, building the infrastructure to help enterprise brands execute micro-influencer campaigns at scale. When companies like Publicis spend over $650 million acquiring influencer platforms and WPP integrates creator economy capabilities across their network, it signals that this isn't just a fad (Marketing Dive, 2024; WPP, 2023).

The brands winning in the next decade aren't chasing the biggest audiences —they're building genuine relationships with smaller, more engaged communities. The shift from celebrity culture to creator culture isn't just a trend; it's how people actually discover and buy products now.

The question isn't whether you should work with micro-influencers. It's whether you can afford to keep ignoring them while competitors — and the world's largest marketing companies — build authentic relationships with the communities that matter most to growth and business success.