Influencer Marketing Market Size (2016–2022)
Influencer marketingstands among the most popular ways to grow a business. Whether it’s through anInstagram influenceror aYouTube 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 2022, the influencer marketing industry is valued at$16.4 billion. This is an 18.8% annual increase from the $13.8 billion at which the industry was valued in 2021. Significant as this is, the growth rate of the 2022 influencer marketing market size is actually a deceleration from previous years and marks the slowest annual increase in six years.
For instance, in 2021, the influence marketing industry grew 42.3% year over year—more than two times the growth rate of 2022.
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, nearly one-tenth of its current size. In other words, in just six years, the influencer marketing industry has managed to grow 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 2022, the average annual growth rate of the influencer marketing industry was 46.9%. According to industry analysts, the COVID-19 pandemic was a driving force behind the growth experienced in 2020 and 2021. This is expected to continue in 2022.
As the industry grows, so does the number of companies offering influencer marketing services. In 2019, there were just over 10,000 of them worldwide, of which 4,000 were in the United States. Fast forward to 2021 and the number of companies with influencer marketing services increased by 75.8%, to 18,900, worldwide. The biggest increase was in the US, where the number of such companies grew over 80%, to 7,300 in 2021.