Influencer marketers share which platforms they are spending on and Instagram crushes the competition

Dan Whateley

Feb 21, 2020, 20:18 IST

Influencer marketers share which platforms they are spending on and Instagram crushes the competition

Courtney Quinn

Instagram influencer Courtney Quinn has over 600,000 followers on her account, @colormecourtney.

93% of influencer marketers pay for sponsored content on Instagram, according to a new survey conducted by the marketing agency Collectively.
While TikTok generates significant buzz in the influencer marketing space, only 7% of those surveyed said they were currently investing in the platform.
Still, the influencer marketers said that TikTok was the app they were most interested in testing in 2020.
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Instagram is crushing other social platforms when it comes to influencer marketing.

89% percent of influencer marketers spend more on Instagram than other social-media apps, according to a new survey conducted by the marketing agency Collectively. The agency surveyed 30 marketers across 14 different industry categories and reviewed 235 influencer campaigns from last year for its study.

Instagram continues to dominate sponsored content budgets, even as companies like TikTok are growing faster and releasing new products to draw in creators and brands. Just 7% of those surveyed said they were currently spending on TikTok. But that's likely to change this year. The marketers said it was the app they were most interested in testing in 2020.

"TikTok has seen huge success positioning itself as more of an entertainment-based platform as opposed to Instagram which is more focused on quality and aesthetic," said Joe Gagliese, cofounder and CEO of the influencer-marketing firm Viral Nation.

Instagram's dominance in influencer marketing may be tied to its seniority in the category and its natural connection to fashion and consumer products. The app launched seven years before TikTok in the US, and the company offers a variety of tools for branded content that aren't available on competing platforms.

"Instagram is appealing in the influencer marketing space because it offers a seamless path to conversion through the swipe-up feature on Instagram Stories, especially in the fashion/lifestyle landscape," Gagliese said. Other platforms perform better for certain verticals, with YouTube and Twitch dominating the gaming and tech space, he added.

TikTok has recently introduced new tech in an effort to compete for marketing dollars, but its ad strategy is still in its infancy.

The company's creator marketplace and self-serve ad platforms are both currently only available to beta testers, and the platform only recently introduced linking in profiles, a key feature for promoting brand content.

"The addition of the link-in-bio feature is very enticing to marketer's within the space, and the platform's paid ad capabilities open a whole new door for both brands and agencies," Gagliese said. "Nonetheless, without a feature that allows an organic path to conversion, they won't be catching Instagram anytime soon."

TikTok's unique algorithm for surfacing content - which has enabled some creators to gain millions of followers in just a few months - also presents challenges for influencer marketers who are looking for a degree of predictability around reach and engagement when paying for sponsored posts.

"On Instagram you can just get a bunch of influencers together and then run a campaign," said Anish Dalal, CEO of the marketing firm Sapphire Apps. "On TikTok, you really don't have any choices to make. The algorithm makes all the choices. The feed is a continuous feed."

Despite the app's growing pains, some marketers who have tested influencer marketing on TikTok say they've seen promising results.

Tally, a financial technology company that makes apps for automated debt management and savings, told Business Insider that the cost to get a user to download its app was 300% cheaper when running ads on TikTok versus Instagram. F'real Foods, a milkshake brand that joined TikTok last year, has generated tens of millions of paid and organic video views on TikTok through influencer marketing.

Ultimately it depends on the goal and audience of each brand when choosing which platform to invest in, Gagliese said.

Here is a complete breakdown of the platforms that influencer marketers said they're using, and the percentage of respondents who are spending on each, according to Collectively's report: