Influencer marketing in 2025
Editor’s note: Kyle Dulay is co-founder at Collabstr, Vancouver.
Influencer marketing has evolved from a novel idea into one of the most natural ways for brands to reach consumers. Instead of relying on costly celebrity endorsements, companies are partnering with familiar digital personalities who can build trust and spark conversations within highly engaged communities. What once seemed like a bold experiment, using everyday usernames to drive more impact than polished corporate ads, has now become a cornerstone of modern marketing.
Collabstr’s 2025 Influencer Report shows that while the average spend per collaboration is dipping, this isn’t a sign of decline. Rather, it reflects a market that’s growing, maturing and becoming more competitive. As the creator economy expands, brands and influencers alike will face both opportunities and challenges that will redefine how these partnerships work.
AI’s rising role in the creator economy
Artificial intelligence continues to dominate industry discussions. While some see AI as a time- and cost-saving breakthrough, its use in influencer marketing is still on uncertain legal ground, especially as fully AI-generated works currently have no copyright protection in U.S. courts. This makes AI content easier for brands to reuse without negotiating licensing agreements.
For companies, AI-generated influencers are appealing because they can keep content creation in-house and maintain full control over messaging. But there’s one thing AI still can’t fully replicate: genuine human connection. Until technology can convincingly bridge that gap, human influencers will remain critical for creating authentic relationships with audiences. Expect AI in influencer marketing to be a headline topic beyond 2025.
User-generated content becomes the star
Despite the buzz around AI, real people still drive the most impactful influencer campaigns. User-generated content (UGC): Unpolished, unscripted and authentic, it resonates deeply with consumers. It strips away the corporate gloss, making products feel more relatable and trustworthy.
Brands are increasingly leaning on UGC because it delivers authenticity at a lower cost. However, that affordability comes at a price for creators, who often need to charge less for UGC than for traditional sponsored posts. In 2025, expect UGC to take an even larger share of influencer marketing, forcing creators to adapt their pricing and offerings to stay competitive.
Why rates are trending down
Several forces are pushing influencer fees lower. The most obvious is oversupply as there are more influencers than ever before, driving up competition for brand deals. If AI-generated influencers become more widely adopted, human creators may feel pressured to reduce rates further to match the cost efficiency of digital alternatives.
Content usage rights also play a role. When influencers produce original, copyright-protected content, brands typically pay more for the right to reuse it. AI-generated content, lacking those protections, removes that negotiation entirely, reducing potential earnings for creators who lean heavily on AI tools.
TikTok’s growing influence
Although TikTok is younger than Instagram by about six years, it’s rapidly closing the gap in influencer marketing activity. The platform is on track to hit 2 billion monthly active users – a milestone Instagram reached in 2021. Its growth is attracting more brands, especially as its audience profile shifts. Today, Millennials join Gen Z as a core user base, offering both spending power and product awareness.
TikTok’s recent move from its Creator Marketplace to TikTok One could accelerate brand adoption, giving companies new AI-powered tools to streamline campaigns. While this may open doors for some influencers, it also risks reducing the role of human creators if brands prioritize AI integration for cost and control.
Long-term partnerships over one-off campaigns
The early days of influencer marketing were dominated by quick, broad-reach campaigns involving multiple creators. Now, brands are moving toward deeper, long-term relationships with niche influencers who can consistently speak to a target audience.
These extended collaborations allow for more authentic storytelling, but they also mean brands will work with fewer influencers overall, intensifying competition for those coveted long-term deals and potentially driving rates down further.
Influencer marketing and the road ahead
Influencer marketing remains in a constant state of evolution. Everything from pricing models to platform preferences can shift year to year as brands chase the perfect balance of authenticity, reach and ROI.
The wild card is AI. AI’s ability to create cost-effective, brand-controlled content will continue to tempt marketers, but its lack of genuine human connection keeps the door wide open for human creators. In 2025, the influencers who thrive will be the ones who adapt quickly, lean into authenticity and carve out a clear niche in an increasingly crowded marketplace.
Methodology note
This report analyzes data (from Collabstr’s influencer marketplace) from 40,000 advertisers and 100,000 creators, collected between January 1, 2024, and December 15, 2024.