Future of the Global Instagram Influencer Market 2021-2025

If you were to ask me which is the most popular online influencer marketing, I would definitely say Instagram. Both factual and anecdotic evidence point to this being true.

All the big brands are present on Instagram and are investing millions of dollars, sometimes even billions, in influencer marketing. Most importantly, it’s all worth it due to the vast influence of content creators on Instagram.

But exactly how big is influencer marketing on Instagram in 2023? How about in the future, though? How much will it grow? That’s what we’ll see in this article.

I’ll be using data from Statista to show you the expected growth of influencer marketing on Instagram until 2025 and a look at the past until 2021.

Year	Influencer Market Value
2021	$13.8 billion
2022	$15.2 billion 10.14% increase from last year
2023	$17.4 billion 14.47% increase from last year
2024	$19.8 billion 13.79% increase from last year
2025	22.2 billion 12.12% increase from last year

As you can see, we’re talking about dozens of billions of dollars in terms of overall value for the Instagram influencer market. Moreover, it is estimated to grow by 46% from 2022 to 2025, from $15.2 billion to $22.2 billion.

Clearly, marketers are not playing around and are fully realizing the potential that Instagram’s influencers have for promotional value.

Online product placement has become extremely popular in recent years, and Instagram has been at the forefront of this marketing avenue.

Back in 2021, the number of brand-sponsored influencer posts had reached 3.8 million on Instagram, an astounding number that’s sure to grow a lot in the coming years.

How Will Instagram’s Influencer Marketing Grow?

Based on my research, more and more businesses have turned to social eCommerce as a primary tactic for product placement. Some have changed their entire business models to rely on online marketing.

Just to make a point, back in 2010 when Instagram was just released, the total ad expenditure for TV commercials was around $131.1 billion. In 2021, that budget had been slashed to a “meager” $41.5 billion. Clearly, that money went somewhere else. And you can guess where.

That’s right; it went to influencer marketing. Well, online marketing first, and then when social media platforms evolved into what they are today, influencer marketing was born.

Now, it’s becoming the most successful form of online marketing available to businesses. In the future, it will become the centerpiece of any online marketing strategy. It’s almost there in 2023…

Right now, not many small-time businesses are using Instagram influencer marketing either because they can’t afford it (or they think they don’t) or they haven’t yet thoroughly understood its benefits.

As the years go by, marketers will understand better how to interact with influencers and build solid business relationships.

As of 2023, around 68% of marketing specialists believe that Instagram influencer marketing is indispensable for their campaigns.

And that’s not really a surprise, considering that the barrier to engaging with social media influencers is all but gone.

Today, it’s extremely easy to contact an influencer on Instagram, set up a deal, negotiate a fair price, and wait for customers to flock to your products.

The influencers are already aware of what they’re supposed to do and quite adept at doing it.

Remember, most of these influencers are part of Gen Z, which was effectively born into social media, so they’re very quick to adapt to the new market.

How Has Instagram Helped Influencer Marketing?

Instagram has done all it can to help develop influencer marketing on the platform because it would bring major profits to it. Of course, they’d be helping.

In 2021, Instagram launched the Professional Dashboard, which provides a host of new features and resources to content creators, such as:

Track Your Performance – Indicators and insights that will tell you your account’s performance based on trends and the users’ interaction with your posts. You can see the number of impressions, account activity, post interactions, accounts reached, and so on. There’s also a follower breakdown on age, gender, overall growth, and most active times. You can also see your sales, the hashtags you’re using, how well those hashtags are doing, keep track of different strategies you implement, and more.

Grow Your Business – Post boosting is key here. You can choose to boost a post and propel it to any number of users with Instagram’s help. You can approve tag requests, and business partners, create ads, save your replies and use shortcuts to get around your account easier, ask your personalized audience questions, and streamline replies to your audience. If you’re in the food industry, you can even set up an Instagram partner so that your audience can order directly from your feed.

Inform Yourself – Instagram gives you plenty of helpful articles and carousels to keep you informed of your options and how you can scale your business, engage your audience better, and create content with a higher reach. You can even create your own guide if you want to share actionable tips with your audience or anyone else.

Another important aspect that Instagram has done to support influencer marketing is allowing links in Stories.

They’ve also been pretty clear that they’re doing this to let people share things with their friends and family and as a way to connect content creators and businesses. Suddenly, influencers had way more marketing potential than before, and advertisers were quick to take advantage of this.

What’s more, Story Linking gave every influencer the same amount of potential reach, including micro-influencers. Anyone can share a link to a product or service, meaning user-generated content has taken on a different meaning. A marketing-capable type of content.

Another one of Instagram’s newest changes is the “New Remix” feature for the Reels. This lets content creators personalize their reels and create viral content that massively boosts content trends and product placement.

Content creators can easily produce viral videos for certain brands, which they then share to their followers and amplify the reach of the products. Naturally, the brands will receive traction and promotion like never before.

Last but not least, Instagram also added new monetization solutions for content creators. Affiliate Marketing, in particular, was a game-changer for influencer marketing on the platform. It allowed users to discover “new products available on checkout, share them with their followers and earn commissions from the purchase they drive – all within the Instagram app“.

Even when influencers decide to sell their own merchandise, they can add or open shops much easier on the platform. Instagram lets them display and sell their products directly to their followers and link to their shop on their profile page.

It remains to be seen how influencer marketing will evolve on Instagram, but one thing is clear – it’s here to stay, and we’d better understand that!