Well, it looks like influencer marketing has a big future after all. According to eMarketer’s projections, spending on influencer marketing in the US alone will race past $3 billion before the end of the year and may cross the $4 billion in 2022.
The Insider Intelligence firm predicts a bump of 33.6% in influencer marketing spending in America this year. This will bring the total to a whopping $3.69 billion. In 2020, the jump was restricted to 14.4%, mainly due to the pandemic.
As per Jasmine Enberg, senior analyst at eMarketer, marketers limited their influencer marketing spending in the early days of COVID-19. However, as the pandemic continued, social trends such as social commerce and short video started gaining prominence. This motivated marketers to resume their activities and since then, they have been focusing on increasing their spending on influencer marketing, considering the potential of the influencers when it comes to reaching a widespread audience.
Enberg pointed out how travel restrictions and social distancing guidelines negatively impacted travel influencers, forcing many to strategize accordingly and partner up with brands on campaigns revolving around consumer packaged goods and finance.
The analyst also remains optimistic that more money will go into the influencer marketing space over the coming years, thanks to influencers’ significant role in lower-funnel marketing goals, as well as, the gradual improvements in branded content tools from the social platforms.
Even though eMarketer doesn’t provide insight into each platform’s spending on influencer marketing, it believes that Instagram will emerge as the market leader, with YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok following suit.
As per eMarketer, influencer marketing spending refers to the payments disbursed to influencers or the individuals/parties representing them, in order to promote certain products and services, mainly on social media and platforms comprising user-generated content. It’s worth noting that eMarketer’s definition of influencer marketing spend doesn’t include non-cash remuneration, for example, free products, trips, paid media, etc.
Last but not least, the company brought up that influencer marketing spending is in no way close to the overall spending carried out on social networks, which should amount to $58.66 billion in the U.S. by the end of this year.
Original article: Digital Information World
