Brand trips, PR packages and partnerships make sharing content hard to resist.
However, the industry’s rapid growth has left some to speculate if there is room for more, or if the influencer market is oversaturated.
According to a 2024 study by IZEA, a company dedicated to helping brands and agencies partner with influencers, 54% of consumers ages 18-60 would quit their jobs to become full-time influencers. Additionally, McKinsey & Company reported that the influencer market was worth $21.1 billion in 2019.
According to UMD’s Yogesh Joshi, a professor at the Robert H. Smith Business School with specialties in competitive marketing strategies and product and brand management, there will always be room for another influencer — if they approach it right.
“One has to be careful about how the influence is used to ensure that it actually continues to grow rather than backfire,” Joshi said, “If they stay close to their expertise, the fans are happy, but if they start straying away from the expertise, then fans start questioning the motives.”
This is true with micro-influencers, which make up an overwhelming majority of the industry. Micro-influencers have anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 followers, and take up 91% of the market.
“I think rather than it being a crowded space, what that is also likely to do is create more options for clients to work with, and so they might be able to choose more effectively about what kind of influencers they want to work with,” Joshi said.
Micro-influencers typically have a niche they stick to, which builds a loyal fanbase. Typically, their engagement rates are double or more than those of large-scale influencers.
As for one of the most popular benefits to influencing, Joshi says that for brands, it goes beyond getting influencers to use their product.
The package sent to the one person has the potential to reach 1000 to 10,000 times more people, and it also serves as a way to keep influencers involved and interested in the company, Joshi explained.
The hashtag “prunboxing” has over 80 thousand posts on TikTok, which shows influencers unpacking items sent to them by companies. Comments underneath the videos show followers expressing their enthusiasm and desires to have similar packages sent to them.
Overall, the UPenn Wharton School of Business graduate had this to say:
“I am not too worried about it [the influencer industry] getting overcrowded, because I think this notion of influence and influencers is as old as time,” Joshi said.