Over the last two decades, social media has become a major part of our daily life as we spend more of our time on these platforms because these platforms connect us with our friends and family. As more users have joined social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Triller, Instagram Reels, many of them have become content creators themselves, curating and creating their own stories, photos, and videos for others to entertain. Therefore, the influencers market has seen rapid growth and many children now want to become vloggers or influencers when they are grown up. The pandemic situation could be a reason to change the mind of many people to start their own channels. Now, many people are thinking that how many influencers exist in the world and across all social media platforms. Some hints say that it is somewhere between 3 to 38 million.
It is difficult to calculate the number of influencers without a viable methodology. Therefore, Mediakix established the influencers tier to get information about how many influencers exist on the given platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok for every tier. To determine the number, Mediakix gathered the data from 4 influencer marketing platforms like (Julius, CreatorIQ, HypeAuditor, and Influencity). Mediakix evaluated the top 1000 influencers’ channels on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok from HypeAuditor and Social bakers; however, this does not include the channels of brands, celebrities, and non-influencers accounts.
There are a number of fake influencers on these platforms and the authenticity of many influencers can be ignored especially on larger influencer marketing platforms. During the assessment of many datasets of Mediakix, it noticed a wide range of data between third-party estimates and influencers marketing database. Now the main thing to be kept in mind is the influencer can be mean many things for a normal person but the area of Mediakix limits to only those influencers having these criteria:
The influencer marketing platforms vary in size, offerings, number of audience, and methods of finding influencers on these platforms and this inconsistency is evident by some of the wide range of estimates for the number of influencers for every tier. For instance, one influencer platform has 2000 heavily-vetted expert Instagram influencers while the other offers 20 million Instagram influencers with limited information on profile reliability.
>100,000 followers 300,000 to 2000,000
>1,000 followers 2000,000 to 37000,000
According to the data of HubSpot and Mention, 52% of Instagram users have less than 1000 followers while 48% of users have more than 1000 followers. However, Instagram has 500 million active users daily. While taking 500 million Instagram users with more than 1000 followers means that they are 48%, then evaluating the ratio of influencers from the top 1000 Instagram accounts study (35%), we can find a wide ceiling range of 83 million potential Instagram users. While studying the data of HypeAuditor and Influencity, the total numbers of Instagram users (over 1000 followers) are between 8.7 million to 69 million correspondingly. However, after applying the reliability check filters the influencers’ search result went down to 176,000 to 37000,000 respectively. The credulity check filters reduced the number of influencers from 30% to 97%.
Mediakix has distributed the influencers into various tiers like:
1000 followers to 10,000 followers are considered as Nano tier and they are 54%, 10,000 to 50,000 followers are known as Micro tier and they are 33%, 50,000 to 500,000 followers are considered as Mid-Tier and they are 11%, 500,000 to 1000,000 are considered as Macro-Tier and they are less than 1%, while more than 1 million followers are Mega-Tier and they are also less than 1%.
YouTube influencers’ distributions are (however these tiers differs from other platforms):
1K to 10K distributed as Nano Tier is 38%
10K to 25K distributed as Micro-Tier is 39%
25K to 100K distributed as Mid-Tier is 20%
100K to 1 million distributed as Macro-Tier is less than 2%
More than 1 million are distributed as Mega-Tier is less than 1%
TikTok influencer distributions are:
1K to 10K distributed as Nano-Tier is 15%
10K to 50K distributed as Micro-Tier is 16%
50K to 500K distributed as Mid-Tier is 29%
500K to 1 Million distributed as Macro is 4%
More than 1 Million distributed as Mega is amazingly 36%.
However, TikTok has not granted access to their API, therefore to check these data; companies have to go through non-official channels to gather the data of influencers.
MediaKix's data also shows stats around influencer overlap across platforms, and according to it "90 percent of all influencers who make a top 1,000 account list do so for one platform only (TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube)."
Read next: Data Shows Influencer Marketing/Paid Content Currently Has The Biggest Share In Digital Advertising Budgets
It is difficult to calculate the number of influencers without a viable methodology. Therefore, Mediakix established the influencers tier to get information about how many influencers exist on the given platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok for every tier. To determine the number, Mediakix gathered the data from 4 influencer marketing platforms like (Julius, CreatorIQ, HypeAuditor, and Influencity). Mediakix evaluated the top 1000 influencers’ channels on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok from HypeAuditor and Social bakers; however, this does not include the channels of brands, celebrities, and non-influencers accounts.
There are a number of fake influencers on these platforms and the authenticity of many influencers can be ignored especially on larger influencer marketing platforms. During the assessment of many datasets of Mediakix, it noticed a wide range of data between third-party estimates and influencers marketing database. Now the main thing to be kept in mind is the influencer can be mean many things for a normal person but the area of Mediakix limits to only those influencers having these criteria:
- They must have more than 1000 followers or subscribers on their channels
- Influencers of all age, nationalities and language favorites are included in this report
- The study is limited to YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok
The influencer marketing platforms vary in size, offerings, number of audience, and methods of finding influencers on these platforms and this inconsistency is evident by some of the wide range of estimates for the number of influencers for every tier. For instance, one influencer platform has 2000 heavily-vetted expert Instagram influencers while the other offers 20 million Instagram influencers with limited information on profile reliability.
According to the estimation method of Mediakix, the size of Instagram Influencers is as following:
>1 million followers 20,000 to 40,000>100,000 followers 300,000 to 2000,000
>1,000 followers 2000,000 to 37000,000
According to the data of HubSpot and Mention, 52% of Instagram users have less than 1000 followers while 48% of users have more than 1000 followers. However, Instagram has 500 million active users daily. While taking 500 million Instagram users with more than 1000 followers means that they are 48%, then evaluating the ratio of influencers from the top 1000 Instagram accounts study (35%), we can find a wide ceiling range of 83 million potential Instagram users. While studying the data of HypeAuditor and Influencity, the total numbers of Instagram users (over 1000 followers) are between 8.7 million to 69 million correspondingly. However, after applying the reliability check filters the influencers’ search result went down to 176,000 to 37000,000 respectively. The credulity check filters reduced the number of influencers from 30% to 97%.
Mediakix has distributed the influencers into various tiers like:
1000 followers to 10,000 followers are considered as Nano tier and they are 54%, 10,000 to 50,000 followers are known as Micro tier and they are 33%, 50,000 to 500,000 followers are considered as Mid-Tier and they are 11%, 500,000 to 1000,000 are considered as Macro-Tier and they are less than 1%, while more than 1 million followers are Mega-Tier and they are also less than 1%.
The Numbers of influencers on YouTube
According to the study from Tubics, there are around 37 million YouTube accounts and almost 32 million accounts have less than 1000 subscribers, the residual 5 million accounts have more than 1000 subscribers, but it does not differentiate active accounts from influencers accounts. To determine the influencers account from these 5 million accounts having more than 1000 followers, these influencers’ accounts are around 30% of the top 1000 channels, publishers and brands are 47%, and celebrities are 22%. After applying the reliability filters we can estimate the number of influencers on YouTube is somewhere between 1.5 million to 5 million out of 2 billion daily active users. Less than 1% is actually influencers.YouTube influencers’ distributions are (however these tiers differs from other platforms):
1K to 10K distributed as Nano Tier is 38%
10K to 25K distributed as Micro-Tier is 39%
25K to 100K distributed as Mid-Tier is 20%
100K to 1 million distributed as Macro-Tier is less than 2%
More than 1 million are distributed as Mega-Tier is less than 1%
The number of Influencers on TikTok
Some platforms say that TikTok has over 22 million influencers on its platform but according to the study of Mediakix, this lacks reliability. Julius gave the data that there are 43000 TikTok influencers while using the check filter on HypeAuditor and Influencity, Mediakix claims that there are 50,000 average ranges of influencers on TikTok with over 1000 followers.TikTok influencer distributions are:
1K to 10K distributed as Nano-Tier is 15%
10K to 50K distributed as Micro-Tier is 16%
50K to 500K distributed as Mid-Tier is 29%
500K to 1 Million distributed as Macro is 4%
More than 1 Million distributed as Mega is amazingly 36%.
However, TikTok has not granted access to their API, therefore to check these data; companies have to go through non-official channels to gather the data of influencers.
MediaKix's data also shows stats around influencer overlap across platforms, and according to it "90 percent of all influencers who make a top 1,000 account list do so for one platform only (TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube)."
Read next: Data Shows Influencer Marketing/Paid Content Currently Has The Biggest Share In Digital Advertising Budgets
