Research, data, and real campaign results that shape how we build. Curated for brands and creators who want to understand the landscape they're operating in.
The most comprehensive annual benchmark in the industry. The 2026 edition covers ROI data across creator tiers, platform-by-platform performance, and budget allocation trends from 500+ brand marketers. The findings confirm what we've built our model around: smaller creators, managed with precision, consistently outperform.
The strongest year-on-year growth intent since the report began
Highest expansion intent of any creator tier — above micro, mid, macro, and celebrity
Of brands increasing spend, nearly three-quarters are going all in
Micro expansion vs 20% for macro — the shift to smaller creators is decisive
These aren't hypotheticals. These are real brands that bet on nano and micro creators when the industry told them to go bigger — and won.
Sustainable apparel brand tentree bypassed celebrity deals entirely. Instead they seeded products and unique affiliate codes to dozens of nano and micro creators in the outdoor and sustainability space on TikTok and Instagram — then tracked every single conversion by creator. The result wasn't just impressive ROI. It also generated 800+ pieces of owned content the brand could repurpose for paid ads, product pages, and organic channels.
While legacy skincare brands were spending millions on celebrity endorsements, CeraVe quietly partnered with micro-sized dermatologist creators on TikTok — people with 10K–200K followers who built trust through education, not aesthetics. The content felt like a recommendation from a knowledgeable friend, not a paid placement. The campaign created a feedback loop: creators recommended CeraVe, their audiences trusted it, and organic UGC exploded. The brand became the most talked-about skincare name on TikTok without a single traditional celebrity deal.
Daniel Wellington's rise is the most documented case study in creator marketing. Founded in 2011 with almost no advertising budget, the brand seeded watches to thousands of Instagram nano and micro creators — each receiving a personalised discount code so every sale was tracked back to its source. No celebrity deals. No traditional media. Just an enormous network of small, authentic voices creating consistent social proof. Within four years it had grown from zero to $230M in annual revenue.
Australia's ad spend on creators is set to surpass AU$1 billion in 2026 — and is projected to reach AU$2.46 billion by 2030. What that inflection point means for brands still treating creator marketing as experimental.
Australians trust creators who share mistakes, portray realistic lives, and back claims with evidence. Why authenticity isn't a strategy here — it's the baseline expectation from the audience.
The IAB's 2025 report confirms creator-led media has shifted from experimental channel to core growth engine. Fabulate breaks down what the findings mean for brand strategy in Australia.
Micro-influencers deliver 60% higher engagement than mega-influencers at roughly one-tenth the cost per post. Nano-influencers achieve conversion rates two to three times higher than macro campaigns. Nano-influencers accounted for ~75.9% of Instagram's influencer base in 2024 — and their share is growing. The data is no longer ambiguous: the case for smaller creators is structural, not tactical.
The campaigns beating mega-influencer budgets are coming from creators with under 50K followers. The structural reasons why that trend keeps accelerating.
Data from thousands of campaigns confirms nano and micro-influencers consistently outperform on engagement, cost-efficiency, and conversion across every major platform.
UGC converts 74% higher than pages without it. It generates 6.9× more engagement than brand content and saves brands up to 70% on production costs. The authoritative round-up of numbers defining the UGC era.
92% of consumers trust peer recommendations over branded messaging. This piece examines the psychological drivers behind the trust gap between creator content and traditional advertising — and what brands can do about it.
When authentic creator content sits next to polished brand advertising, one wins on every metric that matters. The research on why — and what it means for where content budgets should go.
TikTok no longer rewards follower count — it rewards content quality measured by completion rate, saves, and shares. Over 70% of brand video traffic on TikTok now originates from the For You feed. New in 2026: videos are tested with existing followers first, and only pushed wider if they perform. Understanding this changes everything about how campaigns are built and how creators are briefed.
Instagram's shift to an interest graph means content from accounts you don't follow now competes directly in Reels, Explore, and the main feed. For brands, this means a single well-placed creator post can reach completely cold audiences. Buffer's definitive breakdown of what the current algorithm rewards — and how to brief creators accordingly.
From community-over-broadcasting to the rise of private social, Media Week identifies the ten forces reshaping creator marketing this year — with input from Tourism Australia, Hoozu, and more. Essential reading for anyone building a creator strategy in the current environment.
CreatorIQ's flagship annual report draws on data from thousands of brands and campaigns. The 2025–2026 edition maps the shift toward long-term creator relationships, performance-linked deals, and the growing dominance of nano and micro tiers across every category of marketing spend.
All articles link to external sources. MJO MYRIAD curates this reading list to share the research and thinking that informs how we build campaigns. We are not affiliated with any of the publishers listed above.