Insight of the Month: The rapid rise of affiliate influencer activity

You won’t need us to tell you that influencer marketing is on the up. In our recently commissioned Forrester survey on affiliate marketing, senior marketers told us it was their chief priority for budget allocation this year. So, we decided to study the changing face of the practice when managed through an affiliate program. 

Starting with the basics, revenue generated by influencer activity on Awin between January 2022 and January 2024 increased by 19% but influencer registrations grew quicker at 118%. We’d pin the gap to reducing barriers to access. Average monthly creator registrations have risen 83% since the launch of Awin’s Influencer Express signup in March 2023, which makes it possible to sign up to our platform using Instagram data.  

Back to revenue, and despite their reputation as awareness drivers, our data shows creators enjoying bigger and bigger peak seasons. November 2023 proved 18% more successful than November 2022 in these stakes as the influencer channel demonstrated a clear bottom line impact over major sales events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 

Influencers or sales drivers? Or both? 

Are advertisers now moving creators down the funnel to work more on driving revenue? Not quite, according to CreatorIQ’s recent Influencer Marketing Trends report, which claims those in charge of influencer campaigns are still three times more likely to prioritize awareness over conversions. 

That said, our data does reveal a changing tide. We looked at the percentage of influencer transactions involving a coupon in periods when advertisers typically focus on discounting. In November 2023, coupon codes were used in 35% of influencer transactions on Awin, up from 26% the year before and far surpassing our platform average of 25% for the same period.   

We can take a much more detailed view of where influencers and other publishers typically interact with customers through the new Awin Funnel Report. Now available to Awin Advanced users, the report shows how different affiliates contribute throughout the purchase journey beyond a simple last-click attribution.  

Across the Retail & Shopping category, the lower-funnel contribution of influencers hasn’t moved since Q1 2023. Of more surprise is the rising involvement of incentive publishers during the early stages of conversion. Cashback has seen its upper-funnel contributions rise from 14% to 18% between Q1 2023 and Q1 2024, with Discount Code affiliates going from 6% up to 10%. Evidently, content creators aren’t alone in their ability to influence customers at the start of their journey.  

The vertical view – which sectors are embracing influencers? 

So, more creators, higher revenue, bigger peak seasons, and more rounded contributions paint quite the picture for influencer marketing — but which sub-industries are pushing things forward? 

Looking at sales, revenue, traffic, and AOV from the past six months, it’s telling that even Clothing, Health & Beauty, and Shoes - all long-time investors in the influencer space - are still seeing double-digit increases. Yet, the biggest rises are saved for less obvious adopters like Home & Garden (+169% traffic, +36% revenue) and DIY (+152% traffic).  

Much less movement is happening when looking at the biggest sub-industries in terms of the percentage of transactions driven by influencers. Both Health & Beauty and Department Stores have shown clear signs of maturing over the past year — their influencer contributions going up and down but staying largely along the same lines. 

One area to keep an eye on is fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), where influencers’ proportion of sales jumped from 1.1% to 6.5% in the 12 months to Q4 2023. The idea of leveraging a creator’s reputation to change perceptions of everyday products is not going unnoticed. 

Where in the world are influencers growing fastest? 

Onto individual markets. Almost every market across the Awin platform is seeing a significant rise in traffic coming from influencer partners. No surprise perhaps given the volume of new registrants joining and the many new partnerships being forged as a consequence. But some are growing faster than others, with the likes of Poland, France and the UK particularly rapid and outstripping the global average of 56%.  This makeup shifts slightly when it comes to looking at those markets where influencer sales are most on the rise though, with Spain (+54%) and the Netherlands (+43%) leading the pack. 

Does size matter when it comes to influencer marketing? 

Influencers now account for almost 8% of all transactions at Awin, up 21% year on year. They remain part of a mix rather than taking over the affiliate space. Nevertheless, at a time when nearly half of advertisers (43%) admit to difficulties measuring influencer performance, it’s positive to see more of their activity heading into the channel.  

From a business size perspective though, where does this message resonate the most?  

Looking at the share of influencer sales across Awin’s three platform plans over the last six months provides some clues.  

Awin’s three plans (Access, Accelerate and Advanced) align roughly to the needs of differently sized businesses. With Access, typically favored by smaller brands wanting to run a cost-efficient program, influencers account for 6% of sales. This figure drops to 4% across Accelerate, which is ideal for SMEs looking for some level of support and additional options for configuring their program, before going up to 12% for Advanced, represented largely by enterprise brands with sophisticated needs. 

Big advertisers do obtain a relatively large proportion of their sales from influencer marketing. But, clearly, company size doesn’t always equate to a bigger percentage in these stakes. Our data shows a clear appetite for influencer marketing among the smallest businesses, which typically need their budgets to work harder.   

The Access segment is also where the growth is, with influencers’ percentage of sales for these advertisers rising 44% year on year over the past six months against just 7% for Accelerate and 3% for Advanced.       

It’s an incredibly interesting story when cross-referenced with reports of smaller influencers generating particularly high ROIs too. 

Recently, the market research firm Magic Numbers reported that advertisers generate a significant return on investment when working with creators who have 5,000 followers, seeing a return of 18 times their investment. However, this return drops to 6 times the investment when engaging with creators who have 20,000 followers, and decreases even further with those who have 160,000 followers. The reasoning is that smaller influencers can connect with their audience on a more personal level. Their content is more specific, their engagement rate is higher, and this translates to a greater return.

Analysts note that ‘nano influencers’ are generally more interested in being guides, educators, and teachers than celebrities. It’s perhaps music to the ears of smaller brands that don’t have the enormous budgets of their larger competitors and who are therefore ‘limited’ to working with such nano influencers. 

Further reading 

We hope you’ve enjoyed delving into some of the figures surrounding influencer growth at Awin. 

If you’re a small business interested in running influencer activity on your affiliate program, our handy guide shares plenty of tips on getting started and finding partners. 

Fashion advertisers should also be aware of our recent overview of the top 10 creators in their space.