How Many Influencers Are There in 2024? New Data, Calculations & Charts

How Many Influencers Are There? New Data, Calculations & Charts

Influencer marketing is a hybrid of old and new marketing tools that use endorsements and product mentions from individuals (influencers) through social media platforms, especially those with a dedicated social following and experts in their field.

Influencer marketing works based on trust built over the years, and their recommendations serve as social proof of your brand to potential customers.

Since the past two decades, with the outbreak of the COVID pandemic, social media have become a major part of our daily lives, connecting us with our family and friends.

More and more users have recently joined social media platforms through Instagram, YouTube, and Tiktok.

Many have become content creators themselves, creating and uploading their videos, stories, and photos.

The Influencers market has grown rapidly, and many kids now want to become Influencer or Vlogger.

The pandemic could be a possible reason people change their minds, considering how influential they are present worldwide and across all social media platforms.

Now talking about the number of influencers, there are many fake influencers on these platforms, and the authenticity of many influencers can be overlooked, especially on large influencer marketing platforms.

In this write-up, I’ll roughly estimate the influencers’ segments on these platforms by excluding brand publications, accounts, and celebrities.

These influencer marketing platforms differ in their offering, size, audience count, and the methods of finding influencers on these platforms are very inconsistent.

Ultimately, this explains the authenticity of such influencers in each tier. To sort out how many influencers are present on each social media platform.

In this article, I’ll establish the influencer tiers that determine how many influencers are on a given platform for each tier:

  • How Many Influencers Are There on YouTube?
  • How Many Influencers Are There on Instagram? 
  • How Many Influencers Are There on TikTok? 

How Many Influencers Are on YouTube? 

Youtube is one of the most preferred social media channels for marketers and influencers.

Based on a study conducted by Tubix, it was estimated that there are over 37 million active YouTube accounts across the globe, of which 32 million have less than 1000 subscribers.

So the data concludes that there are a remaining 5 million YouTube accounts with more than 1,000 subscribers, but this data does not differentiate “active accounts” from influential accounts.

To determine how many of these 5 million accounts influencer accounts with over 1,000 YouTube accounts were potentially analyzed using search platforms such as Socialbakers and HypeAuditor.

It was found that YouTube influencers represent about 30% of the top 1,000 channels, while celebrities and musicians represent 22%, and brands/publishers/networks are around 47%.

However, when a different approach is used, cumulative data from influencer marketing platforms shows that influencers with more than 1,000 subscribers on YouTube are approximately 1.7 million.

If this data is used as a benchmark, the estimated number of influencers on YouTube can be as high as 1.5.

Million and 5 Million accounts for less than 1% of Youtube’s billion estimated user base as actual users.

Now that we’ve got a range estimate for YouTube influencers using influencer marketing platform data from four different platforms, we were able to get a healthy estimate for the overall YouTube influencer level distribution.

In 2016, a report made by Social Blade, over 2,400 channels had crossed the 1 million subscriber mark, and over 24,000 channels had reached over 100,000 subscribers.

Surprisingly, more than 40 channels crossed the 100,000 subscriber mark, while four channels crossed the 1 million subscriber mark per day.

Examples show how in 2021, there were 10k channels with more than 1 million followers; similarly, there were 100,000 channels with more than 100K followers.

Since this information is limited to reference channels and not influencer channels, approximately 1,000 YouTube accounts from HypeAuditor and SocialBlade were analyzed to gain and understand the ratio between active channels and influencer channels.

Ultimately, YouTube represented about 30% of the top 1,000 channels, with celebrities and musicians representing about 22%, while channels from brands/publishers/networks comprised 47%.

The Social Blades 2016 report estimates 3,000 influencers with over 1 million subscribers and about 31,000 influencers with over 100K subscribers.

Similarly, a report published by Tubelix in 2020 estimated that around 22,000 YouTube channels have subscribers with over 1 million users.

Pros and Cons of Being an Influencer on YouTube

Pros
  • Provide the audience with more Content
  • An additional source of traffic
  • It gives us a good creative outlet
  • It helps build a community
  • It makes you different
  • Get you out of your comfort zone
Cons
  • Lots of competition
  • The never-ending task keeps posting relevant Content to always be on top.
  • You will never get rid of hate speech.

@PewDiePie – 110M Subscribers

PewDiePie

UK-based Swedish gamer Felix Kjellberg is very famous for running a YouTube channel named @PewDiePie since 2010.

With 110M subscribers, he is number one in terms of popularity; however, he has resigned from YouTube for a while.

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The gaming influencer will diversify into comedy vlogs and sketches in the channel and even publish a book. He was the top YouTuber in the year 2021.

Kids Diana Show – 85.8M Subscribers

Kids Diana Show

The channel is all about childhood, stories, unboxing of toys and games.

With 85.8M subscribers on Youtube, this little Ukrainian girl quickly dominated the children’s entertainment sector of YouTube.

She ranked second in the YouTube chart for the year 2021

Mrbeast – 80.9M Subscribers

Mrbeast

Mrbeast is the most attention grabber channel on Youtube and was launched in 2012.

Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast) of the United States of America is known for his viral challenges, such as eating the world’s largest pizza, charity stunts, and important works such as spending $1 million in just one minute.

He jumped from 5th to 4th position in the year 2021 just because of his great videos.

Dude Perfect – 56.9M Subscribers

Dude Perfect

The sports entertainment channel was started in 2009 by 5 Best Friends.

It originally started with basketball trick shot videos, but now entrepreneurs make videos on many different sports, noiseless battles, funny stereotypes, and lots of trick shots.

His unique blend of sport and humor explains his huge success. The channel includes a dose of comedy using sports. The channel is currently ranked sixth.

Whinderssonnunes – 43.2M Subscribers

Whinderssonnunes

The young Brazilian singer and comedian have garnered over 43.2 million subscribers on YouTube with his satire.

From the very young age of just 15 years, he started uploading comedy videos, movie reviews, vlogs, travel vlogs, vlogs on his personal life, etc.

In 2021, his channel Whinderssonnunes was placed at 8th place.

How Many Influencers Are There on Instagram? 

Along with being marketers’ most loved platform, Instagram is also a social media channel with the maximum number of active influencers.

Now, it’s quite obvious to wonder, “how many Instagram influencers are there?” To be honest, its answer is not that straightforward.

Instagram has been unclear on its user data, including daily active users and monthly active users; however, most social reporting companies and data firms agree that Instagram has over 500 million daily active users.

Analyzing Instagram’s influencer-specific data from more than four different influencer marketing platforms, 52% of Instagram users have less than 1,000 real Instagram followers and mention shares, according to data presented by HubSpot, which more precisely means that 48% of Instagram users have over 1000 followers.

Also, some statistics show that over half a million influencers believe that Instagram is the only platform.

Out of these Instagram influencers, 81% have a follower base between 15,000 and 100,000 followers.

While 15% have 100,000 to half a million followers on their account, only 4% of influencers have over half a million followers.

Moreover, the largest influencer marketing platforms have a 20-80 million Instagram influencers database compared with the data collected (Ceiling Range).

In another experiment on the two largest influencer search platforms (Influencerity and HypeAuditor), it was noticed that the total number of Instagram influencers was 8.7 million and 69 million, respectively once the checker-filter was applied, the search results narrowed the data to 176,000 and 37 million, respectively (using an authenticity filter can reduce the total number of effective search results by anywhere from 30-97%).

On the other hand, while it is important to acknowledge the possibility of an influencer being on Instagram and not in the influencer marketing database, the top category estimate of Instagram influencers is likely lower than the original comprehensive estimate.

Pros and Cons of Being an Influencer on Instagram:

Pros
  • Improve brand awareness
  • Builds trust quickly
  • Enriches your content strategy
  • Provides amazing value to your audience
  • Effectively reaches your target audience
  • Winner Builds Partnership
Cons
  • Shortage of Integrity 
  • Non Consistency in finding any work
  • Building up a community

This list includes top Instagram influencers in comedy, pranks, entertainment, fashion, beauty, DIY, travel, gaming, cooking, fitness, and lifestyle.

@ZACHKING – 24.6M Followers

ZACHKING

Zach King is one of the most viewed names on Instagram. With 24.6 million followers on the platform, Zach King is undoubtedly one of the most popular top influencers.

His unique digital magic tricks and adorable videos are mind-blowing. They have partnered with BMW, Chipotle to name a few.

@BRETMANROCK – 18M Followers

BRETMANROCK

Bretman Rock will be the most recommended name on Instagram if you look for someone in the Entertainment category.

Bretman is known for leveraging story highlights to turn his many passions into different video series for his followers.

His cameo endorsements led him to work with some famous brands like EA Sports, Crocs, Michael Kors, Klarna, and many more.

MTV gave its show to the Internet personality in 2021 and was awarded the Best Content Creator of the Year award.

@ADAMW – 3.5M Followers

ADAMW

With his brilliant humor, Adam has garnered a huge following for himself. In addition, over 7.5 million followers receive an average of 3,400 comments from engaged users.

The entertainer has sponsorships from Old Spice, FTX Official, and Snickers. Adam also appeared in Comedy Central’s spoof “Pitch Please.”

@MEMEZAR – 23.4M Followers

MEMEZAR

Memezar is the most followed meme page on Instagram, with nearly 24 million followers. However, Instagram pages have shifted to show more videos and reels.

Members have shared sponsored posts from GG Poker and other beauty brands.

@GIRLWITHNOJOB – 3M Followers

GIRLWITHNOJOB

With 3M subscribers on Instagram, comedian and New York Times bestselling author Claudia Oshari is one of the much-known faces on Instagram.

She is known for her humorous videos and memes. She shares her sponsored posts and the latest merchandise at dawn in her brand era.

How Many Influencers Are There on TikTok? 

TikTok, earlier known as Musical.ly, is a growing social media platform. Launched in 2017, the channel is quickly gaining popularity, especially among teenagers.

According to some other platforms, TikTok has over 22 million influencers.

Still, when a further investigation was made using the two largest influencer databases, many influencers lacked credibility.

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Julius, an influencer marketing platform, revealed that they have 43,000 TikTok influencers in their database used their credibility check tool on two other TikTok influencer marketing platforms (HypeAuditor and Influencer), the average range of TikTok influencers was 50,000 with an average range of 1,000+ followers.

However, it was highly likely that these platforms were using third-party tools to scrape the influential data and not the official API of TikTok.

Therefore, prioritizing reliability was the best approach in this instance, and therefore it was originally speculated that there would be a high category of TikTok influencers 50,000.

Pros and Cons of Being an Influencer on TikTok

Pros
  • It helps you in legitimacy with your audience
  • You can quickly become popular
  • When it comes to domination, TikTok is, and always was, king
  • Your chances of being successful increase when you have a wider audience base.
  • You can easily track your ad performance metrics
Cons
  • There are limitations to Content creation
  • Easy production of Content is not easy as it reflects

Charli D’Amelio – 133M Followers

Charli D’Amelio

Charli D’Amelio has the highest fan following on Tiktok. Due to her popularity, she has received sponsorships from Invisalign, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Morphe Cosmetics, to name a few.

Charlie and Dixie made a show debut on Snap, and the show’s name is Charlie Vs. Dixie, which consists of 10 mini-TV episodes.

Hollister’s parent company CEO Fran Horowitz began his joint venture with Charlie and his sister Dixie, named Social Tourist.

Addison Rae – 86M Followers

Addison Rae

American Social media Sensation Addison Rae needs no introduction, especially on Tiktok.

With 86 million followers on Tiktok, she ranks fourth in being the most loaded personality on Tiktok. His profile rose to fame, where his dancing video went viral on Tiktok.

Bella Poarch – 87 M Followers

Bella Poarch

Bella Poarch rose to fame when his silly lip-sync video (sung by a British rapper) became the most viewed TikTok of 2020.

Its sponsors are Google, Prada, and Tinder. Bella is the third most followed person on the porch app.

Josh Richards – 26M Followers

Josh Richards

The Canadian social media influencer rose to fame with lip-syncing, dancing, and video skits.

He earned all his following through TikTok and got sponsorships from Cash up, Amazon, etc. He is also the Chief Strategist Officer of Triller.

Chris Collins – 42M Followers

Chris Collins

Collins is another great example of achieving success through TikTok. Collins, a barber by profession, was finding life very difficult in the times of Covid and decided to download TikTok (on his brother’s suggestion).

And since then, she never looked back. He is popular for posting comedy skits on his TikTok account named Kalmkris.

Collins’ humor is based on family-friendly catnip brands and has sponsorships from Pantene, Hershey’s, and Lionsgate.

Influencers Overlap Analysis Across Different Platforms (Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube)

  • 90% of all influencers make the top 1,000 account list using one platform, as you can see in the pie-chart
  • 2.4% of all influencers make the top 1,000 account list on all three platforms (Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube)
  • 5.3% of all influencers make the top 1,000 account list only from TikTok and Instagram
  • 1.3% of all influencers make the top 1,000 account list using Instagram and YouTube and not TikTok.
  • 0.7% of all influencers make the top 1,000 account list using TikTok and YouTube and not Instagram

Influencer overlap analysis is the key to identifying whether your campaign needs to influence the same audience multiple times from multiple channels.

Conversely, it is possible to reach as many influencers as possible with their publication to reach a wider audience.

This functionality will add a lot of value when managing a successful campaign.

The Outcome of the Influencer Overlap Analysis:

  • The influencer percentage exists less than 10% on the three platforms combined (Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube)
  • A top Instagram influencer is also likely to be a top influencer on TikTok. A top Instagram influencer is also likely to be a top influencer on YouTube.
  • While the sample size used in the research or study was limited to 1000 most followed influencers, the overlap of influencers across social platforms is likely to be enormous. The findings, however, show that there is a 10% chance influencers are mega-influencers on one or more social platforms, with as many influencers as mega-influencers on one channel and macro- or mid-level influencers on another. However, one can indicate that the overlap of influencers between Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok is at least 10%.
  • The social channels with the largest influencer overlap are TikTok and Instagram, whereas the social channels with the least influencer overlap are TikTok and YouTube.
  • It is more likely that a top Instagram influencer has to be a top influencer on YouTube than for a top Instagram influencer also to be a top influencer on TikTok. It is also likely that a top influencer will be at the top of all three platforms combined.

According to Mediakix, an estimated 3.2M – 37.8M Influencers worldwide from all three platforms combined (Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube).

Large estimates range from 3.5 million to 42 million.

We can remove 10% of influencers from the total estimate per the Influencer Overlap analysis, even though the percentage (overlap) between the three platforms combined is very high.

Conclusion

Influencer marketing is now a mainstream form of online marketing.

Despite the proven successes of influencer marketing, there has been a lot of talk and concerns about fraud and authenticity-related issues in the industry.

However, most influencers still care about being transparent with their audience.

Influencer marketing is a great example of how brands can apply the psychology of influence to influence people to buy their products.

In recent years, Businesses across the world have used a lot of influence and psychology to attain customers. This concept makes influencer marketing effective and is the key to its growing popularity.

Sources

Mediakix Mediakix Mediakix
SocialbladeTubics
Charlie has been building WordPress themes, reviewing web hosts and utilizing social media since their respective inceptions.

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