The Italian influencer market is worth 308 million: from Facebook to YouTube, this is how much you earn

At the end of 2022, a research (this) conducted on a representative sample of the Italian population confirmed how important the role of influencers was not only in influencing people’s buying habits but also as a source of news and entertainment.

Among other things, the analysis revealed how 20% of the sample would have changed my opinion even on sensitive issues (global warming, inequalities, rights) after hearing from some influencers, 53% consider them a source of inspiration to improve lifestyles and almost 60% disseminators of useful information.

We are looking for fewer celebrities and more closeness

It’s no surprise: Internet personalities are important in today’s hyper-connected society and what until a few years ago we didn’t understand what their job was, now it’s a full-fledged job. Which also allows you to earn well or very well.

Not for everyone and not on all platforms, as can be understood from the annual price list of DeRev, a digital strategy and communication company, updated for 2023 after last year’s: a further (and imaginable) fall emerges for Facebook (-13.6%), while Instagram (+8.6%) establishes itself as a reference platform alongside YouTube, where the fees paid to creators remain stable. As for the inevitable TikTok, is down slightly (-2%) but the data concerns almost exclusively the small creators, who are now many and therefore have to divide the same, metaphorical cake into several slices.

The case of Instagram is opposite and deserves further study, as highlighted by Roberto Esposito, CEO of DeRev: “The greatest growth in compensation (+14.4%) is for those with up to 300,000 followers and much less for the so-called mega influencers (+1, 8%) with a community exceeding one million”. It happens “because users are tired of distant celebrities and they prefer creators who speak authentically about substantial topics that coincide with their real interests”.

450 thousand jobs, only in Italy

In general, however, the tariff (visible in the diagram above and detailed below) reflects the global growth of the influencer marketing market: if in 2021 it had recorded a +15% compared to the previous year, reaching volumes of around 280 million euros in Italy and generating 450 thousand jobs, in 2022 reached 308 million (16.4 billion worldwide)which is equivalent to a 10% growth over the previous year.

That’s not all, because according to estimates, 2023 could register a further 13% increaseequal to a turnover of 348 million euros in our country alone.

As for the individual sectors, they are still leading fashion and beauty (from 15% in 2022 to 25% in 2023), but companies that work in the gaming (12.9%) and in the field of travel (12.5%); again: in 2023 we note the considerable increase in sport (from 4% to 12%) and instead the contraction of fitness (from 13% to 6.8%).

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From Facebook to YouTube: social rates

Coming to the figures, a couple of premises: DeRev calculates them on the basis of two analytical factors (number of followers and engagement rate, i.e. the ability to generate reactions in people) and also on the complexity of the work required; moreover, if in 2022 it was possible to pay up to 80 thousand euros for a single piece of content, today this figure is reached only on YouTube, confirming that some adjustments are also taking place in this field.

Between individual platforms, Facebook it has long ceased to be profitable for creators and already in 2021 more followers were needed on average to receive compensation (the minimum was 10 thousand). Today it’s worse: to try to cash in 100 euros for a post it is necessary to approach 50,000, while those with between 50,000 and 100,000 followers have seen their fees decrease by 23%, dropping to a range of 100-400 euros per post.

Conversely, always in the Meta family, Instagram it is the social network par excellence of the creator economy, where people are looking not for personalities in the strict sense but for influencers deemed reliable and credible. Even with small numbers: the growth in fees, starting from 100-300 euros per content (+14.3%) is already starting to be seen by creators with 5-10 thousand followers, and is replicated for micro influencers (10-50 thousand followers) who go to 300-850 euros per content (+15%) and it also affects the so-called mid-tier (50-300 thousand followers), who can even reach 4 thousand euros per post (average growth of +14%). Instead, the fees of macro influencers increase less (+6.7%), those from 200 thousand to 1 million followers and beyond these numbers we enter the field of celebrities, who now find earnings in a more traditional way, i.e. by turning to the market advertising.

Switching to TikTok, is, as mentioned, complementary to Instagram: on the ByteDance platform, the ease with which one can emerge has raised the threshold for entry into the real creator economy. With 5 thousand followers, you can aim for 50 euros per content (the same as in 2021 and half of 2022); if you have between 10,000 and 50,000 followers it can reach 650 euros per post. Instead, once the 300,000 is exceeded, the price list shows increases and from 3-6,500 euros per content it has gone to 3,500-7,000.

In the end YouTube, where the highest fees have always circulated but this year there is the first, slight setback: compared to 2022, no creator, in any bracket, earns more. However, the figures remain high, if not very high: for a video you can also collect 20-30 or even 80 thousand euros.

The (predictable) collapse of Twitter

What remains is very little: already last year, Twitter was practically irrelevant in the creator economy, but this year, the arrival of Elon Musk and the flight of advertisers, have made it very, very difficult to make money on this platform. According to DeRev, however, a space “to watch” is LinkedIn, which “is investing a lot and is evolving in a way that favors the birth of its own creator economy”. Obviously waiting for them to become more popular in Italy as well the so-called virtual influencers, which we reported on Italian Tech in the summer of 2022.

@capoema