The influencer marketing industry is beginning to mature – slowly, but it is happening.  

And with that slow maturity, we start finding some level of standardization, best practices, and everyone involved starts to get a little more savvy. We’ve still got a way to go, and as the industry grows and changes, so should we along with it.

I wanted to know how the industry changed in 2024, and where marketers thought influencer marketing would go in 2025.

So I asked 33 marketers for their thoughts on the technical side of the industry:

• What were their biggest contracting headaches?
• What kind of deals are influencers negotiating?
• How were prices changing (and what did they predict for 2025)?
• How were marketers confronting pricing challenges?

And much more.

Influencer contracts are getting stricter – especially over usage rights

63.6% of marketers said that influencer contracts became more strict in 2024 over previous years. Another 87.9% of marketers said that influencers were savvier than ever before.

So how exactly are they changing?

First, there’s slightly more standardization in the value of different deliverables – especially concerning usage rights.

Marketers were quick to highlight how big a piece usage rights took in negotiations.

In fact, negotiation around usage rights goes past just if and for how long you can use an influencer’s content. Instead, we’re getting down to the details:

• How much can you change?
• Where can you use it exactly?
• And for how long?

Also, brands feel that they need to be stricter with their contracts to get value for their investments. They’re almost feeling nickel-and-dimed from influencers and their representatives.

For Lee Drysdale, usage rights are definitely driving up the cost of working with influencers – mainly due to how much brands are using influencer content.

Lee Drysdale

Senior Influencer and Affiliates Executive, Argento

Usage, usage, usage! I feel like everyone now wants paid usage across all content, I expect to see a rise in the cost of usage due to how much brands are requesting and using across sites, paid socials and emails.

Michael Todner explained that this was natural as time goes on and we collectively understand the value behind usage rights.

Michael Todner

Influencer Marketing, Gear4music

I think it's mostly just natural progression as the industry develops. More and more people understand the value in things such as usage rights, so it will be more of a conversation point in negotiations.

Greta Zacchetti says that these strict contracts can take away from building those critical influencer relationships.

Greta Zacchetti

Influencer Marketing Manager, foodspring

Influencers and agencies are becoming demanding in placing limitations and "add-ons" for which they can ask additional costs. This translates to less flexible contracts, the key is in making sure that good relationship management is prioritised.

However, according to Joshita Dodani, who works on the other side of the coin in talent management, the strict contracts and guidelines are coming from both sides.

Joshita Dodani

Head of Social Media and Influencer Partnerships, DigiOrange

Clients are now seeking more than just posts; they’re becoming increasingly specific about every small detail, from the content’s tone and visuals to posting schedules and caption wording.

What to do about overly-strict contracts: 

First, try to work in some flexibility. A contract that’s too rigid might sour a potential relationship with an influencer, or discourage them from working with you according to Fernanda  Marques.

Fernanda Marques

Influencer Marketing Coordinator

Being too strict can discourage influencers from partnering with us, so we prioritize flexibility and ensure that creators can add their unique spin to the content, as they know their audience best. We also maintain proactive communication with our partners to ensure they have ample time for content creation, allowing everything to proceed smoothly and authentically.

For Leslie Belen, it’s about mutual understanding and respect.

Leslie Belen

Influencer Search and Outreach Virtual Assistant

Both brands and influencers are seeking flexibility and collaboration rather than rigid terms. As the industry continues to evolve, there's a greater emphasis on mutual benefit and creative freedom, allowing for more adaptable agreements that can foster long-term relationships and better results.

Next, work with your influencer to come to an agreement that benefits both of you.

For Marit Tiesema, if anything takes more than two emails to be clear, it’s time to jump on the phone.

Marit Tiesema

Sr KOL and Ambassador Specialist, Loop Earplugs

If you're sending more than two emails back and forth and not reaching an agreement, jump on a call. It usually completely breaks the tension. After that, everything is resolved because you understand each other.

Fernanda highlights that working with savvier influencers has its benefits – like the contracting process going much more smoothly from beginning to end.

Fernanda Marques

Influencer Marketing Coordinator

Influencers are more knowledgeable in areas like contracting, pricing, and negotiation, and they understand how to create content that aligns with both their brand and ours. This awareness helps foster partnerships that are mutually respectful and transparent, making collaborations smoother and more effective.

Influencers are opening up to affiliate deals again

For a time, influencers shied away from potential affiliate deals with brands in favor of more stable, regular income. And it’s understandable – who wouldn’t want to get paid up front for collaboration?

But things are changing, and now creators are seeing the long-term value in affiliate partnerships with brands – especially for the potential of unlocking long-term collaboration. 63.7% of marketers have found that more influencers are opening back up to affiliate deals compared to the last few years.

There are plenty of potential reasons for this. Some influencers are opening up to affiliate partnerships because:

• Brands have shifted to performance-based marketing, and influencers want a means to generate passive income
• Content feels more authentic than some one-off promotions
• They hope it’ll lead to deeper collaboration with brands they love

According to Nicole Ampo, it’s a win-win solution for both sides.

Nicole Ampo

Influencer Marketing Manager, American Hat Makers

I think a lot more influencers are taking affiliate deals now since: 1. It could become a long-term collaboration with the brand. 2. Promotion to both the brand and influencer's audiences. 3. It's a win-win situation: Engagement for both: sales for the brand, and passive income opportunities for the influencer.

As brands shift to performance-based marketing, creators want to partner with the brands they genuinely love. Leslie mentioned that affiliate programs are a means to diversify revenue streams for a lot of influencers.

Leslie Belen

Influencer Search and Outreach Virtual Assistant

With the rise of performance-based marketing and added revenue potential, affiliates now offer influencers a chance to earn passively. Influencers see affiliate deals as low-risk, allowing them to partner with brands they already like while earning a share from every sale they drive. Plus, affiliate deals are more appealing since influencers can track their earnings accurately.

For others, affiliate programs still weren’t cutting it for influencers. Joshita said that it was about fixed, regular income for many creators.

Joshita Dodani

Head of Social Media and Influencer Partnerships, DigiOrange

Influencers are often hesitant to embrace affiliate deals because these arrangements typically don’t include a guaranteed base fee. As a result, their earnings depend solely on performance, which can lead to inconsistent or reduced income compared to collaborations with upfront payments.

According to Victor Wiśniowski, the ROI simply isn’t there for creators.

Victor Wiśniowski

Founder and Influencer Marketing Specialist, LikeLab

The companies that reach out to them usually offer less-than-optimal deals for the influencer so for him/her to make money they have to dedicate more time and effort then they do with “normal” brand deals.

What to do if your influencers reject affiliate programs:

If you’re recruiting influencers for an affiliate program, some creators may not want to do it – even if they’re warming up to the idea overall. So what do you do in this case?

Try this:

• Go for creators that already know, love, and organically post about your brand. They’ll be much more excited to work with you in any capacity.
• If there’s potential for long-term partnership in the future – highlight that to your influencer. Use affiliate marketing as a first-step to a deeper collaboration.
• If you can swing it, try offering a smaller up-front payment, or use affiliation as part of a regular paid collaboration. It’s a good idea to take a mixed, diverse approach anyway.

If that doesn’t work, it’s time to accept the unfortunate truth. Your ability to secure affiliate partnerships is going to depend on a few things, like your brand size and notoriety, and the influencers themselves. Some creators just won’t be interested in affiliate programs – and that’s okay.

There are plenty of fish in the sea.

Prices will rise in 2025 (and what to do about it)

Is influencer marketing getting more expensive?

According to marketers we polled, it’s becoming more difficult to get the same ROI from influencer marketing.

So we asked marketers if they experienced pricing changes between 2023 and 2024.

Results:

• Influencers raised their prices in 2024: 78.1%
• Influencer prices stayed the same: 8.7%
• Influencers lowered their prices: 4.3%
• We don’t know: 9.4%

Already this year, marketers were feeling the squeeze on both sides: not only were budgets shrinking, but influencers were raising their prices too.

We also asked marketers if thought influencers might raise prices again in 2025.

Results:

• Influencers will probably raise their prices in 2025: 65.6%
• Influencer prices will probably stay the same: 12.5%
• Influencers will probably lower their prices: 6.2%
• We don’t know: 15.6%

More than two-thirds of marketers said that they predicted prices will continue to rise in 2025.

Finally, we asked marketers if pricing for influencer campaigns was becoming more difficult overall.

Two-thirds of marketers agreed that pricing was just getting harder.

So why is that happening?

Of course, the cost of living is getting higher, so it might be normal to assume that pricing would go up to accommodate that.

But there are a few other potential reasons too:

There is no standardization when it comes to influencer pricing.

Several marketers mentioned that pricing was so difficult because there’s just not an industry-accepted grid for pricing out and paying for deliverables. Lauren Roth said that the onus of standardizing pricing is shared by both the brand and the influencer.

Lauren Roth

Influencer Marketing Consultant

Influencer pricing is truly all over the map. Unless you, as a brand, come up with a strict CPM or CPV you want to stick with and be prepared to negotiate, you may not get the ROI you want.

According to Alycia Lykins, because other brands inflate prices for deliverables, it affects an influencer’s expectations from all other brands as well.

Alycia Lykins

Influencer Marketing Manager, Wish 

There are brands that probably paid influencers more than they should have been paid. They will continue to shoot for the stars payment wise, and they now hire agencies who also ask for absurd payouts.

Another problem: the prices influencers are asking for don’t correspond to the level of engagement or reach.

According to Athira Aravind, even though prices keep rising, engagement metrics and performance aren’t increasing proportionately – making it harder to justify the ROI.

Athira Avarind

Brand Partnerships and Influencer Manager, Mahina

Pricing for creators is getting unreasonable – it doesn’t justify the CPV nor the followers/engagement.

According to Greta, she uses influencer marketing tools to better gauge whether pricing makes sense for a particular creator and the deliverables in negotiation.

Greta Zacchetti

Influencer Marketing Manager, foodspring

Prices have been increasing for the same deliverables in their contract, that's why it is important to have influencer marketing tools that allow us to negotiate prices backed up by data.

What to do when prices are too high:

When you feel that an influencer’s prices aren’t really justified by their metrics, there are a few things you can do to negotiate.

First, a lack of standardization across the industry means you need to create your own.

Develop your own pricing table based on metrics that’s flexible enough to not alienate great talent you want to work with, but stays reasonable within your own budget. Leave some wiggle room for negotiation.

Second, see where you can get more value for the price.

If, for example, you have an influencer that’s quoting a heftier price for, say, an Instagram Reel and a Story. If you don’t feel that those deliverables are worth the cost, and negotiation on price alone isn’t getting anywhere, you can maybe negotiate on other things.

Maybe you can get the creator to add an additional Story – or perhaps even agree on usage rights thrown into that price for a certain amount of time. Maybe you can even negotiate on when content gets delivered – for example, get a quicker turnaround for the price.

Obviously, if there’s no room to budge on either side, the cash-in-hand style of negotiation won’t work as well. But it’s worth a try – especially for a great creator.

Third, back up your pay scale with metrics.

It’s hard to argue with data. If you can back up your pay scale with data gathered either from the influencer’s accounts or via aggregated data from influencer tracking software – it’ll be much easier to justify certain prices.

If you can, talk to other marketers and see what they’re paying for certain deliverables. When in doubt, having a payment benchmark from others in your industry can be a great help.

(PS: We did a killer piece on how to price deliverables for Instagram and YouTube)

(By the way, for any creators listening in – this is also a great way to justify your own pricing models too. Just saying. 😉)

When all parties are well-informed, it’s a lot easier to work through these potential pricing kinks.

Key Takeaways

With these trends and changes in influencer marketing, chances are, your job becomes trickier by the day.

The best way to confront these changes is to face them head on.

• When your gut instinct is to make contracts stricter, hop on a call with your influencer/their agent. Everything is easier to work out once we all remember that there are human beings on both sides – and you’ll want mutual trust.  
• Work out usage rights that make sense for both sides – part of building that trust is making things fair for everyone. Work in flexibility to avoid discouraging influencers from partnering with you.
• Prioritize influencers that know and love your brand to recruit them as affiliates. This does a lot of the legwork for you because they’ll be excited to work with you.
• Sweeten affiliate deals with either a small upfront payment, tacking it onto a regular paid promotion, or with the promise of a long-term partnership in the future.
• If influencer prices are too high, negotiate other potential deliverables or value-adds that can help you justify the price.
• Standardize your own prices through industry benchmarking and influencer marketing software to help you back up your own negotiations.

These tips will make negotiation a lot easier for everyone involved – and hopefully take some of the stress of it all off your plate.

Going into negotiation well-informed helps you see every angle at once, and being data-driven is a great way to do that. Modash can help by unlocking creator data and helping you find, vet, and reach out to the right creators for your campaigns this year.

The best part? You can try it free for 14 days (without even getting your card out).