Influencer budgets on the rise as creators edge closer to the media mix

Influencer marketing is quietly moving into a new phase in Australia, one defined less by hype and follower counts and more by infrastructure, accountability and growing confidence from senior marketers.

Budgets are rising, scrutiny is rising with them and creators are increasingly being treated not as experimental line items, but as a core part of the media mix.

That shift is reflected in new data from influencer platform Fabulate, alongside fresh commentary from co-founder and chief revenue officer Ben Gunn, who says growth in influencer investment is accelerating as brands start applying the same commercial discipline they use across other channels.

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“What we’re hearing across the market is budgets increasing, probably on average around 40%,” Gunn said. “And that’s from a pretty big base. The Australian market is already a billion-dollar influencer industry.

“As those line items grow, CFOs start asking different questions. If you want to double this again, what ROI is it driving? How is it contributing to brand lift, consideration and purchase intent? Those are now standard conversations.”

It’s a far cry from influencer marketing’s early years, when creator selection often defaulted to follower size and campaign success was judged largely on reach and engagement.

Today, Gunn says marketers and agencies are looking much deeper into who actually follows a creator, how engaged those audiences are, where they’re based and what kinds of content they consistently respond to.

“That maturity is flowing through into how brands shortlist creators and how they use them across the funnel,” he said. “Creators aren’t just a top-of-funnel awareness play anymore.”

Those shifts are front and centre in Fabulate’s inaugural Fab 100, a data-led ranking of the most searched and considered Australian creators of 2025. The report, based on close to a million searches and profile views from brands and agencies using the platform, offers a rare look at how brands are actually making creator decisions behind the scenes.

Topping the list is food and lifestyle creator Jessica Nguyen, followed by a mix of family, lifestyle and comedy creators - categories that continue to dominate brand demand.

But the more telling insight sits beneath the headline names. Most creators appearing in the Fab 100 sit between 50,000 and 500,000 followers, particularly on Instagram.

“What stood out wasn’t just who topped the list,” Gunn said. “It was how many of the creators brands keep coming back to are in that mid-tier range.

“A few years ago, the default was creators with millions of followers because they could deliver reach in one hit. Now brands are being more strategic. They’re thinking about creators as part of a broader performance and brand solution.”

Despite TikTok’s cultural dominance, Fabulate’s data shows Instagram remains the primary starting point for creator discovery in Australia. TikTok plays a powerful complementary role, driving cultural relevance and momentum, but the creators who appear most consistently in the Fab 100 tend to be strong on both platforms.

“In Australia, Instagram is still very much where creator discovery starts - it’s where brands are forming shortlists and making decisions,” Lucy Ronald, head of strategy and talent at Fabulate, said.

“TikTok plays a powerful complementary role, driving cultural relevance and momentum, but the creators who show up most consistently in the Fab 100 tend to be strong on both. Cross-platform presence now matters, but it has to feel native, not duplicated.”

The broader implication for CMOs is that influencer marketing is starting to resemble other mature media channels: planned, modelled, benchmarked and increasingly plugged into econometric and attribution frameworks.

“We’re getting asked what influencer data can be fed into MMM models,” Gunn said. “So marketers can start working out what the right proportion of their media budget allocated to creators actually looks like.” 

That demand is also reshaping agency structures, with influencer capability now being pitched as a standalone specialism in some cases, rather than folded loosely into social. 

For Gunn, none of this signals influencer marketing becoming less creative. But it does signal the end of its adolescence. 

“Traditional media channels have had decades to build infrastructure, reporting and standards,” he said. “Influencer marketing has had years. The challenge now is making sure the plumbing keeps up with the pace of growth.”

For creators, it offers independent, data-backed validation. For brands, it offers a clearer view of who is genuinely being considered, not just who is loudest. And for the industry, it reinforces a simple truth: influencer marketing is no longer sitting on the sidelines.

It’s moving, quickly, toward the centre of modern media planning.