The state of influencer marketing in Europe 2024 is a survey conducted by Kolsquare, a leading European influencer marketing agency. It provides a particularly interesting perspective on influencer marketing budgets, how influencer marketing is handled and its future trends. Besides, its comparison of Europe’s main markets for IM is clearly enlightening. It’s one of the first if not the first of its kind and it sheds light on the way that businesses are conducting marketing with Key Opinion Leaders, at least for business to consumers. One of the most striking takeaways from this study is the sheer size of the average European influencer marketing budget which is evaluated at a whacking €3.375 million annually. 
European Businesses Spend nearly €3.5m Annually on Influencer Marketing
Methodology of the 2024 Influencer Marketing Survey
This 2024 European Influencer Marketing (IM) survey was conducted by Kolsquare and NewtonX. It involved 385 decision makers representing medium to large organisations across various sectors (Beauty and fashion, IT, SaaS and Telecommunications, Retail food and beverages, entertainment …). All respondents had more than two years of experience in influencer marketing. The sample is relatively large for that kind of B2B survey with five countries surveyed (France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the United Kingdom) and approximately 80 respondents in each of these countries.
The European influencer marketing landscape
Thanks to this survey, we now have evidence that the influencer market is really significant with €3.375 million spent on influencer marketing by European businesses annually, and Germany topping the list at €5.74 million per annum. Micro influencers (10,000 to 100,000 followers) being the most popular partners for the surveyed European businesses. Respondents’ expectations on growth are very optimistic with 54% of them expecting to increase their influencer marketing budget next year. Unsurprisingly, the influencer marketing landscape has shifted towards three main platforms: Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
More than ever, influencer marketing is here to stay with 27% of respondents saying that it will become more important in the marketing mix. And even 6% stating that it will become the most important part of the overall marketing spend.
UK marketers seem less prone to spend huge chunks of their budgets on influencer marketing with a yearly average of £848,000 (still a whopping €1.02 million!) Brands are also declaring that they will become more selective in the influencers with whom they work (56%). Ethics is topping the list of preoccupations in Italy and France, but less in the UK and not that much at all in Germany.
Indeed, Germany is described by Kolsquare as “the big spender”, but not very keen on ethical considerations. Unlike the French and Italians, who said to be prioritising corporate ethics when selecting influencers.
This emphasises a significant shift in the market, whereas four or five years ago we were stressing the fact that ethics weren’t really on French influencer marketing managers’ priority list.
Social network usage by marketers and Key Opinion Leaders
When it comes to social network usage by influencer marketers, the shift towards Instagram, TikTok and YouTube is significant. However, Facebook has not disappeared from the IM landscape completely, as it is still the platform of choice in the UK.
X has slipped down the ladder and further down one can find niche platforms such as Twitch, Pinterest, Snapchat and a flurry of Chinese platforms that are clearly less attractive to European marketers. What is surprising, though is that LinkedIn is definitely not part of this list,