Upfluence Research · Q1 2026 creator-economy industry study
Creator economy industry study: Q1 2026 application share, paid price and CPM by industry
A study of 17,288 creator applications and 2,605 brand campaigns on the Upfluence platform between January 1 and March 27, 2026 — share-of-mix, paid price, and CPM across 15 macro industries and 459 sub-industries. Where the creator money moved in Q1 2026: America's fashion. Britain's home. The post-resolution slump for fitness and wellness.
Influencer-marketing platforms see early-warning signals of advertiser intent before they show up anywhere else: when brands open campaigns and creators apply, the resulting funnel is a real-time read of what categories the market is leaning into. We analyzed every applicant on the Upfluence platform across the first quarter of 2026 to find the patterns.
The five things to know
- Fashion & Apparel and Home & Living roughly doubled their share of creator applications between January and March (+6.6 pp and +6.2 pp respectively). The companion CPMs (price per 1,000 followers) rose by +50% and +56% — brands paid more and ran more campaigns.
- Health & Wellness gave back 6.3 percentage points of mix, the steepest fall of any macro industry. Sports & Fitness (-3.3 pp) and Food & Nutrition (-3.2 pp) followed. CPMs for all three fell 30–55%. The January resolution-economy unwound faster than the holiday-shopping unwind in retail.
- Entertainment & Events, while small in absolute terms, was the standout pricing-power story: median CPM rose +268% as brands ramped concert, festival and ticketing campaigns ahead of the spring/summer event calendar.
- Baby & Kids quietly outperformed on price: median paid application rose +66% and CPM +41%, despite only modest share gain. Brands are paying premium rates to lock in mom/parenting creators.
- Overall application volume fell 28% from January to March (19,546 → 14,138), but the composition of demand shifted decisively toward spring/lifestyle categories. The "sales" mix is changing, not just the "size".
Section 1Which industries gained or lost creator-application share in Q1 2026
The cleanest cross-industry comparison isn't raw application counts — those are noisy because not every campaign is in scope each week — but each industry's share of the applications mix. That metric is robust to data-coverage drift and tells you which categories are pulling creator interest at the expense of others.
Five industries gained meaningfully (Fashion, Home & Living, Technology, Entertainment & Events, Baby & Kids); five lost meaningfully (Health & Wellness, Sports & Fitness, Food & Nutrition, Media & Entertainment, Pets); the rest were roughly flat. The shift is consistent with a textbook seasonal pattern — brands ramp spring/summer-relevant categories from late February onward and the wellness/fitness peak burns off after the New Year.
Section 2Creator-application demand vs CPM pricing power by industry, Q1 2026
Pairing the share shift with the change in CPM (the price brands paid per 1,000 follower-reach for a creator) makes the dynamic explicit: the industries that grew share also commanded higher CPMs, and vice versa. There is no industry that grew share while CPMs fell, which means the rotation is not purely a budget reallocation toward cheaper categories — it's a coordinated shift in where brands want to be.
Section 3Weekly creator-application volume by industry, Q1 2026
The stacked view shows how absolute application volume composed itself week by week. The headline: total joined volume actually rose into March, but that's largely because more campaigns made it into our matched set later in the quarter. The shape of the stack — what's growing and shrinking inside it — is what carries the signal.
Section 4Median paid creator application price by industry, Q1 2026
What did creators charge per campaign? About half of all applications quoted a $0 price (i.e. barter / free-product compensation), so we report the median among paid applications. The full-mix metric (including barter) is shown in the appendix.
Section 5Median creator CPM (price per 1,000 followers) by industry, Q1 2026
Application price alone can mislead — a $200 application from a 200,000-follower creator is a very different deal from a $200 application from a 20,000-follower one. Normalizing by audience reach gives a cleaner read on what brands are paying per unit of attention.
Section 6Sub-industry detail: which sub-industries drove the macro shifts in Q1 2026
The macro-level picture is driven by very specific sub-industries. We restricted this view to sub-industries with at least 80 applications in both January and March (roughly 100 sub-industries) so the changes aren't a statistical mirage of small samples.
The 8 sub-industries that gained the most pricing power
| Sub-industry | Macro | Apps Jan | Apps Mar | Share Δ | Paid price Δ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fashion | Fashion & Apparel | 257 | 1,537 | +1.3 pp | +260.0% |
| Fashion Trends | Fashion & Apparel | 136 | 1,191 | +1.2 pp | +260.0% |
| Women's Clothing | Fashion & Apparel | 168 | 1,234 | +1.1 pp | +260.0% |
| Online Boutiques | Fashion & Apparel | 138 | 1,099 | +1.1 pp | +260.0% |
| Style | Fashion & Apparel | 158 | 1,126 | +1.0 pp | +260.0% |
| Fashion Leadership | Fashion & Apparel | 136 | 1,066 | +1.0 pp | +260.0% |
| Fashion Inspiration | Fashion & Apparel | 136 | 1,066 | +1.0 pp | +260.0% |
| Fashion Blogging | Fashion & Apparel | 372 | 1,519 | +0.9 pp | +75.0% |
The 8 sub-industries that lost the most
| Sub-industry | Macro | Apps Jan | Apps Mar | Share Δ | Paid price Δ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Holistic Health | Health & Wellness | 945 | 332 | -2.4 pp | -70.0% |
| Dietary Choices | Food & Nutrition | 843 | 795 | -1.5 pp | -60.0% |
| Health Nutrition | Food & Nutrition | 883 | 957 | -1.4 pp | -50.0% |
| Dance Fitness | Sports & Fitness | 839 | 1,015 | -1.2 pp | -70.0% |
| Crossfit | Sports & Fitness | 839 | 1,015 | -1.2 pp | -70.0% |
| Bodybuilding | Sports & Fitness | 839 | 1,015 | -1.2 pp | -70.0% |
| Fitness Coaching | Sports & Fitness | 839 | 1,015 | -1.2 pp | -70.0% |
| Pilates & Barre | Sports & Fitness | 839 | 1,026 | -1.2 pp | -70.0% |
Section 7Other lenses on Q1 2026: creator size mix, paid vs barter, audience and primary platform
Who's applying — creator size mix
Different industries pull different creator tiers. Beauty & Fragrance and Education are nano-creator-heavy (small accounts dominate); Baby & Kids skews toward larger creators and is the only category where mid-tier (100k–1M) accounts represent more than 20% of applications.
Paid vs. barter
The share of applications quoting a paid (non-zero) price varies dramatically by industry: Finance (85%), Entertainment & Events (84%), Education (80%), Technology (75%) are paid-economy categories. E-Commerce (40%), Beauty & Fragrance (46%) run heavily on free-product compensation.
Audience profile by industry
Primary platform by industry
ConclusionWhat the Q1 2026 creator-application data adds up to
If the creator-economy story of 2025 was "brands of every kind are still paying for influence," the Q1 2026 read is more textured: brands are not pulling back, they are rotating. The categories they are rotating toward — fashion, home, travel, parenting, events — are classic spring/summer-cycle plays. The categories they are rotating out of — fitness, wellness, fitness-adjacent food — are the categories that always boom around January-1 resolutions and then unwind.
What's notable is the magnitude of the unwind. Health & Wellness lost 6 percentage points of mix in roughly eight weeks, with concurrent CPM compression. That's a faster handoff than typical retail seasonals, and worth watching: if it persists into Q2, it points to a more structural fatigue with the wellness category rather than a clean seasonal cycle.
For brands and journalists, the working takeaway is simple: the creator pipeline is leading the spring shopping cycle by 3–4 weeks. By the time the consumer-side data shows up in retail and ad spend reports, our applicant funnel has already moved.
FAQFrequently asked questions about the Upfluence Q1 2026 industry study
Which creator-economy industries gained the most application share in Q1 2026?
Fashion & Apparel and Home & Living roughly doubled their share of creator applications between January and March 2026, gaining +6.6 percentage points (6.2% → 12.8%) and +6.2 pp (6.5% → 12.7%) respectively. Technology (+2.3 pp), Entertainment & Events (+2.2 pp), and Baby & Kids (+1.8 pp) rounded out the top five gainers.
Which industries lost the most share of creator applications in Q1 2026?
Health & Wellness fell the most, giving back 6.3 percentage points (17.0% → 10.7%). Sports & Fitness lost 3.3 pp and Food & Nutrition 3.2 pp. The three together describe a faster-than-typical unwind of the January resolution economy.
How much did creator CPM change by industry in Q1 2026?
CPM (price per 1,000 followers, in USD) rose +267.8% for Entertainment & Events, +56.3% for Home & Living, +50.0% for Fashion & Apparel, and +41.3% for Baby & Kids. CPM fell -59.9% for E-Commerce, -55.5% for Pets, -55.0% for Finance, -45.0% for Sports & Fitness, and -38.3% for Food & Nutrition.
What was the highest median paid creator price by industry in March 2026?
Baby & Kids topped the table at $500 median paid application, followed by Media & Entertainment at $400. Education, Fashion & Apparel, E-Commerce, Travel & Hospitality, and Home & Living clustered between $200 and $300. Finance and Beauty sat at the bottom of the paid-price distribution.
How much did overall creator-application volume change in Q1 2026?
Overall application volume fell 28% from January to March 2026, declining from 19,546 to 14,138 weekly applications across the matched subset. The composition of demand shifted decisively toward spring and lifestyle categories — fashion, home, travel, parenting, and events — even as total volume contracted.
Which sub-industries drove the Fashion & Apparel gain in Q1 2026?
The Fashion macro's gain was dispersed across many sub-industries — Style, Women's Clothing, Online Boutiques, Fashion Trends, and Fashion Blogging each gained between +0.9 and +1.3 percentage points of share between January and March 2026.
Which sub-industries drove the Sports & Fitness decline in Q1 2026?
The Sports & Fitness decline concentrated in eight tightly correlated fitness sub-industries — including Crossfit, Bodybuilding, Pilates & Barre, Dance Fitness, and Fitness Coaching — suggesting a single large fitness brand winding down its Q1 push. Within Health & Wellness, Holistic Health alone lost 2.4 pp of mix, the largest single sub-industry decline of the quarter.
How did the creator size mix and paid-vs-barter split evolve in Q1 2026?
Across the quarter, the cross-platform creator follower distribution stayed concentrated around micro and mid-tier creators. The share of applications quoting a non-zero price trended up in Beauty & Fragrance and down in Baby & Kids — a supply-side signal of new entrants in the parenting category.
Methodology & caveats
- Data: Application records from Upfluence creator-marketplace activity, January 1 – March 27, 2026 (48,107 applications across 2,605 campaigns). Industry data from the campaign metadata table (2,247 campaigns).
- Industry mapping: Each campaign carries multiple sub-industry tags; we mapped these to 15 macro industries via a regex rule set covering 459 sub-industries (93% of all sub-industry mentions). An application is counted once per macro it touches; an application tagged Fashion + E-Commerce contributes to both.
- Currency: All price analyses use the USD subset (89% of applications). Influencer prices are stored in cents in the source data and have been converted.
- Joining: Applications were joined to campaigns by campaign name (the only key available). Match rate is 35.9% overall (Jan: 22%, Mar: 48%) — coverage rises through the quarter, which would bias raw volume comparisons. We therefore report volume changes as share-of-mix shifts (each industry's share of all matched applications), which is robust to coverage drift. The price and CPM analyses describe the matched subset only.
- Followers: "Followers" denotes the cross-platform total (Instagram + TikTok + YouTube + Facebook + Pinterest + Twitter + Twitch). This counts the same person twice if they follow on multiple platforms — CPMs reported here are therefore conservative (lower) than single-platform CPMs would be.
- Medians vs. means: All price metrics are medians. Roughly half of all applications quote $0 (barter / free-product); we report median paid price (excluding zeros) as the headline, with the full-mix median in the appendix.
- Time period: 13 weeks of data; the first partial week (Jan 1–4) is excluded from time-series charts.
AppendixMacro industry summary table — share, paid price and CPM, Q1 2026
| Industry | Share of applications | Median paid price (USD) | Median CPM (USD) | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan | Mar | Δ | Jan | Mar | Δ | Jan | Mar | Δ | |
| Fashion & Apparel | 6.2% | 12.8% | +6.6 pp | $200 | $200 | +0.0% | $5 | $8 | +50.0% |
| Home & Living | 6.5% | 12.7% | +6.2 pp | $200 | $250 | +25.0% | $5 | $8 | +56.3% |
| Technology | 4.9% | 7.2% | +2.3 pp | $300 | $200 | -33.3% | $7 | $7 | -1.6% |
| Entertainment & Events | 0.5% | 2.6% | +2.2 pp | $500 | $250 | -50.0% | $2 | $8 | +267.8% |
| Baby & Kids | 3.6% | 5.3% | +1.8 pp | $300 | $500 | +66.7% | $7 | $10 | +41.3% |
| E-Commerce | 4.1% | 4.4% | +0.3 pp | $500 | $300 | -40.0% | $16 | $7 | -59.9% |
| Travel & Hospitality | 4.0% | 4.0% | +0.0 pp | $250 | $250 | +0.0% | $7 | $9 | +25.2% |
| Finance | 0.8% | 0.6% | -0.2 pp | $300 | $150 | -50.0% | $14 | $6 | -55.0% |
| Education | 4.1% | 3.0% | -1.1 pp | $500 | $200 | -60.0% | $12 | $7 | -44.0% |
| Beauty & Fragrance | 13.4% | 11.9% | -1.5 pp | $200 | $180 | -10.0% | $7 | $7 | -4.1% |
| Pets | 3.6% | 2.0% | -1.6 pp | $500 | $250 | -50.0% | $17 | $8 | -55.5% |
| Media & Entertainment | 6.1% | 4.0% | -2.1 pp | $300 | $400 | +33.3% | $9 | $10 | +13.0% |
| Food & Nutrition | 14.8% | 11.6% | -3.2 pp | $500 | $200 | -60.0% | $12 | $8 | -38.3% |
| Sports & Fitness | 10.4% | 7.2% | -3.3 pp | $500 | $200 | -60.0% | $13 | $7 | -45.0% |
| Health & Wellness | 17.0% | 10.7% | -6.3 pp | $500 | $250 | -50.0% | $12 | $8 | -32.4% |
