How many creators do brands typically work with?

With very few: 49.6% of brands use no more than one to five influencers per campaign, according to a 2025 sector analysis by archive.com. And that while three quarters of all available profiles are nano.

It looks like a choice for quality over quantity, but it's mostly what's left when you do it by hand. Finding, approaching, briefing, shipping to and following up five creators easily costs half a working week. Twenty-five doesn't cost five times as much — it costs more, because at five you keep the overview in your head and at twenty-five you don't. The limit of five is a bandwidth limit.

The difference matters, because the effect you're after isn't linear. Five posts spread over three weeks are five separate messages. Twenty-five posts in the same week inside the same running community look like something happening. Why numbers work differently here is described separately.

We run squads of 25 with three to five reserves, because selection, shipping, briefing and follow-up aren't manual work every time round for us. That's the whole reason our number differs from that of a marketing team doing this on the side.