TikTok was Julia Kong’s biggest source of brand deals when she started her creator career in 2020. Today, Instagram has replaced it as her top revenue driver, though her TikTok following is still vastly larger.
“It’s what brands would prefer to reference when deciding whether or not to work with you,” Kong, who posts about beauty and cinema, said of Instagram. “TikTok is still a great search engine, but I don’t think it’s as organized or clean-cut as Instagram.”
Travis Percy, a creator who posts about leadership, said he’s also found Instagram to have more potential than TikTok as he has grown.
New survey data from the influencer-marketing platform CreatorIQ backs up the sentiment that, as creators grow their careers, Instagram becomes a more lucrative platform than TikTok.
In a sample of about 5,000 creators, TikTok ranked first (at 52%) as the leading platform for posting branded content, compared with Instagram at 43%. That flipped with creators earning more than $250,000 a year: 60% named Instagram as their main platform for branded content versus 30% for TikTok.
In short: TikTok is for the creator middle class, while top earners favor Instagram.
When asked which platform has the best potential to build a business over the long haul, respondents overall valued Instagram (38%) ahead of TikTok (35%) and YouTube (23%). (Among the creators who regularly publish on YouTube, though, more than half considered it their most lucrative platform.)
The survey was conducted from May to June, primarily among US creators, and contained influencers from a range of genres and follower counts.
Tim Sovay, chief partnerships officer at CreatorIQ, said Instagram is “where brands are spending the most amount of dollars in the category, both in general paid media, but also with creators.”
“So the nano-micro story starts on TikTok, and then you see people migrate into longer-term and bigger channels and bigger monetization on platforms like Instagram,” he continued.
What’s behind the divide
Influencer talent and marketing agencies said they have seen similar dynamics among their clients.
Kyle Hjelmeseth, CEO of talent firm G&B Digital Management, said Gen Z creators made TikTok popular in recent years as a place to get your start as a creator.
“It’s great for virality, it’s great for finding an audience, but it was always mired by negative press, so it wasn’t seen as a place where I can’t throw all my eggs in this basket,” he said. “Instagram is the platform that’s been consistent and hasn’t had any issues.”
Hjelmeseth said he sees the tide turning, though, with brands showing strong interest in both platforms.
TikTok “micro” influencers saw a spike in their average brand partnership rates in the first quarter compared with the year-ago period, according to data from Upfluence, an influencer marketing platform.
TikTok also shared internal data showing its creators’ business results have accelerated in the past year. The number of creators making branded content deals through its platform grew 90% year over year through May, while creators with 50,000 followers and up saw their monthly earnings rise 40% year over year.
Becca Bahrke, CEO of talent firm Illuminate Social, said so far this year, 64% of brand partnerships coming through her firm involved Instagram versus 14% for TikTok. She added that Instagram posts reached their potential audiences faster than TikTok posts, giving brands results to evaluate sooner.
Paid boosting helps TikTok
Sovay cited a TikTok program called “Spark Ads” as another reason the platform works well for less-established creators. This program lets a brand pay to boost posts, which makes it easy to place a lot of small bets on micro influencers.
The advent of TikTok Shop has also benefited small-scale creators who have proliferated in recent years. TikTok positions Shop as a place where creators with as few as 1,000 followers can earn affiliate revenue.
EMARKETER, a sibling company of Business Insider, forecast that paid boosting will grow and roughly match what brands pay influencers to post about their products on social media in the US in 2027.
“Immediately boosting that content to hit your target audience with Spark Ads has been core to TikTok’s strategy,” Sovay said. “It’s not to say that small creators don’t work on Instagram or big creators don’t work on TikTok.”
Lily Comba, CEO and cofounder of the marketing agency Superbloom, said, though, that Spark Ads rates have become increasingly competitive.
For that and other reasons, she said Instagram is better for discovery, relationship building, and conversion potential. While YouTube ranked third in the CreatorIQ survey, it drives some of the longest-lasting value from creator content.
“The content has a much longer shelf life, audiences tend to be more intentional and engaged, and we’re increasingly prioritizing YouTube for our clients as we plan into 2027,” she said.
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