Creator campaigns combine platform fit, brand activity and paid support
Creator marketing performance varies by platform, post format and the level of investment behind a campaign, according to a 2026 analysis of branded social media activity. The findings point to a mix of creator partnerships and brand-owned publishing—not creator posts alone—as a feature of many high-ranking campaigns.
The analysis reviewed 1,755 social media posts associated with 20 brand campaigns, collected from January through September 2026. Its results offer a snapshot of those campaigns, rather than a universal benchmark. TikTok views were unavailable because of data restrictions, and engagement rate could be calculated only for Instagram.
Instagram consistency and TikTok’s engagement ceiling
In a first-quarter survey of brands and agencies, 96% of respondents said they partnered with creators to make social media content. Instagram was the most commonly used platform for those partnerships, cited by 90% of respondents, followed by Facebook at 80%, YouTube at 72% and TikTok at 63%.
The campaign analysis found different strengths across platforms. Instagram accounted for the largest share of the top posts identified for campaigns, while top-performing TikTok posts recorded higher average engagement than posts on other platforms. The analysis characterized Instagram as a more consistent environment and TikTok as having a higher engagement ceiling, while cautioning that the results reflect branded campaigns rather than all content on those services.
On Instagram, Reels had an average engagement rate of 11%, compared with 7% for still posts and 5% for carousels. The calculation divided engagements by follower count; video views were not included in engagement-rate calculations for Reels, still posts or video-containing carousels. Instagram Reels also received more video views than YouTube Shorts and long-form videos in the dataset. Most of the captured YouTube posts, however, were Shorts, limiting the comparison with long-form video.
Format and funding shape post performance
Product demonstrations and styled product images were common across both sponsored and gifted posts. The analysis defined sponsored posts as creator content made through a direct brand partnership, and gifted posts as content featuring products sent to creators without a paid content agreement. Classification relied on disclosures, including labels and hashtags such as #ad, #paid, #gifted and #PR, as well as verbal disclosures in some videos.
Styled images appeared more often in gifted than sponsored posts, at a ratio of 19 to 15. The analysis suggested creators may be less inclined to make a single-product demonstration for a gifted item when it could look overtly promotional. Yet demos were the exception to a broader engagement pattern: sponsored posts generally outperformed gifted posts across formats, but gifted demos had higher average engagement than sponsored demos.
Styled posts performed better when sponsored, and had the highest overall engagement among the formats examined. Their execution also differed: gifted examples were often simple product images or flat lays, while sponsored versions more frequently included video. The analysis noted that paid production can matter for categories such as fragrance, where visual storytelling is used to evoke mood and sensory qualities.
Average views showed a substantial reach gap between sponsored and gifted posts: 334,055 for sponsored posts versus 48,008 for gifted posts. Sponsored style shots averaged 707,646 views, followed by demos at 250,764 and influencer events at 231,595. Gifted demos led their group at 81,023 views. The analysis linked sponsored posts’ greater reach in part to paid media support, which can extend distribution beyond a creator’s existing audience. Those figures are averages from the campaigns studied, not guaranteed outcomes for future posts.
Brand channels and campaign approaches matter
Higher-ranked campaigns generally included substantial activity on the brand’s own social accounts alongside creator posts. Lower-ranked campaigns tended to have less brand-owned publishing, and some had no brand-generated posts. The analysis also found that leading campaigns often combined sponsored and gifted content, while using creators at different audience sizes. All of the highest-ranked campaigns had large budgets behind them, although paid support by itself did not ensure strong performance.
Charlotte Tilbury’s #exaggereyes campaign ranked first. Gifted posts made up 35% of its posts, the largest share among the campaigns analyzed. A collaboration with Influenster, a product sampling and review platform owned by Bazaarvoice, generated a large portion of that gifted content. Many of the gifted posts were demonstrations, the format that performed best for gifted posts in the analysis.
Neutrogena’s #hydroboost campaign ranked second. Sponsored or gifted posts accounted for 39% of its total, the highest share of brand-seeded content among the campaigns. The campaign paired its branded hashtag with #hyaluronicacid, connecting the product-line extension to a broader category conversation.
Too Faced’s #chocolatesoleil campaign took a different route, emphasizing a Brazilian audience. Thirty-four of its top 75 hashtag-associated posts mentioned Brazil, including posts from the brand’s Brazilian account and Brazilian creators. Seventy-four of those 75 posts were classified as organic. Together, the examples show varied paths to campaign performance: seeding, paid creator partnerships, brand-account activity and local relevance can be combined in different proportions, with no single approach established as a universal formula.
