TL;DR
70% of leading brands now prioritize ongoing creator partnerships over one-time activations, while 82% work strategically with fewer than 20 creators per campaign
29% of brands achieved optimal performance with 10-19 creators per activation, and 26% focused on partnerships with 5-9 creators
Enterprise brands making over $500M revenue reported ambassador programs as their most successful tactic
38% of sub-$10K programs maintain an “always-on” approach to influencer campaigns
Table of Contents
The campaign-to-campaign approach to influencer marketing officially ended in 2025. Marketing leaders across top-performing brands abandoned the transactional playbook that treated creator partnerships like media buys and started building a more sustainable strategy with long-term impact.
According to Later's 2025 State of Influencer Marketing report, 70% of leading brands now prioritize ongoing creator partnerships over one-time activations, while 82% work strategically with fewer than 20 creators per campaign. This strategic shift marked the beginning of a new influencer marketing program infrastructure.
Creator partnerships now play a foundational role in brands’ overall marketing strategy, with campaigns built specifically around influencers rather than being treated as an afterthought.
The data reveals that the brands achieving consistent results stopped thinking about creator marketing as a volume game and started treating it as a relationship portfolio that appreciates over time.
Transforming creator partnerships from transactional to relational
After years of experimenting with influencer marketing campaigns, brands have officially evolved from the old way of doing things. The former model saw marketing teams investing heavily in creator discovery, vetting, and onboarding each quarter, only to start the entire process over when the next campaign cycle began. The transactional model treated creator partnerships like media placements, siloing performance data by campaign rather than creator.
In 2025, the transactional model has shifted to a relational one. With 70% of leading brands prioritizing ongoing creator partnerships over one-time activations, it’s clear that influencer marketing leaders are realizing the long-term benefits of investing in relationships over single campaigns. They recognize that the heaviest lift in creator partnerships happens at the beginning, as brand education takes time. When creators and brands engage in ongoing partnerships, each campaign builds on the last. Content quality improves as creators internalize brand voice and develop authentic product expertise. This allows them to deepen trust with their audience through repeated exposure, not single touchpoints. The continuous collaboration with creators also generates a steady flow of content and engagement, ensuring performance data compounds across activations.
Why fewer creators beats mass activations
According to the report, 29% of brands identified working with 10-19 creators per campaign as their optimal approach. Some brands opted for an even more precise approach with 26% focused on partnerships with 5-9 creators, and 27% working with only 1-4 creators per campaign. The focus on precision over volume showed that effective influencer marketing programs relied on depth, not just reach.
The 10-19 range represents the point where relationship management remains sustainable while audience reach achieves meaningful scale. Marketing teams can maintain regular communication, provide thoughtful creative direction, and track individual performance patterns while creators receive the guidance required to produce their strongest work. As a result, the portfolio achieves diversity across audience demographics and content styles without overwhelming operational capacity.
This sweet spot also optimizes budget efficiency. The same investment that funds 25 one-off collaborations can instead support 12-15 ongoing relationships that produce multiple activations throughout the year. The per-post cost looks similar, but the accumulated value compounds as creator expertise deepens and audience trust builds through repeated exposure.
The brands working within this range have built programs that scale without sacrificing the relationship quality that drives performance. The roster size reflects strategic discipline rather than budget limitations.
Get the full picture before building your Q1 creator marketing strategy. Download Later's 2025 State of Influencer Marketing report to see the complete breakdown of creator team composition.
How ambassador programs became revenue infrastructure
Later’s report revealed that ambassador programs emerged as the top-performing tactic for brands that generate over $500M in revenue. This data signals that these organizations had the operational maturity to transform creator partnerships from marketing campaigns into systematic revenue channels.
The distinction matters because infrastructure functions differently than tactics. The brands achieving this level of maturity structured their ambassador programs with clear operational frameworks. They selected creators based on demonstrated performance data rather than follower counts or engagement rates alone. They also developed onboarding processes that went beyond brand decks to include product education, company culture immersion, and strategic goal alignment.
For large brands, this approach represented the natural evolution of influencer marketing from experimental channel to essential infrastructure. The investment discipline, operational systems, and performance accountability that characterize mature programs enabled ambassador relationships to scale with the same reliability as any core business function. Enterprise organizations of all revenue sizes can use this framework to turn ambassador relationships into business partnerships that deliver value across multiple functions.
The compounding effect: how each campaign builds momentum
Ongoing partnerships eliminate the hidden inefficiency in campaign-focused creator marketing. The investment in creator education, brand alignment, and relationship building amortizes across multiple activations. Content quality improves as creators develop genuine product experience, and audience trust builds through repeated exposure rather than resetting with each new face.
The compounding effect is evident in both operational efficiency and performance outcomes. The second campaign with a creator requires significantly less management oversight than the first, for example. The third campaign produces stronger results as the creator’s audience recognizes sustained brand loyalty and usage rather than an isolated sponsorship. The fourth campaign and beyond operate at a level of efficiency and effectiveness that first-time collaborations structurally cannot match.
This progression creates advantages that accumulate over time. Marketing teams can redirect energy from constant creator discovery and onboarding toward strategic optimization and performance improvement. Using a platform like Later also helps brands track the performance metrics and impact of influencer campaigns over time, enabling pattern recognition and informed decision-making that single-campaign measurements never reveal. In addition, budget efficiency increases as the same investment produces more content from creators who understand the brand and can more easily create aligned content.
What “always-on” looks like in practice
The “always-on” approach represents an important shift in how brands structure creator relationships. It involves maintaining relationships that enable activations aligned with business priorities rather than starting from zero each campaign cycle.
Later’s report revealed that 38% of brands that operate programs with a budget less than $10K maintain this approach. This finding challenges the assumption that sustained creator presence requires enterprise resources.
Organizations achieving the always-on strategy structure their creator partnerships around consistent engagement rather than constant content production. They maintain regular communication with their creator roster throughout the year, providing product updates, sharing performance insights, and involving creators in strategic planning conversations.
Always-on doesn’t require significantly different resources than campaign-focused approaches. Instead, it requires strategic resource allocation. The budget previously distributed across constant creator discovery, vetting, and onboarding instead funds relationship development and maintenance that enables more efficient activation when business priorities demand creator involvement. Using Later’s creator marketplace and relationship management tools also makes it easier to coordinate these always-on partnerships without dedicating more time or resources to ongoing campaigns.
Download the full report to access comprehensive insights on building ongoing creator partnerships that deliver year-round results.
In 2026, successful influencer marketing programs must prioritize sustained partnerships over one-off campaigns. Organizations that want to build long-term creator partnerships should focus on identifying creators for multi-year collaborations that strengthen over time.
Ready to deepen your creator roster? Schedule a call with Later's team to discuss how our platform can help you build long-term creator relationships, scale partnerships, and integrate always-on influencer campaigns.
