Foundations
Influencer tiers
Influencer tiers group creators by audience size: nano (roughly 1,000 to 10,000 followers), micro (10,000 to 100,000), mid-tier (100,000 to 500,000), macro (500,000 to 1 million), and mega or celebrity (over 1 million).
Also called nano influencer, micro influencer, macro influencer, creator tiers.
These bands are industry convention, not a standard. Different agencies draw the lines in different places, and the boundaries shift by platform, so treat them as shorthand for a conversation rather than a category a creator belongs to.
The reason the tiers matter is that engagement rate tends to fall as audience size rises, while cost per post rises. Smaller creators usually deliver a more engaged, more specific audience per dollar, and larger creators deliver scale and a recognisable name. Many brands run a mix for that reason.
Common questions
- Which influencer tier gives the best return?
- For most brands, micro creators offer the best cost per engagement, because their engagement rates are typically several times higher than macro accounts while their fees are a fraction. Larger creators are usually bought for reach and credibility rather than efficiency.
Related terms
- Engagement rate
- Engagement rate is the share of an audience that interacts with a post, calculated as total engagements divided by a chosen denominator, most often followers or reach, expressed as a percentage.
- CPM
- CPM is the cost of a thousand impressions, calculated as the fee divided by impressions, multiplied by one thousand. It is the standard way to compare the efficiency of creator deals against each other and against paid media.
- Influencer marketing
- Influencer marketing is a form of advertising in which a brand pays an independent content creator to promote a product to that creator's own audience, on the creator's own channels.
- Audience audit
- An audience audit checks whether a creator's followers are real and relevant, looking for bought followers, engagement pods, and mismatches between the audience's location or age and the brand's market.
Distinct is the workspace where brands and creators run the work behind these terms. For brands, for creators, or back to the full glossary.