If we talk about an agency’s revenue, the overall business has been growing rapidly. Last year, the agency partnered with 25,000 influencers and ran 432 campaigns. The goal is to complete the ₹100 crore mark.
But one of the biggest questions in influencer marketing is simple: if an influencer has 1 lakh Instagram followers, how many views and likes should they normally get, and how much can they charge a brand?
The answer depends on the category, audience, views, engagement and the authority of the creator.
How Much Can an Influencer Charge for 1 Lakh Views?
For an entertainment creator, the cost per view can be around 10 paise.
For example, if an influencer has 1 lakh followers and gets around 1 lakh views on a video, then at 10 paise per view, the creator could charge around ₹10,000.
However, this can change depending on the category. A creator with only 1,000 followers may sometimes generate millions of views and therefore command a much higher price.
In entertainment, the attempt is generally to keep CPV below 10 paise because otherwise the ROI may not work.
For finance, around 20 paise can make sense, while in technology, around 30 paise can make sense.
Some influencers may even charge ₹1 per view and still get brands because brands are not always buying only views. Authority also matters.
For example, an influencer with 5 lakh followers may not receive extremely high views on every video, but their audience may still give them significant authority. That authority can become part of the pricing.
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Why Influencer Marketing Competes With Meta Ads and Google Ads
The biggest competition for influencer marketing is Meta Ads and Google Ads because brands can use these platforms to generate measurable results.
Meta for Business – Reels Ads explains how brands can use Reels advertising, targeting and measurement to reach audiences.
Google Ads – Creator Partnerships also allows brands to use creator videos in advertising campaigns and measure performance.
This creates an important challenge for influencers and agencies: brands need to see enough return from creator campaigns to justify spending money instead of putting the same budget into paid advertising.
That is why influencers should think beyond getting one brand deal. If a creator delivers good ROI, the brand can return every month and create a much bigger long-term business.
Why Creators Are Becoming So Popular
Creator work has become mainstream.
Almost everyone wants to become a creator because of the money and lifestyle associated with it. Brand collaborations, income, cars, homes and other things can appear much harder to build quickly through a traditional job.
But if someone wants to become a creator, should they simply follow their passion, interest and knowledge, or should they enter industries where there are more brands?
This is an important question because certain categories naturally attract more brand campaigns.
For example, even creators associated with shows such as India’s Got Latent, including creators who use a lot of abusive language, have received major brands and become brand faces.
Again, this is an experiment that brands run. Brands generally stay with influencers and celebrities while the overall environment is positive. When a creator enters a negative phase, brands may have to back out.
From Engineering to Meme Pages and Influencer Marketing
Himanshu Singla started as an engineer who wanted to build a business.
During college, he started a technology company with a college friend. In his third year, the company raised around ₹30–40 lakh in funding.
The company was working around 3D technology. The idea was to create a 360-degree product experience for e-commerce.
Instead of showing only five product images, customers could rotate the product and see it from a 360-degree angle.
The idea was to create their own version of a platform where 360-degree videos could be shared. For example, someone could take their own photo, move around the camera and create a 360-degree video.
The idea was large enough to potentially replace the existing concept they were working around, but the startup ultimately did not work out.
At the same time, as a passion and for fun, Himanshu was running a meme page called Idiotics Sperm.
The page grew to around 2 million followers.
The startup did not work out, but the meme page started generating substantial income.
He then partnered with a few people and started learning influencer marketing.
How Meme Marketing Became a Business
Initially, small brands and shoe sellers started approaching them.
At that time, brands did not really understand memes.
So the team started approaching brands, OTT platforms and movies and explained the idea of meme marketing.
Initially, everyone was working through individual pages. There were only a few pages involved.
The major difference came when these pages were clubbed together into a proper media plan.
Instead of selling one meme page, hundreds of pages could be combined into one campaign.
They could then sell plans worth ₹5 lakh, ₹1 lakh and other amounts depending on the requirement.
Initially, brands had doubts.
They would ask what would actually happen through a meme page.
But gradually, brands started accepting meme marketing.
Today, the business has handled more than 1,000 meme marketing campaigns alone.
One of the biggest advantages of meme marketing is that paid content can look organic.
People want entertainment every day. They do not necessarily want to like a generic brand post.
For example, if a brand posts a simple Happy Independence Day message, it may receive limited engagement.
But if the brand becomes part of something funny, relatable or shareable on Independence Day, people may actually share it.
That is why brands try to enter communication through entertainment-heavy content.
Can Meme Marketing Generate Conversions?
Meme marketing is not limited only to awareness or positive brand image. It can also generate conversions.
Initially, smaller sellers came to promote their products. They were able to see an increase in sales because their businesses were small enough to notice the difference.
Larger brands such as Amazon and Flipkart already have huge sales volumes.
They can use link tracking, and the campaign can still work, but not every person who sees content will click a link.
Someone may see a piece of content, remember the product and later search for it themselves before purchasing.
Therefore, conversion may happen even when the person does not directly click the campaign link.
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Meme Marketing vs Influencer Marketing
Both meme marketing and influencer marketing have their own advantages and disadvantages.
Meme marketing generally has mass-market appeal. It can be useful for awareness and relevance.
Influencer marketing can be more ROI-focused because brands can target specific communities and niches.
For example, a finance brand can work with finance creators because those creators already have a consumer base interested in finance.
At the same time, the same finance brand can use meme marketing for a broad communication campaign such as Mother’s Day.
The campaign can reach a wider group and communicate emotional trust, popularity and market credibility.
So meme marketing is generally more focused on brand awareness, while influencer marketing can be more ROI-oriented.
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Can Negative Meme Marketing Be Intentional?
Some memes can improve a brand’s image, while others can negatively affect a brand’s image.
Negative marketing through memes can also be intentional.
However, an agency is unlikely to do it simply for a small amount of money.
For example, when a Varun Dhawan movie is released, negative memes may suddenly start appearing across meme pages. It can sometimes feel as if someone is behind the content and funding multiple pages to publish the same type of negative communication.
But there can also be an organic reason.
If a movie or script is actually bad, people may naturally create memes about it because meme pages are effectively part of an open review market.
Imagine 100 movie reviewers. Fifty may like a movie and fifty may dislike it.
Paid negative content can sometimes be identified when the reviews become excessively forceful.
People may believe negative PR is being funded, but in many cases the negativity can actually be genuine.
There can also be situations where meme pages that are not receiving promotion try to create negative content simply to attract advertisers.
However, the agency does not consider completely negative marketing to be its normal practice.
Political Parties and Meme Marketing
Political parties also use meme marketing.
In fact, almost every political party is involved in meme marketing nowadays.
A significant amount of political meme marketing is directed against competing political parties.
This becomes much more common in politics because negative communication can attract attention.
The preferred approach discussed here is to talk about one’s own positive side rather than continuously attacking someone else’s negative side, because negativity can ultimately give more attention to the other person.
The Problem of Fake Engagement and Fake Followers
One of the biggest insider issues in influencer marketing is fake engagement.
A significant percentage of engagement can be fake.
That is why marketers need to properly check profiles before partnering with creators.
The agency uses APIs to identify the percentage of fake followers.
Experience also helps in identifying suspicious profiles by looking at the ratio between likes, engagement, views and shares.
For example, if a video has a huge number of likes but almost no shares, very few reposts and comments that all look similar, it can become suspicious.
An organic profile normally has more varied activity.
The algorithm can also identify several signals.
Some follower profiles may have:
- No profile picture
- Names that do not appear relevant to the target audience
- No posts
- No engagement
- No meaningful activity
Even fake accounts have become more sophisticated and can now imitate Indian names and Indian elements.
However, many of these accounts still have no genuine engagement.
There are tools available in the market to detect fake followers and suspicious engagement, and marketers should make greater use of them today.
Why Influencer Payments Get Delayed
Another major issue in the influencer marketing industry is delayed payment.
Many Instagram creators are now getting brand collaborations, but payments can sometimes be delayed by three, four or even five months.
This is a very real industry problem.
Technology companies can potentially help solve this problem.
For example, suppose an agency has ₹5 crore of working capital available for campaigns.
If the agency receives work worth ₹6–7 crore in a particular month, there is a high probability that payments to some creators will be delayed.
The biggest problem is often not only the delay but also the lack of communication.
If an agency promised payment within 30 days, it should at least respond after 30 days and communicate that another 15 days may be required.
A better solution could involve PO-based financing.
When a brand issues a purchase order, the financing or banking side can potentially fund the campaign against that order, helping solve the working-capital problem before it becomes serious.
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How Influencer Campaign Payments Actually Work
Suppose a campaign brief is finalized for 100 influencers.
The agency locks those 100 influencers and commits to them according to the agreed payment terms, such as 30 days or 15 days after invoicing.
The agency has a similar agreement with the brand.
After the campaign is completed, the brand may pay the agency within 30 days.
This creates a working-capital requirement.
For example, if influencers complete their work and submit invoices immediately, but the brand’s payment comes later, the agency needs to fund the gap.
If 100 influencers go live, the brand invoice is raised, but influencer invoices may already have arrived because their invoice is generated around the live date.
Therefore, a 15–20 day payment gap is something many agencies struggle to manage.
How an Influencer Marketing Campaign Works Behind the Scenes
A campaign normally starts with the brand’s main objective.
For example, Xiaomi or Redmi may want to promote a phone with a particular focus on its camera and communicate that it has one of the best cameras in the market.
The brief first goes to the sales team.
The sales team then sends it to the content strategy team.
The content strategy team develops ideas around how to highlight the camera and which influencers could communicate that message.
After ideation, the campaign moves to the operations team.
The operations team identifies the best influencers who fit the idea and the available budget.
A final influencer list is prepared.
The list and campaign ideas are then presented to the brand.
The brand may choose which positive or negative points it wants to focus on.
After feedback and final influencer selection, the campaign plan is locked.
How Agencies Select the Right Influencers
Influencer selection depends on the campaign brief.
If a brand wants to target a particular community, the agency first tries to understand the actual customer profile.
For example, consider a Bajaj Personal Loan campaign.
The target audience could include people who prefer getting loans quickly, business-oriented people or employees who regularly have loan requirements.
The team searches Instagram for people who fit this profile and also studies the content they consume.
The operations team may then create a list of 100 potential influencers.
For each influencer, the team calculates engagement rates and averages.
The team also checks the budget, the amount the influencer is asking for and the expected CPV.
The best-performing influencers on the basis of CPV and other campaign requirements are then shortlisted and sent to the brand.
The brand makes the final decision.
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Why Enterprise Brands Trust Influencer Marketing Agencies
For enterprise brands, agencies can play a major role in influencer selection.
An agency that has already worked on many campaigns has experience in identifying suitable creators.
Large enterprise brands generally do not want to personally select hundreds or thousands of influencers for every campaign.
Smaller accounts and startup founders may be much more involved in deciding which influencer should or should not be selected.
But with larger enterprise accounts, the agency can often receive confirmation after presenting its influencer selection.
How CPV Determines Influencer Pricing
The question of how much an influencer with 1 lakh followers should charge does not have one fixed answer.
It depends heavily on the category.
For entertainment creators, CPV can be around 10 paise.
So if a creator receives 1 lakh views, 10 paise per view would equal approximately ₹10,000.
But the same calculation cannot be applied to every creator.
A creator with only 1,000 followers who regularly receives millions of views may command a much higher amount.
For entertainment, agencies generally try to keep CPV below 10 paise because otherwise the ROI may become difficult.
Finance can work around 20 paise, while technology can sometimes work around 30 paise.
Some influencers charge ₹1 per view and still receive brand deals.
This can happen because not every campaign is purely ROI-driven.
Sometimes a brand uses its social media budget to publish a collaboration reel with a creator.
In such cases, the brand may be buying authority and positioning rather than only direct conversions.
Authority vs ROI in Influencer Marketing
Authority is difficult to calculate.
An influencer with 5 lakh followers may have high authority even if their views are comparatively low.
That creator may therefore charge more.
But if everything is ROI-driven, an agency needs to focus on what conversion is generated from the available views rather than only the creator’s authority or network.
This often becomes a process of experimentation.
A brand may work with many influencers.
Some will perform well and some will not.
The brand can then identify the creators who generate results and increase spending with them.
If 10 paise per view produces the required ROI, the brand can continue running campaigns at that level and scale them.
Why Influencers Should Focus on Long-Term Brand Relationships
The objective should not be to get a brand deal only once.
If a brand gets good results from a creator at a reasonable CPV, it may be ready to run campaigns every month.
That is why creators should think about long-term relationships.
If a brand works with a creator once and never returns or continues the conversation, it can be a sign that the expected ROI did not come.
Long-term business is created when brands continue coming back.
How Influencer Marketing Agencies Make Money
Many influencers believe that an agency takes their quote, adds a markup and gives the increased price to the brand.
The agency model described here works by keeping a margin because the agency manages thousands of influencers and provides campaign operations.
For example, last month the agency worked with around 1,550 influencers.
It has a 35-member operations team and a 20-member content strategy team.
The agency keeps around 20% margin on what the influencer charges.
This 20% covers:
- Operations costs
- Employee costs
- Office costs
- Company profit
This model is particularly relevant for enterprise accounts.
Why Enterprise Brands Use Agencies
Enterprise brands generally do not partner directly with 1,000 influencers because managing that many relationships internally would require a large team.
If a company spends ₹3–4 crore per month on influencer marketing and pays an agency 20%, the agency fee could be around ₹60–80 lakh.
For the enterprise, that may still make financial sense compared with hiring and maintaining a large internal influencer marketing team.
If a company spends ₹1 crore and pays an agency ₹20 lakh as the service fee, building a team of around 55 employees could cost much more.
The agency also brings expertise.
It has content experience from previous campaigns and can share case studies showing what worked for other brands.
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Why Creator Relationships Matter
Creator relationships are another important part of the agency business.
The agency’s internal tool contains records of collaborations and payments going back around seven years.
This allows the team to see how long it has been working with a particular creator.
For example, if the agency has worked with a creator for five years and has a record of previous paid promotions, it can use that relationship during negotiations.
A young brand with no previous relationship may have to pay more.
An agency with a long-standing creator relationship may be able to bring the creator at a lower price.
This is another reason the agency’s 20% margin can provide value to enterprise clients.
Should Startups Use Influencer Marketing?
Startups should definitely consider influencer marketing.
If a startup wants to run performance advertising, influencer content can also become an important source of creative.
However, startups should begin with a smaller budget.
The right approach is to keep an experimental budget and test different categories of influencers.
The objective is to understand whether the campaign can generate ROI.
Once the startup identifies what works, it can increase the budget.
UGC vs Influencer Content: Which Works Better?
It depends on the script and the way the content is used.
If influencer content is shown to that influencer’s own audience, it will generally perform better because the audience already has a relationship with that creator.
UGC content can also perform very well when it has a strong hook in the first five seconds.
People can relate to UGC because they can imagine themselves in the situation.
It may not feel like a celebrity or influencer is directly promoting a product simply because they were paid.
That can make the content feel more real and potentially improve conversion.
However, if an influencer’s own video is shown to that influencer’s existing audience, it can still deliver better ROI for the brand.
The Biggest Influencer Marketing Campaign
One of the biggest campaigns discussed was the Flipkart Big Billion Days campaign.
Last year, the campaign was worth around ₹4–5 crore.
The agency partnered with approximately 1,550 influencers, including micro influencers.
The campaign generated more than 500 million views across the internet.
During the campaign, the speaker was sitting with a Flipkart marketer.
The marketer explained that Flipkart had reached a plateau over the previous couple of years.
Around 50 million users were already on the app, but the user base was not increasing even though the company was continuing to spend on marketing.
Influencer marketing was introduced heavily into the brand’s strategy last year.
Eventually, the campaign helped the brand reach another level.
The Biggest Mistake Micro-Influencers Make
One of the biggest mistakes young creators make is accepting too many brand collaborations for too little money.
When a creator’s profile becomes too heavily filled with brand content, the audience can stop trusting the creator.
As soon as a brand reel is uploaded, the views can drop significantly.
At the beginning of a creator’s journey, the main focus should be on building an audience and earning user trust.
After some time, collaborations can be introduced.
Not every video should be a brand video.
For example, if a creator uploads five or six videos, perhaps only one should be a brand collaboration.
This is one of the biggest mistakes made by small and micro influencers, and it can slow down their growth.
Successful micro profiles today also generally avoid making their content excessively promotional.
When today’s large creators started around 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020, they did not have many brands.
They therefore did not produce a large amount of promotional content.
That helped them build user trust.
Today, if a large creator does one brand collaboration every three videos, it may still be acceptable because the creator already has strong authority.
For smaller creators, doing the same thing may not be sensible.
Many current micro influencers praise almost every product they receive because they believe that giving a positive review will bring the brand back.
But the audience can understand that the creator may be praising the product because it was received for free or because money was involved.
Instagram vs YouTube: Which Platform Has More Authority?
Instagram has a very large number of creators because it is relatively easy to start creating content there.
YouTube can be somewhat more difficult.
The question is which platform has more authority and power.
YouTube can provide a stronger audience for learning because people often come to the platform specifically to learn something.
This can help brands get better customers from YouTube.
Tracking can also be better on YouTube.
For example, a link can be placed in the video description, which is not available in exactly the same way on Instagram.
At the same time, Instagram has an enormous daily user base.
A large number of users scroll Instagram every day, making it extremely important for brands and creators.
Official creator tools are also becoming more integrated into advertising platforms. Meta has expanded Instagram’s Creator Marketplace to help brands and creators discover suitable partnerships, while Google Ads now provides YouTube Creator Partnerships for discovering and managing creator collaborations.
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Final Thoughts
Influencer marketing has grown from individual creator promotions into a large business involving agencies, content strategy teams, operations teams, creator relationships, performance measurement and enterprise campaigns.
The business is no longer only about how many followers an influencer has.
Brands increasingly have to consider views, engagement, CPV, audience quality, authority, content quality, conversion and long-term ROI.
For creators, the lesson is equally important: building audience trust should come before accepting every available brand deal.
For brands, the objective is to find creators who can deliver the right audience and the right results.
And for agencies, the real value comes from combining creator relationships, campaign strategy, operations, negotiation and performance data at scale.