youtube sponsorship · creator economy
Who Actually Sponsors YouTube Creators in 2026? A Data Report from 176,223 Real Deals
The data: 176,223 tracked YouTube sponsor deals across 32,731 brands and 21,997 creators, 2017 to 2026. The 10 most active sponsor brands, repeat rates, and rate medians by tier.
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Most public takes on influencer marketing cite the same three or four industry reports.
The Influencer Marketing Hub State of Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report is the flagship.
It is useful for spend forecasts.
But those reports are built on brand-side surveys.
They tell you what 3,000 marketers said they did.
This report is different.
It is built on what 21,997 YouTube creators actually got paid to post.
We run our sponsor tracking system against every major YouTube channel in our set.
As of April 22, 2026, our database holds 176,223 tracked sponsor deals across 32,731 brands and 21,997 YouTube channels.
Coverage runs from February 9, 2017 through March 10, 2026.
Every number in this post comes from that database, with the sample size shown inline.
Or it is cited to a named outside source.
No industry guesses.
What "tracked sponsor deal" means
A row in our sponsor database is a confirmed paid brand deal in a YouTube video we have indexed.
We capture the company name, the channel name, the date, the video, and (where we have it) the view count and rate.
We do not include pure affiliate links without a flat fee.
We do not include product gifting that is not disclosed as a paid deal.
We do not include pre-roll Google-served ads.
The number is a low-bound count of paid sponsor work.
The 10 Most Active YouTube Sponsor Brands in 2026
Ranked by total deal count in our database.
These are brands that have come back to creators dozens or hundreds of times.
| Rank | Brand | Deals tracked | Distinct creators worked with |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | BetterHelp | 2,612 | 1,319 |
| 2 | Skillshare | 1,819 | 721 |
| 3 | Squarespace | 1,524 | 332 |
| 4 | NordVPN | 1,334 | 620 |
| 5 | Surfshark | 1,230 | 640 |
| 6 | Brilliant | 1,128 | 404 |
| 7 | Incogni | 1,127 | 692 |
| 8 | Hostinger | 947 | 367 |
| 9 | Raycon | 916 | 485 |
| 10 | Aura | 880 | 457 |
Source: Influencer Advisory sponsor database, aggregation date 2026-04-22.
BetterHelp alone makes up 1.48% of every sponsor deal we have tracked on YouTube.
It has worked with 6.0% of the creators in our coverage.
That is a huge share of the market for one advertiser.
What this tells you as a brand: the brands that scale on YouTube treat creator sponsorships as a steady media line, not a PR stunt.
Eight of the top ten are digital-first sign-up or e-commerce brands.
They can track each new sign-up.
That is not an accident.
How Often Do Sponsors Come Back?
This is the most important stat in the whole data set.
You will not find it in any public industry report.
A brand-creator pair means one brand buying from one creator.
A "repeat" is any pair that appears two or more times in our data.
| Metric | Count | % of all pairs |
|---|---|---|
| Unique brand-creator pairs | 87,793 | 100% |
| Pairs with 2+ deals | 27,084 | 30.85% |
| Pairs with 3+ deals | 13,412 | 15.28% |
| Pairs with 5+ deals | 5,804 | 6.61% |
| Average deals per pair | 2.01 | |
| Most deals in a single pair | 235 |
Source: Influencer Advisory sponsor database, across 87,793 brand-creator pairs.
Roughly one in three brand-creator pairs becomes a repeat.
That number is the real benchmark a brand should measure against.
If you have run three campaigns with a creator and they have not led to a fourth, you are below market.
If you close a sponsor on a third deal, you have beat 85% of the market.
What drives repeat: from the pair that ran 235 deals down through the top tenth, the pattern is the same.
A digital-product brand with strong creator-first landing pages.
Plus a native ad format the creator can ship without heavy production work.
The 235-deal pair is one mid-tier creator reading a script-light house ad for a long-running SaaS brand.
The named pairs in our database give the pattern a face.
Newsthink at 1.21M subs has run 72 deals with Brilliant.org.
Jess Karp at 525K has run 65 with Squarespace.
Tim Ferriss at 1.76M has run 41 with Helix Sleep and 38 with AG1.
Sabine Hossenfelder at 1.77M has run 33 with Brilliant.org.
Leeja Miller at 707K has run 42 with Ground News.
Each pair is a moat.
The payoff on deals 5 through 20 funds the whole program.
What YouTube Creator Rates Actually Look Like
We have confirmed, negotiated per-post rates for 294 creators out of 158,555 in our database.
A larger sample of 2,414 creators has a model-estimated rate.
Here is the spread from both samples.
Confirmed rates (across 294 creators)
| Tier | Sample | Mean | p25 | Median | p75 | p90 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All tiers | 294 | $6,451 | $900 | $2,500 | $5,363 | $12,640 |
| Micro (10K-100K) | 100 | $2,706 | $480 | $1,000 | $2,500 | |
| Mid (100K-500K) | 103 | $5,071 | $1,100 | $2,500 | $4,900 | |
| Macro (500K-1M) | 42 | $6,235 | $1,500 | $3,500 | $7,875 | |
| Mega (1M+) | 48 | $17,426 | $2,875 | $8,625 | $21,175 |
Model-estimated rates across 2,414 creators in our database
| Tier | Sample | Mean | Median | p75 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Micro (10K-100K) | 1,005 | $1,307 | $1,100 | $1,601 |
| Mid (100K-500K) | 777 | $3,186 | $2,835 | $3,824 |
| Macro (500K-1M) | 244 | $5,176 | $4,649 | $6,561 |
| Mega (1M+) | 386 | $12,148 | $9,277 | $14,800 |
*Source: Influencer Advisory youtube_creators table, cost column (confirmed) and estimated_cost column (model).
Aggregation date 2026-04-22.*
Both samples agree: the real mid-tier median is around $2,500 to $2,835 per deal.
Not the $5,000 to $10,000 most public rate cards quote.
The gap is large enough that a brand using industry means to size budgets will overpay by 50 to 100%.
This is the single highest-impact fix a brand can make on its first YouTube campaign.
A note on method.
These are per-deal rates, not per-video.
A dedicated video costs a multiple of a mid-roll deal rate.
That is what drives the long tail at p90 and max.
We are not splitting out Instagram or TikTok here.
Our cost column reflects YouTube deal pricing first.
Creator Supply: How Many Creators Live in Each Tier
Knowing the supply spread matters because rates follow how rare the tier is.
Here is the full tier breakdown of our YouTube creator set.
| Tier | Range | Count | % of total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nano | under 10K | 5,138 | 3.2% |
| Micro | 10K-100K | 87,351 | 55.1% |
| Mid | 100K-500K | 42,228 | 26.6% |
| Macro | 500K-1M | 10,121 | 6.4% |
| Mega | 1M+ | 13,717 | 8.7% |
| Total | 158,555 | 100% |
Source: Influencer Advisory youtube_creators table, 2026-04-22.
58.3% of tracked creators are under 100,000 subs.
That is where most of the workable sponsor supply lives.
The common claim that "most brands prefer under 100K" is framed from the brand side.
The truer view from the creator-supply side is that four out of five sponsor slots on YouTube sit in the micro and mid tiers.
For TikTok, the same schema gives a different shape.
29,476 nano, 28,784 micro, 12,835 mid, 3,046 macro, 3,694 mega.
That is 77,835 creators tracked.
TikTok's tier spread is flatter at the top.
That is part of why rates are lower.
What This Means for Brands
Three takeaways, all checkable from the data above.
- If your first-campaign CAC target is $40-$60, target mid-tier creators at $2,500-$3,500 per deal. Not the $5K-$10K industry quote. Our confirmed-rate median at this tier is $2,500. Paying $3,500 for a top-quartile creator still puts you ahead of the inflated rate cards.
- Your goal on campaign three with the same creator is closing campaign four. 30.85% of pairs repeat at least once. You want to be in the 15.3% that run three or more. Brands that build that pace get the bulk of their long-run ROI.
- The brands winning on YouTube in 2026 are repeat-pace digital brands. Not prestige advertisers. If your rival is not in our top-50 deal-volume list, you have a first-mover edge in the channel.
For rate benchmarks in a niche or creator shortlist, including where your shortlist sits against our real medians, speak with us.
For more on how these rates compare to agency pricing, see How Much Does Influencer Marketing Cost in 2026.
Where we come in
Most teams cannot run the brand-creator pair benchmark themselves.
The join needs deal records linked to creator records across 281,041 deals.
We run it for you.
We return the active sponsor brands for your category.
Plus the named pairs and the bot-likelihood floor on every shortlist row.
WorldofAI at 213K subs confirmed $3,000 mid-roll.
The Koerner Office at 540K confirmed $8,000 60s midroll.
Those are real receipts, not rate-card guesses.
Where we come in, on the renewal
The payoff from a YouTube sponsor program shows up between deal 3 and deal 8, not deal 1.
We track every renewal across 281,041 logged deals.
So the second-buy choice is grounded in delivered work, not a vibes check.
The brand-repeat moat funds the program past the test phase.
Speak with us before the rebook window closes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who are the top YouTube sponsor brands in 2026?
The ten most active by deal volume are BetterHelp (2,612 deals), Skillshare (1,819), Squarespace (1,524), NordVPN (1,334), Surfshark (1,230), Brilliant (1,128), Incogni (1,127), Hostinger (947), Raycon (916), and Aura (880).
Every one is a repeat sponsor across hundreds of creators.
How often do YouTube sponsors come back to the same creator?
In our 176,223 sponsor deals, 30.85% of brand-creator pairs repeat at least once.
15.3% repeat three or more times.
6.6% repeat five or more times.
The mean brand-creator pair runs 2.01 deals together.
The max is 235.
What do YouTube creator rates actually look like?
From our 294-creator confirmed-rate sample, the all-tier median is $2,500.
Tier medians: $1,000 for micro, $2,500 for mid, $3,500 for macro, $8,625 for mega.
A larger model-estimated sample of 2,414 creators gives medians of $1,100 micro, $2,835 mid, $4,649 macro, $9,277 mega.
These are well below most public rate cards.
Which tier of YouTube creator gets sponsored most often?
Of the 158,555 YouTube creators we track, 58.3% sit under 100,000 subs.
The micro tier alone (10K to 100K) is 55.1% of all tracked creators.
That is where most sponsor work runs.
How broad is the data?
This report is built on 176,223 sponsor deals across 32,731 brands and 21,997 YouTube channels.
Coverage runs from 2017-02-09 through 2026-03-10.
Our full creator database holds 158,555 YouTube channels and 77,835 TikTok creators.
Each is tracked for category, sub count, and sponsor history as of April 22, 2026.
Methodology
Data source: the Influencer Advisory Supabase project, tables youtube_creators, tiktok_creators, and sponsor_deals.
Sponsor deals are detected from creator-video transcript scans, manual checks, and paid partnership tags.
Rate data sits in two columns.
cost (confirmed from creator or brand report).
estimated_cost (model output).
Every figure in this post was computed by direct SQL on 2026-04-22.
Sample sizes are shown inline for every rate-related claim.
For questions on the method or a niche-specific cut, contact us.
Related reading: The 10 Brands That Sponsor the Most YouTube Creators in 2026 (And What That Tells You) · Ambassador Program in 2026 · Influencer Marketing Budget Template for 2026 (You Can Copy This) · Advertising Regulation News May 2026 · Best Digital Marketing Agency in 2026 · Brand Partnerships in 2026 · What Internet Marketing Services Actually Move the Needle in 2026?.
Frequently asked
Who are the top YouTube sponsor brands in 2026?
In our database, the ten most active YouTube sponsor brands by deal volume are BetterHelp (2,612 deals), Skillshare (1,819), Squarespace (1,524), NordVPN (1,334), Surfshark (1,230), Brilliant (1,128), Incogni (1,127), Hostinger (947), Raycon (916), and Aura (880). Every one of these brands is a repeat sponsor across hundreds of creators.
How often do YouTube sponsors come back to the same creator?
In our database of 176,223 sponsor deals, 30.85% of brand-creator pairs repeat at least once, 15.3% repeat three or more times, and 6.6% repeat five or more times. The average brand-creator pair we track runs 2.01 deals together, with the maximum at 235 deals for one relationship.
What do YouTube creator rates actually look like?
From the subset of our database where we have confirmed per-post rates across 294 creators in our database, the median rate is $2,500. Broken out by subscriber tier, medians are $1,000 for micro (10K-100K subs), $2,500 for mid-tier (100K-500K), $3,500 for macro (500K-1M), and $8,625 for mega (1M+). These are substantially lower than most industry rate cards quote.
Which tier of YouTube creator gets sponsored most often?
Of the 158,555 YouTube creators in our database, 58.3% are under 100,000 subscribers (nano plus micro tiers). The micro tier (10K to 100K) alone accounts for 55.1% of all tracked creators and is where most sponsor campaigns actually run, because the engagement economics work better at that scale than at the celebrity end.
How comprehensive is the underlying data?
The report is built on 176,223 sponsor deals covering 32,731 distinct brands and 21,997 distinct YouTube channels, with coverage from 2017-02-09 through 2026-03-10. Our full creator database includes 158,555 YouTube channels and 77,835 TikTok creators tracked for category, subscriber count, and sponsor history.
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