Vendor reportAspire, 2026

YouTube has the highest cost per engagement by social channel

Channel validation

Average cost per engagement by social channel, based on total creator investment

Average cost per engagement by social channel, based on total creator investment
Channel	Average cost per engagement (USD)
Pinterest	$0
TikTok	$0.07
Instagram	$0.07
YouTube	$0.2

Reader Note:: Cost per engagement is the hard part of this comparison: an engagement means something different on YouTube than on TikTok or Instagram, and the report does not say what it counts on any of them. So YouTube may come out dearest partly because its engagements are scarcer and heavier rather than because its creators charge more. The card carries the ranking without a figure for any channel. Based on creator investment across 2025.
Evidence:: Observed behaviour
Vendor interest:: High — This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
Sample:: Mixed methods: Aspire internal platform data from creators and campaigns, plus surveys of nearly 900 marketers and creators; exact split and sampling method not disclosed.

Good for

Comparing yourself against a similar segment, and choosing what to test next.

Not for

Saying that one thing caused another, or predicting what you would get.
This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
This is an aggregated or average number that covers very different cases. Real results in a particular segment may differ.
The source never says how this number was measured.
The source says how much it looked at, but not how any of it was chosen.

4.4x

How much better an AI search visitor converts compared to an organic search visitor, on average

of Google searches that showed an AI summary ended with a click on a link inside that summary (US, March 2025)

20% of Gen Z and 17% of Millennials discover new brands through influencer endorsements, vs 12% of Gen X and 5% of Boomers

Share of each generation who discover new brands via influencer endorsements
Generation	Share who discover brands through influencers (%)
Gen Z	20%
Millennials	17%
Gen X	12%
Baby Boomers	5%

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11.4%

of shopper sessions in the US involved an AI tool as of June 2026, up 2.3 percentage points from a year earlier

is the short-term ROI index for influencer campaigns in the UK, right on the market average with 4.5% of short-term sales (excluding campaigns that produced no result)

21–26%

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YouTube has the highest cost per engagement by social channel

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