Key Takeaways:
Creator marketing is now a quantified performance channel and a proxy of cultural relevance. According to Traackr’s Creator Advantage 2026 US report, beauty outperformed nearly every other consumer category in creator marketing efficiency in 2025. Beauty had stronger content performance and smarter creator retention strategies to fuel the success.
Analyzing more than 760,000 US creators and over 10 million pieces of branded content across beauty, fashion, food and beverage, personal care, and spirits, the report introduces Traackr’s Brand Vitality Score (known as VIT) as a measure of what is driving creator marketing by combining creator volume, frequency, average audience size, and performance of content into a single benchmark.
In 2025, beauty generated an average VIT score of 687K across the top 25 brands, higher than Fashion (672K), Food & Beverage (258K), and Personal Care (62.8K). Unlike other categories, Beauty was the only industry to grow total attention year over year (YoY), despite declines in organic reach across social platforms. Creator volume increased by 37% YoY, and content performance decreased by 1% YoY, which is flat compared to the steep decline seen elsewhere. The average audience size has decreased by 30% YoY, while the total VIT has increased by 22% YoY.
This indicates that beauty compensated for smaller average audiences by improving content resonance and increasing creator participation frequency, suggesting that beauty’s creator-led ecosystems, rooted in trust and repeat engagement, continue to sustain attention more effectively than other industries. Rather than relying on scale from a few large voices, beauty is winning through volume and relevance, reinforcing its position as the most adaptable category in today’s social environment.
Beauty also posted the highest content performance rate among all industries, with an average VIT per reach of 5.9%, compared to fashion with 1.4% and personal care with 1.9%. Despite declining average creator audience sizes (417K for beauty), engagement efficiency remained strong. The data proves that more creators do not equal more attention. Other industries that expanded creator volume saw declines in engagement and total VIT, while beauty avoided this trade-off.
Top-performing beauty brands relied on organic creator content, with 90% of total VIT for Rhode, Rare Beauty, e.l.f. Beauty, and Makeup by Mario coming from organic mentions. Legacy brands, including L’Oréal Paris, Maybelline, Neutrogena, and Dior, sustained 50% creator retention YoY: a key driver of durable attention. Routine-led, demo-first formats such as GRWMs, tutorials, and single-product use cases consistently outperformed campaign-driven posts in both engagement and repeat creator participation.
While macro (100,000 to 1 million followers) and mega (over a million followers) creators still account for the largest share of total VIT, nano (1,000 to 10,000 followers) and micro (10,000 to 100,000 followers) creators delivered the fastest growth in 2025. Nano creators increased by 55% in video views, 35% in save and share rates, and 50% total VIT YoY. Micro creators had an increase of 30% in video views and 27% total VIT YoY.
In contrast, macro, mega, and VIP creators all saw flat or declining attention. The report suggests that high-intent actions, such as saves and shares, are increasingly concentrated among smaller, more trusted creators.
In 2025, TikTok established itself as beauty’s primary growth engine, with platform performance diverging sharply across the social landscape. TikTok delivered an 18% increase in total VIT, generated by a 54% surge in creator volume and a 27% rise in posting frequency, underscoring the platform’s ability to scale attention through creator-led ecosystems. Instagram, by contrast, saw creator participation grow 32% while total VIT declined 14%, reflecting weakening engagement and viewership efficiency. YouTube remained largely stable, with a modest 3% increase in total VIT. For K-beauty brands including Medicube, Anua, SkinFood, Laneige, and Missha, TikTok and YouTube together generated 75% of total VIT, reinforcing the power of routine-driven, educational, and transformational-focused content in modern beauty discovery.
As organic reach continues to soften in 2025, beauty brands leaned heavily into paid and boosted amplification, but with diminishing returns. Boosted VIT surged 129% YoY, while paid VIT increased 41%, offsetting a 12% decline in organic VIT. However, this investment did not translate proportionally into deeper engagement, with engagement per view falling 7% overall, signaling that paid distribution is expanding visibility without consistently strengthening resonance. Notably, beauty remained one of the few categories to post gains in saves and shares per view, outlining that while amplification alone cannot manufacture relevance, content rooted in utility and intent continues to outperform even in an increasingly pay-to-play environment.
Top Beauty Brands by VIT
The takeaway for beauty brands' attention is no longer bought through scale, but rather through repeatable, creator-native systems. As the creator economy becomes more crowded, the brands poised to win in 2026 are those prioritizing creator retention over one-off activations, investing in smaller creators optimized for frequency and trust, and producing TikTok-native, demonstration-led content that aligns with how consumers actually discover and learn about beauty products. Paid amplification remains a valuable performance lever, but not a substitute for genuine resonance. Ultimately, competitive advantage in beauty will not come from working with more creators, but from generating stronger signals and having the discipline and infrastructure to act on them.
