📊 Kolsquare Budget Report 2026: Optimize Your Influence Budget
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Influence should become the creative core of the marketing mix
Influencer marketing has come of age.
After years of experimentation, buzz and rapid growth, the French influence market is becoming more structured and professional, and is focused on a key question: how can influence become a genuine strategic driver, fully integrated into the marketing mix and creating long-term value?
For Joy Jimenez, founder of Agence Percie, the answers are found in creative usefulness, when influence becomes the core of a campaign rather than acting as a mere distribution channel.
Business usefulness, when content feeds every marketing lever. Responsible usefulness, when transparency, compliance and education shape industry practices.
Going against opportunistic approaches, Jimenez advocates for influence designed as a sustainable system, inspired by the principles of sobriety, circularity, cooperation and resilience as strategic choices.
In this interview, she shares her perspective on the French market, her convictions about 360-degree integration of influence, the rise of long-form formats, the role of social commerce and the conditions required for truly mature influence.
How do you evaluate the influencer market in France in 2026?
The French market has evolved significantly. We are no longer in an experimental phase at all. The sector has genuinely professionalised, particularly with the law and the work carried out by UMICC (Influence Professionals and Content Creators Union).
France is one of the most structured countries in Europe on these matters. Brands are particularly vigilant about compliance, transparency, the Responsible Influence Certificate, GDPR requirements… There is real awareness around these issues, even if education is still needed.
This structuring has had a very positive effect: it is raising standards and encouraging more qualitative influence.
If I compare it with the United States, they are ahead when it comes to integrating influence into the marketing mix. There, it is a fully-fledged lever, completely embedded in media ecosystems, commerce and community culture.
They are more willing to embrace fandom and community codes. A beauty brand targeting a K-pop community, for example, will genuinely adopt its cultural codes. In France, we sometimes remain more centred on our own brand codes.
What is holding French brands back from fully integrating influence into the marketing mix?
Brands are investing more and more, but there is still a very strong need to prove return on investment. Senior management expects measurable, quantifiable results, often assessed through sales, even when the initial objective is awareness.
There is often inconsistency between the objectives and the indicators being used.
Influence could be further integrated by becoming the creative core of campaigns. Content produced by creators can feed earned media, social ads, CRM, retail…
I’m a firm believer in this 360-degree approach. Influence should not simply complement a campaign: it can initiate it and feed every other lever. That is what I call circularity in my useful influence approach. We capitalise on content, we reuse it, and that is also how we improve ROI.
Do we need new KPIs to better measure the impact of influence?
I don’t think we need new KPIs. We already have plenty. The real issue is about agreeing which ones to genuinely analyse and taking the time to interpret them correctly.
Signals like shares and saves are often more telling than likes or impressions. A post saved 13,000 times is a real indicator of interest.
For purely awareness-driven campaigns, we can also implement simple and smart mechanisms. For example, story polls about brand awareness that are repeated several months apart can allow us to measure how awareness has evolved amongst the creator’s audience.
2026 will bring a refined version of France’s influencer marketing law: what do you expect from it?
Greater clarity. Some areas remain vague, while others are perhaps too strict compared with other marketing levers.
The educational work carried out by UMICC is essential in order to adapt the law to the realities on the ground.
Responsible influence is fundamental. The most effective partnerships are those that are authentic and transparent. Audiences are now extremely vigilant.
In agencies, this means verifying compliance, analysing indicators and requiring influencers to complete the Responsible Influence Certificate.
We must remain demanding, but also supportive. Some creators are not always fully informed about transparency laws and regulations. Our role is also educational: to explain, guide and correct in a constructive way.
What are the key challenges to developing a strong UGC strategy?
It is tempting to produce a large number of assets, but quality can quickly suffer. Some creators do this to supplement their income, and the result is not always very qualitative.
I favour tailor-made strategies: a limited number of well-targeted pieces of content, with profiles aligned with the audience, a carefully developed script and a genuine creative intention.
The next step is to recover this content in white label and connect it to a strong media amplification strategy. A good example is HelloFresh: high-quality content amplified through social ads, occupying space and generating buzz.
The UGC market will continue to professionalise. At the moment, it is still a bit like the Wild West.
Brands often talk about long-term partnerships with creators. What are the challenges of this approach?
The most effective partnerships are built on time invested upfront: talking, understanding the creator and ensuring the creator understands the brand.
With one-off collaborations, it is difficult to dedicate that time. Over the long term, you build a real relationship, you establish repetition, as in traditional media, and you can gradually move from awareness to conversion.
In your view, what are the major opportunities for influence this year?
I see three main opportunities.
First, long-form and narrative formats. We are seeing almost television-style projects on YouTube, driven by creators who have become true entrepreneurs. These formats allow for more subtle and natural brand integration.
Second, the 360-degree approach combined with media amplification. Influence is increasingly connected to retail, social commerce and conversion. The boundaries between content, media and performance are fading.
Finally, building lasting relationships. Influence will become more structured and more sustainable.
About Kolsquare
Kolsquare is Europe’s leading Influencer Marketing platform, offering a data-driven solution that empowers brands to scale their KOL (Key Opinion Leader) marketing strategies through authentic partnerships with top creators.
Kolsquare’s advanced technology helps marketing professionals seamlessly identify the best content creators by filtering their content and audience, while also enabling them to build, manage, and optimize campaigns from start to finish. This includes measuring results and benchmarking performance against competitors.
With a thriving global community of influencer marketing experts, Kolsquare serves hundreds of customers—including Coca-Cola, Netflix, Sony Music, Publicis, Sézane, Sephora, Lush, and Hermès—by leveraging the latest Big Data, AI, and Machine Learning technologies. Our platform taps into an extensive network of KOLs with more than 5,000 followers across 180 countries on Instagram, TikTok, X (Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat.
As a Certified B Corporation, Kolsquare leads the way in promoting Responsible Influence, championing transparency, ethical practices, and meaningful collaborations that inspire positive change.
Since October 2024, Kolsquare has become part of the Team.Blue group, one of the largest private tech companies in Europe, and a leading digital enabler for businesses and entrepreneurs across Europe. Team.Blue brings together over 60 successful brands in web hosting, domains, e-commerce, online compliance, lead generation, application solutions, and social media.
Author
FAQ
What are the 4 M’s of influencer marketing?
The 4 M’s provide a framework for structuring campaigns. They are make, manage, monitor and measure campaigns.
- Make: Define objectives and design business models that link influencer content to growth.
- Manage: Handle campaign management, from contracts to UTM parameters that track website traffic.
- Monitor: Watch how the campaign progresses without over-reliance on vanity metrics.
- Measure: Assess performance through engagement, conversions, and customer acquisition cost.
For first-time campaigns, the 4 M’s act as a checklist. They keep teams aligned, reduce wasted spend, and ensure influencer activity ties back to measurable business outcomes.
What are the 3 Rs of influencer marketing?
The three Rs of influencer marketing campaigns are reach, relevance and resonance. They help brands create effective campaigns that truly impact their target audience.
Let's break down the three Rs of influencer marketing:
- Reach: Selecting a few influencers with substantial followings or many influencers with small followings ensures your message spreads far and wide. The broader your reach, the more visibility your campaign will have.
- Relevance: It's essential to choose influencers whose content aligns closely with or complements your brand and appeals to your target audience. Relevance should also include which platform you choose to launch your campaign on, whether that's Instagram or YouTube.
- Resonance: Craft campaigns that deeply connect with the audience on an emotional or personal level. Resonance fosters genuine interest, encourages interaction, and builds long-term loyalty, turning followers into dedicated customers and brand advocates.
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