Posting More Sponsored Content Doesn't Cost Creators Their Audience, New Kolsquare Data Confirms

The question of whether posting sponsored content is a turn-off for audiences has been laid to rest. New analysis from Kolsquare of some 863,000 creators’ followings across Europe’s five largest markets shows creators who post more sponsored content lose fewer followers than creators who post none at all.

Covering creators across France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK during a six-month period, the pattern holds market by market, not just on average. The data proves it: the so-called “influencer recession” isn’t as widespread as the headlines would have you believe.

“This new data shows that audiences not only reward creators for transparency, but they even expect creators to collaborate with brands as a natural part of their creator activity,” comments Kolsquare Founder and CEO Quentin Bordage. “It’s a measure of how the industry on both sides has matured. Audiences understand that their favorite creators need to make a living from their content, and creators today understand that transparency trumps trickery in the long game.”

The finding builds on earlier analysis from Kolsquare, which found that correctly disclosing sponsored content is not a negative barrier to performance on engagement and EMV (earned media value) metrics.

Follower loyalty and sponsored posts: the full picture

Kolsquare tracked 862,534 creators with at least 30% of their audience based in each of the five markets, on Instagram and TikTok, from Jan. 1 to June 30, 2026. For each creator, the analysis compares follower count at the start and end of time period and flags any net loss as a loss of followers. Averaged across the five markets, the follower loss rate drops at every step as sponsored-post volume rises:

Creators who post no sponsored content at all lose their followers nearly five times as often as the most prolific posters hold onto theirs. The gain in loyalty is steepest in the first few posts and then levels off into a plateau through the double digits, before improving at the highest volumes tracked (150 or more sponsored posts in six months, a pace only a small number of full-time creators sustain).

Follower loyalty by account size and sponsored post volume

Account size matters too. Combining the five markets into a single weighted table, split by both follower tier and sponsored-post volume, shows the pattern holding steady almost everywhere.

Cell values are the follower loss rate, with the number of creators (not posts or followers) analyzed in that cell in parentheses.

Notably, follower loyalty improves at every step up in the volume of sponsored content for nano, micro and macro creators, the same pattern reported at the European level overall. A macro creator with zero sponsored posts loses followers at a rate of 48%, compared with 23% for one who posts 10 or more, cutting the loss of followers roughly in half.

Across the top tier, creators with 1 million or more followers, the pattern is challenged. The follower loss rate here remains flat regardless of volume, at 22% to 24% across the band. This cohort has the smallest data population by far, so the flat rate should be read as a data-limitation exception rather than a reversal of the trend.

These findings cut against a very different narrative that has dominated creator economy coverage during the summer 2026, one that goes by different names depending on the market: an “influencer recession” in US coverage, “la caída de los influencers” (the downfall of influencers) in Spain, and what the French outlet L’ADN called “une grosse fatigue” (a huge fatigue). The specifics vary by market, but the shape of the story does not: tightening brand budgets, audiences increasingly irritated by displays of wealth, and a particular exhaustion with the generic aspirational-lifestyle format many creators have built their following on.

None of that shows up in this data as a rejection of sponsored content itself. The recession narrative describes fatigue with a specific tone and format, generic luxury and overproduced lifestyle content disconnected from reality, more than with branded partnerships as a category.

And unlike TV or display advertising, creator-led brand content sits inside a relationship a follower already opted into; frequent, well-executed collaborations can read as evidence of a creator’s professionalism and staying power rather than a sales pitch.

How the countries compare

The pattern is identical everywhere. The baseline differs.

Italy and the UK start the highest. Creators with zero sponsored posts lose followers at a rate of 47% in Italy and 46% in the UK, the worst retention of the five markets. France starts lowest. Zero-sponsored-post creators in France lose followers at a rate of 39%, still the strongest loyalty baseline in the dataset even before any branded content enters the picture. Germany and Spain sit in between, at 41% and 45% respectively.

By the time creators reach 20 or more sponsored posts, the gap between markets narrows sharply. Spain drops to a 2.9% follower loss rate at 200-plus posts, the lowest endpoint recorded anywhere in the analysis.

The data clearly establishes that posting more sponsored content and holding on to followers consistently move together. The fear of "sponsorship fatigue" driving audiences away is unfounded.

"This is the first time we've been able to prove, at this scale and across five major markets, that responsible sponsored content builds audience trust rather than erodes it," commented Kolsquare Founder and CEO Quentin Bordage. "For years the industry has treated disclosure and volume of collaborations as risks to manage. Our data shows the opposite: creators who post more, and post transparently, are the ones their audiences stay with. That's the case for more volume of collaborations in the industry, with a responsible approach, made with data instead of intuition."