Instagram engagement dropped 24% this year, and the spending continued
Average engagement rates hit 0.48% in 2026, a 24% decrease from the previous year. Posts are generating an average 16% fewer comments than in 2025, as users increasingly scroll past content rather than leaving a comment. And yet, influencer marketing spend is on pace for $40.51 billion this year compared to $31.07 billion in 2025, per 2026 data benchmarks from Influencer Marketing Hub.
These two trends happening in opposite directions help explain who is actually getting paid on Instagram today. While retaining attention is harder for any given influencer, the creators that do still succeed are more valuable to brands than ever. While not always the case, the difference between a stagnant account and a six-figure one is often not the number of followers that an account has but how intentionally that creator uses Instagram promo.
Why shares and saves trump comments, but comments remain critical for sponsorship talks
Instagram has reported that the most important individual metric in 2026 is shares per reach, or the rate at which users DM a post to another person, followed by saves. Thirdly come comments, provided the replies go beyond a single emoji.
That order of priority changes what creators put in their captions. A caption designed to be forwarded (like a joke between friends, a relatable statement, or a “tag a friend who…”) performs better than one that is designed for likes. But comments are still relevant for the most important type of value for content monetization, sponsorship vetting: comments from followers remain the primary place marketers go to evaluate a potential brand partner. When a marketer reviews a pool of potential collaborators ahead of an ad contract, one of the first places they will look to ensure that an audience is genuinely interested in the content is the comments. If a post has hundreds of likes but absolutely no conversation, it immediately looks inauthentic, whether the profile is fake or real.
Another compounding effect you should keep in mind is: the more comments you get, the more DM conversations you start, which signals more engagement, which signals to the algorithm it wants to show the post to more people, which leaves more comments and DMs. Creators who treat the first hour after posting as work instead of passive waiting are the ones most likely to see this flywheel.
The math brands are actually paying
Brands pay for engagement rate now, not reach. And here’s the math: micro-influencers, the ones who have 10,000 to 100,000 followers, get 3x more engagement than macro accounts, and they charge $100 to $500 a post or $200 to $800 a Reel. Nano-influencers, the ones who have 1,000 to 10,000 followers, charge $200 to $2,000 per post depending on niche and get 4% to 7% engagement rates compared to 1% to 3% engagement rates for accounts that have over 500,000 followers.
Every dollar spent on influencer marketing yields $5.78, on average, which is a higher ROI than any digital ad channel, which is part of the reason brands continue to spend on influencer marketing and move away from big names in favor of more engaged audiences.
The content and engagement habits of six-figure accounts vs. stalled ones
Carousels over single images. Carousel posts currently sit on top of 2026 engagement rate benchmarks at around 0.55%, while Reels sit at 0.50% and single images sit at 0.35%. Multi-slide posts keep people on your content longer, and dwell time is the new primary ranking factor for Instagram.
How long your caption is. Posts that have 125 to 150 words in the caption have an engagement rate of 3.1% versus 2.2% for posts that have captions under 50 words. The algorithm and the person scrolling both need more information and reason for them to take their time looking at your content and stop on it.
How consistent you reply to comments and DMs. People will see content of yours that replies to comments and DMs more regularly, because the algorithm is seeing that two-way interaction between the account and the follower and prioritizing it over the account that is not replying to those interactions.
Commenting on the first 120 minutes of a post. Because the signal of a comment is only counted once a single emoji of comment is added, the first 120 minutes of a post either turn into a meaningful conversation or it does not. There are companies that you can buy Instagram comments to buy 100 comments for a post, to get a conversation going early before comments get organic comments, then you can go back into all of the comments and reply to all of the ones that come in for that remainder of the day.
More revenue streams beyond brand partnerships. An in-depth look at income streams for Instagram creators in 2026 showed that 6-figure Instagram creators make money on more than one channel. The report by beehiiv showed that creators with $100,000+ in annual revenue have five to seven income sources. Brand deals remain the largest single stream, but newsletters, digital products, affiliate income, and merchandise fill the gaps. An account built on sponsorship income only has more to lose if engagement is low, while those with multiple revenue streams will generate sales even in a bad month.
What this means for an account building from scratch
None of this relies on a huge following. A 6% engagement rate among 4,000 followers makes a nano account more attractive to sponsors than a 200,000 follower account at 1.5%. What matters is developing strong habits: post formats that capture attention, long form captions that can be saved or shared, and a comment section that’s built to encourage conversation from the first second a post goes live.
FAQ
How much do micro-influencers charge for a sponsored Instagram post in 2026? Micro-influencers with between 10,000 and 100,000 followers typically charge between $100 to $500 per sponsored post, or between $200 to $800 per Reel.
Do Instagram comments still affect the Instagram algorithm in 2026? Comments still carry weight, but with a caveat. Instagram classifies comments as its third highest engagement signal, trailing after sends per reach and saves, and only registers replies that contain more than a simple emoji.
What’s a “good” Instagram engagement rate in 2026? Nano accounts (less than 10,000 followers) average 4% to 7%, micro accounts (10,000 to 100,000) average around 3.5%, and accounts with more than 500,000 followers usually sit between 1% to 3%. The platform-wide average across all account sizes is 0.48%.