According to The Influencer Marketing Benchmarks Report, beauty is TikTok's most-talked-about industry, with 3.63M posts and a 2.46% engagement rate. A whole lot of pressure for marketers who have a lot of content to work with.
For every penny invested in influencer marketing, the beauty industry has received it back in spades. The formula has often been straightforward: sign top talent, send mass gifting, and track success via tagged posts and hashtags. In 2026, that playbook simply does not work anymore.
Algorithms now fixate on content quality, contextual relevance, and watch time over sheer audience size; the beauty industry is experiencing a fundamental shift in how creator partnerships are identified, evaluated, and executed.
To understand what is driving successful creator strategies today, we spoke with Toto Haba, SVP Growth & Digital Transformation at Benefit Cosmetics, and Megan Duong, CEO and Co-Founder of creator intelligence platform Plot.
