New analysis from influencer marketing platform Kolsquare, suggests that beauty brands no longer need huge creator networks to dominate Instagram, with carefully chosen partnerships increasingly outperforming sheer scale.
While Maybelline topped Kolsquare’s latest UK beauty influencer marketing rankings with an EMV (Earned Media Value) of £3,451,247, it was Italian cosmetics brand Kiko Milano that emerged as one of the industry’s biggest success stories because despite working with just 298 creators – 76% fewer than Charlotte Tilbury – Kiko generated almost the same EMV while achieving an impressive 17.3% engagement rate, compared with Charlotte Tilbury’s 2.5%. The brand also climbed 12 places up the league table.
The findings suggest the brands delivering the strongest influencer marketing results are becoming less focused on recruiting the largest creator networks and more focused on choosing creators whose audiences are genuinely engaged.
Alicia Van Der Meer, UK Marketing Manager at Kolsquare, says: “For years, influencer marketing has often been treated as a numbers game, with brands believing the more creators they worked with, the greater the impact. These rankings suggest that approach is changing.
“The brands seeing the strongest results are becoming much more strategic about who they partner with. Relevance, authenticity and audience engagement are increasingly proving more valuable than simply recruiting the biggest creator network.”
Extraordinary results from Bellami Hair
Further down the rankings, specialist hair brand Bellami Hair generated more than £718,000 in Earned Media Value from just five creators, achieving an extraordinary 30.8% engagement rate – the highest among the leading brands in the report. The brand also climbed an incredible 342 places to claim the 34th spot.
Overall, Maybelline claimed the top spot in the UK rankings, followed by Charlotte Tilbury, Kiko Milano, Space NK and L’Oréal Paris.
Several brands also enjoyed dramatic rises, with Marc Jacobs Beauty climbing 298 places, Unicorn Cosmetics up 254 places, Spectrum Collections rising 183 places and St. Tropez climbing 169 places.
Slipping down the rankings
Not every brand enjoyed the same momentum. Milk Makeup fell 57 places, while Olaplex, Benefit Cosmetics and e.l.f. Cosmetics also slipped sharply, highlighting just how competitive the beauty influencer landscape has become.
The rankings are based on an analysis of almost 93,000 Instagram posts published by more than 47,000 creators that mention over 2,400 beauty brands between May 29 and June 28, 2026. Earned Media Value (EMV) measures the estimated value generated through influencer engagement, allowing brands to benchmark the effectiveness of their creator partnerships.
