AnyMind Group released its “Influencer Marketing in Malaysia 2026 Report,” a data-driven analysis of the country’s Influencer Marketing drawn from first-party campaign data collected through its AnyTag platform. The report tracks trends across influencer tiers, platform usage, content verticals, and audience engagement rates from 2023 through 2025, offering brands and agencies a detailed view of how the market has changed.
Malaysia’s digital infrastructure underpins the scale of the market. The country’s internet penetration rate stands at 97.7%, with 34.9 million people online and 30.7 million active on social media, representing 85% of the total population.
The report also cites data from the “Malaysia Digital Landscape 2025 Report,” indicating that 54% of Malaysians prefer influencer-led short videos when discovering new brands.
TikTok Closes the Gap on Instagram
Between 2023 and 2025, the distribution of Influencer Marketing campaigns shifted substantially. Instagram held an 89.66% share of campaigns in 2023, a figure that contracted to 47.69% by 2025 as TikTok climbed to 44.44%. The report describes the current state as “a dominant duopoly between TikTok and Instagram,” with the two platforms collectively accounting for over 92% of Influencer Marketing activity.
Xiaohongshu, the Chinese social commerce platform also known as RedNote or XHS, captured a 7.87% share of campaigns in 2025, its first year of formal brand campaign activity in Malaysia following AnyMind Group becoming an official Tier 1 partner of the platform. The report positions Xiaohongshu as a third distinct channel suited to “credible, review-based lifestyle seeding to influence purchase decisions,” separate from Instagram’s brand-building function and TikTok’s mass-awareness role.
Nano and Micro Creators Drive Growth
Malaysia’s creator pool skews toward mid-tier professionals. Micro-influencers, defined in the report as creators with 10,000 to 100,000 followers, hold the largest market share at 39.7%, followed by macro-influencers at 36.2% and nano-influencers at 19%. Top stars account for 5% of the total.
Growth rates tell a different story. Micro-influencers recorded a 63.90% growth rate in 2025, recovering from slower expansion the prior year. Nano-influencer growth nearly tripled from 6.85% in 2023 to 19.63% in 2025. By contrast, macro-influencer growth slowed to 13.75% and top stars fell to 2.72%. The report characterizes the trend as a shift “toward a more grassroots, high-volume creator ecosystem.”
On engagement, the data consistently favors smaller creators. Across all platforms sampled, nano-influencers deliver the highest median engagement rates. On TikTok, nano-influencers post a median engagement rate of 4.08%, compared to 2.30% for micro-influencers and 0.91% for macro-influencers. TikTok leads all platforms for engagement across every tier.
Fashion & Beauty Dominate Campaign Spend
Investment in Influencer Marketing concentrates heavily in Fashion & Beauty, which accounts for 67.9% of total campaign spend in Malaysia. Lifestyle and Home follow at 13.8% and Food and Drink at 12.8%. The report notes that TikTok holds a 51.98% share of Fashion & Beauty spend, while Instagram leads in Lifestyle and Home at 49.81% and Food and Drink at 50.46%.
Xiaohongshu captures 28.27% of Lifestyle and Home campaign spend, a figure the report identifies as notable given the platform’s recent entry into formal brand campaign activity.
Awareness Campaigns Remain Dominant
Awareness-based campaigns accounted for 70% of total Influencer Marketing activity in Malaysia in 2025, compared to 30% for performance-oriented campaigns. The report notes that awareness campaigns peaked at 78.98% in 2024 before declining slightly, while performance campaign share recovered from a low of 21.02% in 2024 to the current 30%. The report contrasts this with broader Asia-Pacific trends, where performance-driven objectives are gaining faster.
Xiaohongshu Creator Ecosystem
The Xiaohongshu creator base in Malaysia skews heavily toward smaller tiers, with nano-influencers comprising 46.9% and micro-influencers 44.9% of the platform’s active creators. Macro-influencers represent 8.2%. Content posted on the platform differs from other channels: Lifestyle and Home leads at 31.27% and Travel at 23.77%, compared to Entertainment and Food and Drink, which dominate on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. The report states that 90% of Xiaohongshu users search for products for purchase consideration, and 80% of brand and product search traffic converts to e-commerce action.
The report was produced using the AnyTag platform data and includes a random sample of 5,000 Malaysian influencers with between 1,000 and 1,000,000 followers across all major content verticals.
Image source: AnyMind Group Get the full report here
Dragomir is a Serbian freelance blog writer and translator. He is passionate about covering insightful stories and exploring topics such as influencer marketing, the creator economy, technology, business, and cyber fraud.
AnyMind Group released its “Influencer Marketing in Malaysia 2026 Report,” a data-driven analysis of the country’s Influencer Marketing drawn from first-party campaign data collected through its AnyTag platform. The report tracks trends across influencer tiers, platform usage, content verticals, and audience engagement rates from 2023 through 2025, offering brands and agencies a detailed view of how the market has changed.
Malaysia’s digital infrastructure underpins the scale of the market. The country’s internet penetration rate stands at 97.7%, with 34.9 million people online and 30.7 million active on social media, representing 85% of the total population.
The report also cites data from the “Malaysia Digital Landscape 2025 Report,” indicating that 54% of Malaysians prefer influencer-led short videos when discovering new brands.
TikTok Closes the Gap on Instagram
Between 2023 and 2025, the distribution of Influencer Marketing campaigns shifted substantially. Instagram held an 89.66% share of campaigns in 2023, a figure that contracted to 47.69% by 2025 as TikTok climbed to 44.44%. The report describes the current state as “a dominant duopoly between TikTok and Instagram,” with the two platforms collectively accounting for over 92% of Influencer Marketing activity.
Xiaohongshu, the Chinese social commerce platform also known as RedNote or XHS, captured a 7.87% share of campaigns in 2025, its first year of formal brand campaign activity in Malaysia following AnyMind Group becoming an official Tier 1 partner of the platform. The report positions Xiaohongshu as a third distinct channel suited to “credible, review-based lifestyle seeding to influence purchase decisions,” separate from Instagram’s brand-building function and TikTok’s mass-awareness role.
Nano and Micro Creators Drive Growth
Malaysia’s creator pool skews toward mid-tier professionals. Micro-influencers, defined in the report as creators with 10,000 to 100,000 followers, hold the largest market share at 39.7%, followed by macro-influencers at 36.2% and nano-influencers at 19%. Top stars account for 5% of the total.
Growth rates tell a different story. Micro-influencers recorded a 63.90% growth rate in 2025, recovering from slower expansion the prior year. Nano-influencer growth nearly tripled from 6.85% in 2023 to 19.63% in 2025. By contrast, macro-influencer growth slowed to 13.75% and top stars fell to 2.72%. The report characterizes the trend as a shift “toward a more grassroots, high-volume creator ecosystem.”
On engagement, the data consistently favors smaller creators. Across all platforms sampled, nano-influencers deliver the highest median engagement rates. On TikTok, nano-influencers post a median engagement rate of 4.08%, compared to 2.30% for micro-influencers and 0.91% for macro-influencers. TikTok leads all platforms for engagement across every tier.
Fashion & Beauty Dominate Campaign Spend
Investment in Influencer Marketing concentrates heavily in Fashion & Beauty, which accounts for 67.9% of total campaign spend in Malaysia. Lifestyle and Home follow at 13.8% and Food and Drink at 12.8%. The report notes that TikTok holds a 51.98% share of Fashion & Beauty spend, while Instagram leads in Lifestyle and Home at 49.81% and Food and Drink at 50.46%.
Xiaohongshu captures 28.27% of Lifestyle and Home campaign spend, a figure the report identifies as notable given the platform’s recent entry into formal brand campaign activity.
Awareness Campaigns Remain Dominant
Awareness-based campaigns accounted for 70% of total Influencer Marketing activity in Malaysia in 2025, compared to 30% for performance-oriented campaigns. The report notes that awareness campaigns peaked at 78.98% in 2024 before declining slightly, while performance campaign share recovered from a low of 21.02% in 2024 to the current 30%. The report contrasts this with broader Asia-Pacific trends, where performance-driven objectives are gaining faster.
Xiaohongshu Creator Ecosystem
The Xiaohongshu creator base in Malaysia skews heavily toward smaller tiers, with nano-influencers comprising 46.9% and micro-influencers 44.9% of the platform’s active creators. Macro-influencers represent 8.2%. Content posted on the platform differs from other channels: Lifestyle and Home leads at 31.27% and Travel at 23.77%, compared to Entertainment and Food and Drink, which dominate on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. The report states that 90% of Xiaohongshu users search for products for purchase consideration, and 80% of brand and product search traffic converts to e-commerce action.
The report was produced using the AnyTag platform data and includes a random sample of 5,000 Malaysian influencers with between 1,000 and 1,000,000 followers across all major content verticals.
Image source: AnyMind Group
Get the full report here
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