Makeup & Cosmetics Influencer Marketing Benchmarks

What is a good engagement rate for Makeup & Cosmetics content?

The three listed brands start from almost the same place organically, so nearly all the difference between them shows up once they pay. Rare Beauty holds its paid rate closest to its organic one, at roughly two thirds of it. Kiko Milano falls furthest, with paid engagement at about a third of its organic rate. Huda Beauty sits between the two. The prior quarter adds a clear pattern. Organic rates held or edged up: Huda Beauty's did not move, and Kiko Milano's added 0.24 pp. Paid rates fell for all three. Huda Beauty's paid rate lost 1.42 pp, Kiko Milano's lost 1.21 pp and Rare Beauty's lost 0.73 pp. Rare Beauty's lead on paid engagement therefore comes partly from holding up better than the other two. In this market, the paid side is where these brands' engagement moved and where they separate.

Brand	Organic ER	Paid ER
Rare Beauty	2.56%	1.75%
Huda Beauty	2.47%	1.16%
Kiko Milano	2.48%	0.88%

Who are the most visible creators in Makeup & Cosmetics in Italy?

Reach and engagement pull apart among the most visible creators. Giulia De Lellis and ELISA MAINO engage at 0.35% and 0.37%, close to each other and low. Maria Belen stands apart at 1.21%, well above both. A low rate on a high-view account does not necessarily mean weaker content. When more of a creator's views come through boosting, which tends to engage less, the rate falls accordingly. Visibility is also not locked up by a few names: the 20 most viewed creators together hold 26.7% of category views.

1. 1Giulia De Lellis@giuliadelellis103102M views0.35% ER
2. 2Maria Belen@belenrodriguezreal54M views1.21% ER
3. 3ELISA MAINO@la_mainoo45M views0.37% ER

The 20 most viewed creators hold 26.69% of all Makeup & Cosmetics views in Italy.

How much of Makeup & Cosmetics are official partnerships?

Measured by views rather than posts, about a third of what Makeup & Cosmetics content drew came from posts with a paid partnership or boost. The share stands at 32.6% this quarter, against 36.45% in the prior quarter, a move of 3.9 pp down. Across both quarters, organic content brought in the larger part of the category's views.

Which Makeup & Cosmetics posts got the most paid reach?

Public creator posts that brands boosted with Meta ads in Makeup & Cosmetics, Italy, Q3 2026, ranked by the paid reach those ads delivered.

• 13M reach
  Giacomo Giorgio@giacomogiorgioreal

  Features Montblanc3 ads
• 7.2M reach
  Dayoung Clementi@aboutclementi

  Features Dr. Jart+2 ads
• 6.9M reach
  Mattia Basso@mattiaabasso_

  Features Jo Malone London1 ad

Also in the full report

• Timing of BoostingThe median boost starts 4 days after the post goes up.
• Brand Leaderboard20 brands ranked by the public views their creator content earned.
• Paid vs. Earned media20 brands compared on what they bought against what they earned.

How these numbers are measured

• Makeup & Cosmetics counts the posts where we detected a named brand's product in this category, not every post on the subject, so it covers part of the creator feed in Italy rather than all of it.
• Ranked by total public views in the category; share is the creator's category views divided by the category total.
• Creators counts everyone whose content for the brand was live in the quarter, matching the Share of Influence dashboard's own gates; views counts what brand-scored content gained inside it, so the two sit on different populations.
• The paid column counts the ads that delivered in the quarter, public and dark together, each ad's reach pro-rated to the days it ran inside it. The organic column counts views the brand's content gained in the same window.
• Product detection improves from quarter to quarter, so part of a quarter over quarter move can come from better detection rather than from the market.

More influencer marketing benchmarks

All Italy benchmarksAll markets and categories