Ever poured half your budget into ten “diverse” creators, only to realize later that half their followers were the same people? Yep — audience overlap. The silent budget killer.
I know how big a time (and money) waste it must be because I’ve seen a few influencers I follow promote the same product around the same time. If it’s something that I really liked, it wouldn’t take several influencer videos to convince me to buy it…just the one would do.
And like me, many of their followers would be following the same influencers and seeing the same product promoted multiple times. It’s not that it’s ineffective; it’s just redundant.
You’re basically spending money to reach the same audience group over and over again, when some of it could’ve been used to reach a different audience group and make your marketing dollars go further. In other words, you could be maximizing your ROI.
Most agencies look at reach, engagement, and content style when choosing influencers. But without checking overlap, you’re not scaling your audience, you’re just re-targeting the same crowd.
The smartest influencer campaigns aren’t about casting wider — they’re about casting smarter. And the secret weapon? A data-backed audience overlap analysis that tells you who shares followers, who doesn’t, and how to negotiate based on real incremental reach.
Imagine this: you’re working with 10 different influencers who have a combined reach of 1 million. On the surface, these influencers seem diverse because they’re from varying niches – some are artists, some focus on makeup, some create crafting content. So you should be able to reach about 1 million different people, give or take, right?
But if you look closer, you might notice that these influencers have a 40% audience overlap, meaning 40% of those 1 million people are following the same influencers.
There are a few reasons why this could happen:
So if you’re paying all 10 influencers, you’re essentially paying 10 times to reach 40% of the same audience.
That’s wasted spend. And in a world where influencer budgets are under scrutiny, wasted reach is a luxury no brand can afford.
When creators share large portions of followers, your reach metrics become inflated — and your campaign performance stagnates. You’re paying for “new eyes” that aren’t actually new.
As such, you can think of audience overlap as your ROI leak detector.
Understanding audience overlap gives you valuable insights to inform your influencer partnerships and negotiations. When you have this information, you’re not just negotiating with creators, but you’re negotiating with data.
Here’s a closer look at how agencies use it for their influencer negotiations.
For influencers to add value to your campaign, it’s not just their total reach that matters but their incremental reach. How many new and unique audiences are they bringing to your campaign?
If they have 1 million followers but a 60% audience match with other influencers in your roster, it might not make sense to pay them exactly according to their rate card. Otherwise, you’re essentially paying a high fee just to engage 60% of the same people over and over again.
Know exactly what each creator adds to your total audience pool. This lets you build data-backed arguments for fee adjustments, where you could negotiate lower fees with influencers having a high audience overlap.
A high audience match doesn’t necessarily have to eliminate influencers from your campaign. Instead, you need to take a more strategic approach to working with them.
Spot influencers who share large portions of followers and group them together. You could use these influencer clusters to negotiate package deals, for instance. This could help you lower your influencer spend and maximize ROI.
Another approach is to design alternate posting schedules to avoid saturation. This means you’re not flooding people’s feeds with the same type of promotion around the same time. Space out the content between different creators so you can sustain engagement over a longer period, which could amplify your campaign’s impact.
Your audience overlap data also gives you quantitative proof to back up your budgeting decisions in front of clients and relevant stakeholders. For instance, you might decide to pay a smaller creator the same rate as someone having significantly more followers than them. When a client questions this decision, the overlap data could help you justify your decision.
In other words, you could show them that it’s not just preferential treatment. And you’re not simply choosing to pay a certain influencer more because of “vibes.” Instead, you have data to prove that the smaller creator with a unique audience might deliver more real value.
Brands typically want to work with multiple creators to reach a bigger audience. But if those creators are reaching the same group of people, it defeats the purpose. So your audience overlap data can be used to design multi-creator campaigns that actually make sense.
You can use overlap mapping to diversify demographics and handpick influencers who can reach a truly diverse audience. This means refining your influencer selection to focus on creators with a low audience overlap. So you can ensure that your campaign hits new audience segments, not the same loyal fans five times over.
Pro Tip: In Influencity, audience overlap visuals show shared percentages between creators, helping you refine your lineup before you even send proposals.
Influencity comes with comprehensive audience analytics that allow agencies to see exactly how much audience duplication exists between any number of creators. Here’s how you can track audience overlap in the platform.
The platform makes it easy to calculate how many followers a certain group of influencers share between themselves. You can add influencers to a list and compare their followers, and Influencity will automatically calculate the shared audience percentages. It even comes with heatmaps to help you visualize their shared follower percentages.
So you can easily understand just how many of the same people you’ll reach with a certain influencer mix. And you can switch things around to visualize how the overlap data changes, allowing you to seamlessly optimize your influencer casting.
Influencity also automatically calculates the percentage of unique followers an influencer has compared to other creators in your list. This makes it easy to assess how many people you can likely reach through your campaign if you work with a certain combination of influencers.
You can even run an estimate to forecast how much real reach your campaign will have after accounting for overlap. So you can adjust your influencer mix and add or remove influencers before your campaign goes live. This helps you avoid wasted spend and design campaigns that deliver the kind of reach you expect.
The overlap insights from Influencity’s dashboard give you the leverage you need to justify influencer fee proposals and counteroffers. You can use it to build fee models that reflect true incremental value, where influencers are eligible for a higher fee if they have a higher percentage of unique followers, not just because they have a high follower count.
With Influencity making it easy to compare the audiences of different influencer sets, you can see how various influencer combinations bring in unique audiences. Use this visibility to inform your influencer selection and choose diverse influencer sets that will help you expand your reach into fresh segments instead of reaching the same people over and over again.
This isn’t about adding more influencers just to expand reach. It’s about strategically casting influencers to reach untapped audience segments that are relevant to you.
Pro Tip: Use audience overlap reports as part of your client proposals — it shows professionalism, data mastery, and transparent strategy.
As one of the largest sports and fashion brands, Adidas aims to create brand desirability by targeting a diverse range of consumer segments. The brand’s consumer grid consists of six key quadrants:
The brand uses strategic influencer partnerships to reach these diverse audience groups, focusing on creators in fashion, music, and sports/fitness. However, Adidas faced a common challenge as these influencers often had overlapping audiences.
Instead of spreading the budget thin across overlapping profiles, Adidas used audience overlap analysis to segment creators by cultural influence:
They adjusted messaging per vertical and coordinated posting schedules to minimize duplication.
For instance, streetwear and fashion creators shared content trying on the brand’s key fashion pieces.
Some would also show their audience how they styled some of the most on-trend Adidas shoes. This type of messaging serves as outfit inspo for fashion and streetwear enthusiasts, positioning Adidas products as a style staple.
Meanwhile, athlete influencers would share content where they use the brand’s products. This positions Adidas as a go-to brand for athletes and fitness enthusiasts, giving credibility to their vast selection of athleticwear.
Result:
Lesson: Overlap is not the enemy — mismanaging it is.
Having insights into influencer audience overlap data can give you plenty of leverage to inform and strengthen your campaigns. Here are some tips to make the most of it.
Start using your overlap data even before you start your negotiations. Use it to inform your influencer selection and diversify your influencer casting. Then once you’re ready for negotiations, bring the data to the table so you can position yourself as strategic and data-savvy. This data can be used to justify influencer rate proposals and back up your counteroffers.
Your audience overlap data can be used to highlight the unique reach for each influencer. This allows you to build proposals that clearly show how an influencer adds incremental value to your campaign. So you can justify costs and win client buy-in, which will streamline budget approvals.
Influencity further helps you strengthen your proposals with audience brand affinity data. This allows you to showcase the different interests of an influencer’s audience based on the kinds of brands they interact with. Use this data to highlight how each influencer helps you tap into a fresh and relevant audience segment in addition to their unique reach.
While audience overlap often means reaching the same people through multiple influencers, it isn’t always a bad thing. Some shared audiences can reinforce messaging consistency. Instead of seeing just one influencer talk about how much they love a product, seeing a few trusted influencers vouching for it can add credibility.
So instead of trying to avoid overlap altogether, try to balance it so there’s just enough repetition to enhance trust. The goal is to achieve strategic repetition but avoid redundancy.
Audiences evolve. People who weren’t following an influencer before might start following them after seeing a piece of content they love. Some may start following an influencer after seeing them collaborate with another creator they follow.
That’s why you need to regularly check for changes in overlap data to see if you’re still working with a diverse influencer mix. Perform a quarterly check to keep your influencer mix optimized.
In influencer marketing, bigger isn’t always better — different is.
Audience overlap is the missing link between smart strategy and wasted budget. By understanding who shares followers and how that impacts reach, you can negotiate smarter, pay fairer, and scale faster.
With Influencity’s Audience Analysis, agencies and brands get instant clarity on overlap, engagement quality, and incremental reach — all in one place.
Because at the negotiation table, it’s not just about who has influence — it’s about who brings new eyes to the brand.