Most automotive influencer marketing advice stops at "work with micro-influencers" and "be authentic". We wanted to see what the biggest automotive brands actually do, so we pulled the 50 most recent sponsored posts for each of the most-searched automotive brands in the US and looked at who posted, how each deal was disclosed, and which posts took off.

Here's why automotive brands work with creators, the commonalities in their strategy, and a step-by-step way to run your own campaign.

Why automotive brands use influencer marketing

Creators do a few things for automotive brands that ads and product pages can't:

• Creators show the features buyers ask about. A spec sheet can't show what a feature is like to live with. A creator with 337k followers who posts about her dogs tried Tesla's dog mode, self-parking and Supercharging as a first-time EV driver, from a dog parent's point of view.
• A road trip sells the car without a pitch. Followers save a good route and remember the car that drove it. A Durango itinerary filmed with Subaru's Crosstrek Hybrid by a creator with 68k followers got 2.0M plays.
• Car people trust car people. Owners want advice from someone who knows what's under the hood. 12 of Toyota USA's last 50 sponsored posts come from one Toyota technician filming tire rotations and accessory installs.
• Family cars need family creators. Parents shopping for a three-row SUV want to see one on a real family day. 5 of Hyundai's last 50 sponsored posts show the Palisade as a family car, and one from a creator with 369k followers calling it her "mom car" got 447k plays.

Top automotive brands using influencer marketing

These are the most-searched automotive brands in the US, according to Ahrefs. Deal types show how each post was disclosed (for example, with a paid partnership label or an ambassador hashtag). Creator tiers: micro 10k–50k followers, mid-tier 50k–500k, macro 500k+.

1. Tesla: creators who borrow the car

19 of Tesla's last 50 sponsored posts feature the Model Y, and six come from creators who borrowed one on loan and filmed their week with it, from school runs to a first drive. Its creators are spread across the UK (7), the US (7), Turkey (4) and India (3). 42 posts were disclosed as paid partnerships, and none use a code.

• Creators: @rolandsmartin (894k), @shubham_ss (173k) and @jodiedyerofficial (155k) are among the creators who've posted for Tesla.
• How posts were disclosed: 42 paid partnership, 6 gifted, 1 ambassador, 1 unspecified

What to take from it: Lend the car long enough for creators to make it part of their week. @jodiedyerofficial borrowed a Tesla for a week and filmed TikTok dances with her daughter in it, and the post, disclosed as gifted, got 86.7k plays.

2. Toyota: creators at its own events

18 of Toyota USA's last 50 sponsored posts come from events it hosts or sponsors, from a Land Cruiser x Forza Horizon pop-up in Los Angeles to an Ozarks trip with Bass Pro Shops and NASCAR weekends. 14 posts were labeled as ambassador posts, the most of the five. All 26 creators with a listed location are in the US, and none of the posts use a code.

• Creators: @lifewfarzy (3.0M), @everydayalonzo (170k) and @steelojeem (120k) are among the creators who've posted for Toyota.
• How posts were disclosed: 33 paid partnership, 14 ambassador, 2 gifted, 1 unspecified

What to take from it: Put your product where your buyers already spend the weekend. Toyota built a Music Den at the Roots Picnic festival, and a creator with 120k followers posting from it got 1.3M plays, more than ten times their following.

3. Hyundai: World Cup trips for creator families

21 of Hyundai's last 50 sponsored posts are about the FIFA World Cup, many of them creators thanking Hyundai for taking them or their family to a match under #NextStartsNow. Posts also tag local accounts like Hyundai Canada, Hyundai Australia and Hyundai India. It books the biggest creators of the five (a median of 337k followers), its creators are based in the US (18), Australia (4) and Canada (4), and none of the posts use a code.

• Creators: @pov_husband (3.5M), @autocar_india (1.6M) and @esthersoyunpark (267k) are among the creators who've posted for Hyundai.
• How posts were disclosed: 35 paid partnership, 11 ambassador, 4 unspecified

What to take from it: Give creators an experience they'd want to post about anyway. @pov_husband's first World Cup match with Hyundai, labeled as an ambassador post, got 1.2M plays and 57k likes, Hyundai's most-viewed post.

4. Subaru: causes its drivers care about

All but one of Subaru's last 50 sponsored posts were disclosed as paid partnerships, and 11 tie the car to a cause: rescue dogs on #ShelterDogSaturday, free trees with the Arbor Day Foundation and a day with a young cancer patient, Subaru's 2026 Honored Hero. 15 of its 32 creators posted more than once, the highest rebooking rate of the five. Its creators are based in the US (21), Canada (4) and Australia (3), and none use a code.

• Creators: @aguyandagoldenn (5.7M), @isaiahgarza (2.5M) and @davidsjeong (170k) are among the creators who've posted for Subaru.
• How posts were disclosed: 49 paid partnership, 1 ambassador

What to take from it: Back something your buyers already care about, and let creators bring followers along. @aguyandagoldenn's Shelter Dog Saturday post introduced a rescue dog looking for a home, riding in a Subaru Forester Hybrid, and got 2.8M plays and 240k likes.

5. Lexus: a launch trip for the new ES

15 of Lexus' last 50 sponsored posts feature the all-new ES, 10 of them from a launch trip around San Diego. Another 10 come from sports events it sponsors, like the U.S. Open golf tournament and its ATP Head2Head tennis challenge. 11 posts were labeled as ambassador posts, 32 of its creators are in the US, and none use a code.

• Creators: @melisssezen (2.2M), @milesperhr (388k) and @chefshota (370k) are among the creators who've posted for Lexus.
• How posts were disclosed: 30 paid partnership, 11 ambassador, 7 gifted, 2 unspecified

What to take from it: Let creators show their own craft and keep the car in the background. Chef @chefshota tied Lexus' idea of Takumi craftsmanship to the small details of making sushi, and the post got 13.2M plays, more than 35 times his following.

What the top automotive brands have in common

Looking across all 250 posts, four patterns stand out:

• Nobody uses codes. None of the 250 posts include a discount code. Cars are bought after a test drive or a dealership visit, so posts sell the car and the experience, not a checkout.
• Smaller creators get more out of their audience. Across 203 posts with visible likes, creators under 50k followers got a median of 2.2% of their followers liking the post. For creators above 50k, it was 0.7%.
• They book bigger creators. Only 26 of the 179 creators across the five brands have a listed following under 50k, and 102 are mid-tier (50k–500k).
• Views don't follow follower count. A Subaru tailgating video from a creator with 170k followers got 2.5M plays, nearly as many as its post from a creator with 5.7M.

How to run a automotive influencer marketing campaign

Here's how to run a campaign step by step, using what the top automotive brands do at each stage.

1. Pick one goal and one metric

Decide what the campaign is for before you pick a single creator, because the goal changes who you book, how you pay them and what you ask them to post. The top automotive brands' posts show both goals at work. Tesla's UK creators asking followers to book a test drive are built to drive sales. Hyundai's World Cup trips and Subaru's free trees are built for reach.

• Sales: track revenue per creator with a unique link and code.
• Awareness: track views, saves and reach per post.
• Test drive bookings: if buyers need to try the product first, like the three Tesla creators in the UK who told followers how to book a free test drive, give each creator a tracked booking link and compare bookings per creator.

Pick one metric per campaign so you can compare creators fairly afterwards.

2. Find and vet creators who fit your brand

Follower count is the last thing to filter on. A creator with 40k followers who'd never done winter sports filmed a "grown-up snow day" at Subaru's WinterFest and got 274k plays, nearly seven times their following, because the post showed the mountain weekends Subaru's drivers already plan. Across all five brands, creators under 50k followers got about three times the likes relative to their audience.

Our survey found niche micro-creators are outperforming mega-influencers: nearly 60% of marketers said niche influencers performed better in 2025 than in 2024.

• Write down who buys your product (first-time EV owners, parents shopping for a three-row SUV, weekend off-roaders) and look for creators living that life.
• Search Modash's database of 380M+ creators and filter by audience demographics (age, gender, location), bio keywords, engagement rate and fake-follower checks.
• Or describe that creator in plain language, like "creators who film road trip itineraries", and Modash's AI creator search surfaces matching creators on the platform you're searching.

• Check who else they've posted for. @jessicarmaniac posted for Hyundai, and for Audi and Porsche too. Modash shows which brands a creator has already posted sponsored content for.

You can also find automotive influencers for free, for example by searching the hashtags your buyers follow.

3. Choose the deal type

Paid posts lead in automotive. Subaru disclosed 49 of its last 50 posts as paid partnerships, and Tesla 42. Toyota USA, Hyundai and Lexus mix in ambassadors, with 14, 11 and 11 ambassador posts.

• Gifting works for loans and launch drives, like the 7 posts in Lexus' mix disclosed as gifted, mostly from drives around San Diego and Virginia.
• Paid posts suit launches and events that have to land on a date, like a new model year or a big game.
• Affiliate works for accessories and car care products people rebuy, like detailing kits, floor mats or phone mounts.
• Ambassador deals suit creators who drive your car every week anyway, like the pro anglers and swimmers on Toyota USA's ambassador deals.

Commission-only is getting harder to sell, though. Over 23% of marketers in our survey said creators would take performance pay only if a flat fee came with it. If you run tiers, the average commission tiers in our affiliate research were 10%, 14% and 19%, and brands with more than one tier had more active affiliates.

4. Brief the content formats that work in automotive

The captions from the top automotive brands point to three formats that carry most of their creator content:

• Road trips. Subaru's, Tesla's and Lexus' creators turn a drive into a route followers can copy, with stops, hikes and places to eat. Ask creators to list the stops so followers save the post.
• Events and experiences. Toyota's and Hyundai's creators post from festivals, races and stadiums the brand brought them to. Tell creators which shots of the car you need on the way there, not just at the event.
• Everyday life with the car. Hyundai's and Tesla's creators film family days, school runs and errands with the dogs. Give creators enough time with the car to film a normal week.

Whatever the format, give creators one hashtag to use every time, like #toyotapartner or #hyundaipartner, and list the two or three features you want shown on camera.

5. Launch with tracked links and time-limited codes

The top automotive brands didn't use a single code. Posts send followers somewhere instead: a test drive booking in 4 posts, a pop-up or giveaway, or a link in bio to find a Subaru retailer or donation bin.

Codes also leak. In our affiliate marketing research, 47.6% of marketers said they struggle with code poaching, where a creator's code ends up on coupon sites.

• Give every creator a tracked link for everyday posts, and add a code only for launches and sales.
• Put an end date in the caption so followers know the offer won't last.
• If creators use "comment for the link", make sure the link they send by DM is their tracked link.

In Modash, each creator gets a tracked link and a code tied to your Shopify data, so sales from DMs, bios and stories all count toward the right person. Commission is calculated on net revenue after refunds and returns.

6. Rebook your best creators

The top automotive brands come back to the same creators. 46 of their 179 creators posted more than once, and Lexus booked chef @chefshota four times, from sushi to a drive around Seattle in the new LC.

Most marketers want to do more of this. In our influencer marketing trends survey, over 60% said they plan to invest more in long-term partnerships, but only 54% actually ran more of them last year.

• Start new creators on a single post, then offer a longer deal to the ones who hit your metric from step 1.
• Use revenue per creator, not likes, to decide who gets rebooked. Modash's campaign dashboard shows revenue, orders and ROAS for each creator.
• Give rebooked creators something new each time, like a new model year, a road trip route or an event to attend, so their posts don't repeat.

Where automotive creator programs go wrong

The top brands avoid a few mistakes that trip up smaller programs:

• Letting creators film while driving. A creator talking to the camera at the wheel, or showing driver-assist with their hands off, puts followers at risk and your brand right next to it. Brief creators to film parked or from the passenger seat, and keep hands on the wheel in every driving shot.
• Offering commission-only deals to established creators. In our survey, 63% of marketers said influencers were open to becoming affiliates in 2024. In 2025 that fell to 26%. When you reach out to established creators, offer a flat fee plus commission rather than commission alone.
• Running the affiliate program on autopilot. In our affiliate research, marketers who were "very involved" with their affiliates had 71.5% of them active. "Very hands-off" marketers had 10%. Affiliates post when you give them a reason to, so check in every month with something new to share. For automotive, that could be a new model year, a dealership event, or a road trip route to film.
• Sending affiliates old product. 93% of marketers gift products to affiliates, but almost 30% don't refresh them when something new launches. Get every new model or accessory to your creators before it reaches dealers.
• Letting creators guess the specs. Range, mileage and price change by market and trim, and a creator who gets one wrong ends up with a comment section full of corrections. Send an approved spec sheet for the creator's country and check the numbers in captions before posts go live.

FAQ

How much does automotive influencer marketing cost?

It depends on platform, following and engagement. Micro-influencers often work for free product plus a fee in the low hundreds per post, or an affiliate commission. Larger creators charge more. Many brands start with gifting plus commission to test fit before committing to flat fees. To estimate what a specific creator is likely to charge, drop their handle into our free Instagram influencer pricing calculator.

Which platform is best for automotive influencer marketing?

Instagram carries most automotive creator work, and every sponsored post we analyzed for the five most-searched automotive brands ran there. TikTok is worth testing too: in our survey, marketers rated TikTok videos the highest-performing deliverable (53.2%).

Which automotive brands use influencer marketing?

Tesla, Toyota, Hyundai, Subaru and Lexus are the most-searched automotive brands in the US, and all of them run active creator programs. See the breakdown above for who each one works with.

Should automotive brands work with micro or macro influencers?

It depends on your goal. A launch chasing awareness leans bigger, a conversion play leans smaller and more trusted. In the automotive posts we analyzed, creators under 50k followers got about three times the likes relative to their audience size, so most brands should build their base with micro-influencers (10k–50k followers) and add bigger names for launches.

How do I measure automotive influencer marketing?

Track sales per creator with unique links and codes, then compare revenue against what you paid (fees, product and commission). Our engagement rate calculator and fake follower checker help you vet creators before you spend, and our guide to influencer marketing ROI covers the full calculation.

Start your automotive creator program

Find creators, manage relationships, pay them in 180+ countries and 36 currencies, and track every sale through Shopify – all in one place, with no fees taken out of creators' pay. Try Modash free, no credit card required – or browse the top automotive influencers to see who's already out there.