Why Malaysian Brands Are Ditching Influencer Agencies in 2025
Why Malaysian Brands Are Ditching Influencer Agencies in 2025
Something is changing in how Malaysian brands run influencer campaigns. The agency model — which dominated for years — is losing ground fast, and the brands making the switch are not struggling startups looking to cut corners. They're established marketers who have simply done the maths and concluded that the value proposition no longer holds up.
Malaysia's influencer marketing spend is on track to hit RM340 million in 2025, growing at nearly 14% year on year. That growth is not flowing equally toward agencies. A meaningful portion of it is going directly to creators — through platforms, in-house teams, and direct relationships that brands are building for the first time.
Here's why that shift is happening, and what it means if you're still running campaigns the old way.
The Agency Model Was Built for a Different Era
When influencer marketing first took hold in Malaysia around 2015–2018, brands had a genuine problem: there was no infrastructure for finding and working with creators at scale. Agencies filled that gap. They had the creator databases, the negotiation experience, the brief templates, and the compliance frameworks. For brands entering an unfamiliar channel, paying a premium for that expertise was reasonable.
In 2025, that infrastructure gap no longer exists. Today:
- Creator marketplaces let brands find and brief creators directly in minutes
- 79% of Malaysian social media users follow at least one influencer, making creator discovery far easier than it was a decade ago
- Micro-influencers now make up 52% of all influencers in Malaysia, meaning the long tail of the creator economy is massive, accessible, and largely outside agency rosters
- Brand teams have built internal knowledge about platforms, content formats, and creator evaluation
The expertise agencies were paid to provide is now table stakes. The markup, however, remains.
What Brands Are Actually Paying For (And Not Getting)
The typical agency management fee in Malaysia runs 15–30% on top of creator fees. For a RM25,000 campaign, that's RM3,750–7,500 going to the agency before a single piece of content is briefed.
In theory, that fee buys you: creator discovery, negotiation, brief development, content oversight, and reporting. In practice, many Malaysian brand managers describe a different experience:
Opaque pricing. You know what you paid the agency. You rarely know what the creator actually received. The gap between those two numbers is the agency's margin, and it's in their interest to keep it hidden.
Slow execution. Agency campaign setup timelines routinely run 2–3 weeks. In a market where paid social media efforts are getting smarter and brands are partnering with niche micro-influencers for speed and relevance, that lag is increasingly costly.
Roster bias. An agency can only recommend creators they have relationships with. Their incentive is to fill your brief with names from their existing network — not necessarily the best fit for your specific campaign and audience.
No lasting asset. When you stop working with an agency, you lose the creator relationships they managed on your behalf. Every campaign restarts from zero.
The Three Shifts Driving Brands Away from Agencies
1. Micro-Influencer Strategy Has Gone Mainstream
According to Dentsu's 2025 APAC Ad Spend report, paid social media efforts in Malaysia are getting smarter, with brands partnering with niche micro-influencers as a deliberate strategy rather than a budget compromise.
This matters because micro-influencer campaigns are operationally manageable in-house. You don't need an agency to run five micro-influencer campaigns simultaneously — you need a clear brief, a platform to find and brief creators, and a dashboard to track delivery. All of that exists today.
2. Platform Infrastructure Has Matured
The tools available for direct campaign management in 2025 are dramatically better than they were three years ago. Creator marketplaces now offer standardised profiles, transparent rate cards, campaign management dashboards, and direct messaging — everything an agency would charge you to provide, accessible for a fraction of the cost.
Brands no longer need agencies to access creators. They need a good brief and a platform that connects them efficiently.
3. In-House Teams Have Built the Knowledge
A generation of Malaysian marketing managers has now run enough campaigns to understand creator evaluation, brief structure, content approval, and performance measurement. The expertise that once justified agency fees has moved in-house — and with it, the rationale for paying a third party to manage what your team can now handle directly.
What Direct Hiring Looks Like in Practice
The shift doesn't mean doing everything manually. It means using the right tools to replace what the agency was doing — without the markup.
For Malaysian brands making the switch, the typical workflow looks like this:
- Define campaign objectives and budget per creator
- Post a campaign brief on a direct marketplace like CariKOL
- Review applications from relevant creators within hours
- Select, brief, and communicate directly — no intermediary
- Track deliverables and performance from a unified dashboard
The brands doing this well are not just saving money — they're also building direct creator relationships that compound over time. A micro-influencer who delivers strong results in campaign one becomes a go-to partner in campaign three, without any agency involvement.
For a practical walkthrough of the process, see our guide on how to hire a KOL in Malaysia without agency fees.
When Agencies Still Make Sense
This is not an argument that agencies should disappear entirely. There are contexts where they still deliver genuine value:
Large-scale, complex campaigns. If you're managing 50+ creators simultaneously, running integrated campaigns across multiple platforms, and need a production team to support content creation — a full-service agency earns its fee.
International expansion campaigns. If you're a Malaysian brand entering a market where you have no creator relationships or cultural knowledge, a locally rooted agency in that market offers real leverage.
Brands with genuinely no internal capacity. If your team is a founder and one marketing hire, outsourcing to an agency may be the right call — not because agencies are more efficient, but because your internal bandwidth is genuinely stretched.
Outside these scenarios, most Malaysian brands have more to gain from direct hiring than from agency relationships.
The Numbers Side by Side
Here's how the economics compare for a typical Malaysian SME campaign:
| Model | Creator Budget | Agency Fee (20%) | Total Spend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Via agency | RM12,000 | RM2,400 | RM14,400 |
| Direct via CariKOL | RM12,000 | RM0 | RM12,000 |
Run that campaign monthly and the annual difference is RM28,800 — enough to fund two additional creator campaigns per year, or reinvest into content boosting.
For deeper data on what Malaysian creators charge across platforms and tiers, see our KOL rates Malaysia guide.
FAQ
Won't I lose quality without an agency vetting creators?
Not necessarily. Platforms like CariKOL show standardised creator profiles with engagement data, content examples, and verified metrics. You're not vetting blindly — you're making informed decisions based on the same data an agency would use, without the markup.
How much time does managing campaigns directly actually take?
For a campaign with 3–5 creators, most brand managers report spending 3–5 hours across the campaign lifecycle — posting the brief, reviewing applications, briefing selected creators, and tracking delivery. That's manageable alongside other responsibilities, especially with a purpose-built platform handling the infrastructure.
Is this trend likely to continue?
The influencer advertising market in Malaysia is forecasted to grow at a double-digit CAGR through 2030. As the market matures and creator platforms improve, the case for agency intermediaries weakens further. The brands building direct creator relationships now are positioning themselves well for a market where speed, authenticity, and efficiency matter more than ever.
The Infrastructure Exists. The Question Is Whether You'll Use It.
Malaysian brands no longer need to choose between "full agency" and "doing everything manually." There's a third option — direct hiring through a purpose-built platform — that gives you the efficiency of a marketplace with the control of an in-house approach.
CariKOL is built for exactly this. Post your campaign brief, receive applications from active Malaysian creators, and manage everything directly — no agency, no markup, no waiting.
Start your first direct campaign today.