‘Download My Free Guide’: What Products and Services Do Health and Wellness Influencers Promote?

Pew Research Center illustration. (Photos via Unsplash)

A vast majority of health and wellness influencers on social media recommended products or services at least once over a three-month period. In fact, 38% of these influencers’ posts promoted some kind of product or service, according to a recent Pew Research Center analysis in spring 2026. But what exactly do these influencers promote? And what do audiences do with these recommendations?

Response	Share
Tried a fitness, diet or beauty routine	63
Bought a health or wellness product	55
Encouraged someone they know to try a product or treatment	42
Asked a doctor about a medical treatment or procedure	39
Stopped using a product or medical treatment	33
Attended an event, meetup or seminar	14

The most common type of product that health and wellness influencers promote is information: Instructional content like workout guides, apps and recipes are recommended in 36% of posts containing promotions. Other content like books, podcasts or YouTube videos are in 11% of these posts.

And overall, these promotions tend to get a response from their audiences. Nearly two-thirds of adults who get information from these influencers (63%) say they’ve tried a fitness, diet or beauty routine because they heard about it this way, while a bit over half (55%) say they’ve bought a product based on these recommendations.

Among those who get information from health and wellness influencers, women are more likely than men to have tried a routine, bought a product or encouraged others to try a product or treatment. And Black consumers are more likely than White consumers to say they have bought a product or encouraged others based on these recommendations.

Changes in consumer choices can go the other direction, too. A third of those who get information from health and wellness influencers say they have stopped using a product or treatment because of an influencer’s discussion of it.

Below, we’ll take a closer look at the following questions:

About this research

This study looks at the content posted by health and wellness influencers – individuals with large audiences online who provide information about health and wellness, largely on social media. It builds on our previous study of who these influencers are and how U.S. adults engage with their content, as well as our recent look at what these influencers post about.

Why did we do this?

Healthcare providers remain the most common source of health information among U.S. adults. But many get information about their health from sources outside of the doctor’s office, including social media. We conducted this study to better understand what the public might encounter when they get health and wellness information on social media, including the products and services they may see recommended there.

How did we do this?

This analysis is based on two data sources.

For the social media component of this analysis, we analyzed data from posts published by 6,334 health and wellness influencers. We collected 535,512 Instagram, TikTok and YouTube posts published by these influencers from Feb. 1 to April 30, 2026. Then, we analyzed the audio, video and captions of these posts to better understand what products and services they promote. This analysis focuses on the 204,545 posts that included a product or service recommendation. For each post flagged as having a promotion, the LLM also extracted the snippet of text in which the product, service or other offer was mentioned. It then classified the snippet into different product and service categories for further examination. See the full prompt we used to classify offered product types.

Our measurement of promotions was designed to capture the wide range of promotions – with varying levels of disclosure – that are found in social media posts. In our analysis, promotion includes not only posts that explicitly mention a sponsorship or brand partnership, but also any post that contains a suggestion to buy a product or subscribe to a service. Although this definition captures a variety of ways promotions appear in posts, it likely does not apply to subtle forms of promotion and undisclosed sponsorships.

For the survey component of this analysis, we surveyed 5,023 U.S. adults from June 9 to 15, 2025. Everyone who took part in this survey is a member of the Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel . The survey represents the views of the full U.S. adult population.

Here are the survey questions used for this analysis, the detailed survey responses and the methodology.

What do health and wellness influencers promote?

Information

In health and wellness influencer posts that include a promotion, the most common promotion category is informational resources (cited in 45% of these posts).

Topic	Share	group
Informational products	45	1
Instructional guides	36	1
Other content	11	1
Physical products	32	2
Supplements	11	2
Personal care	8	2
Apparel and accessories	7	2
Wellness devices	5	2
Food and drink	5	2
Medication	1	2
Services	22	3
Direct services/coaching	15	3
Medical	5	3
Complementary medicine	1	3
Medical spas and wellness treatments	1	3
Events and communities	9	4
Other	7	5

This category breaks down as follows:

36% of these posts recommend instructional resources like workout programs, nutrition guides and other how-to materials.
11% direct audiences to more general content, like books, YouTube videos or podcast episodes.

About three-quarters of influencers who have shared a post with a promotion recommended an informational resource at least once, making it the most common kind of promotion.

Physical products

About a third of these posts (32%) promote physical products, with some products being more common than others:

11% promote supplements.
8% recommend personal care and appearance products such as sunscreen or haircare products.
7% promote apparel.
5% recommend health and wellness devices such as gym equipment.
5% recommend food and drinks.

Physical product recommendations are also widespread among these influencers. In fact, around seven-in-ten of them recommended such products at least once.

Related: About 8 in 10 Americans take supplements, and many see them as important to their health

Services

Nearly a quarter of these posts (22%) promote a service:

15% point audiences to non-medical services that tend to be directly provided by the influencers themselves, such as coaching, consulting or other sessions.
5% promote medical services.
1% recommend complementary or alternative treatments.
1% promote medical spas and other wellness treatments.

About six-in-ten of influencers with promotions (58%) recommend these kinds of services.

Events and communities

Many health and wellness influencers build communities with their followers through offline and virtual spaces, such as retreats, webinars and online groups.

Promotions for these kinds of communities and events appear in 9% of recommendation posts, and four-in-ten influencers who run promotions include these kinds of recommendations.

Related: Online Community and Connection in America

Which influencers are doing the promoting?

Top promoters

As shown in our previous research on health and wellness influencers, almost all of them (92%) promoted goods or services of some kind at least once in our study period. But some are unusually prolific. Among influencers who promote, 10% produced nearly half (46%) of all posts with a recommendation. These influencers promote something in most of their posts: On average, 66% of their posts are recommendations, compared with an average of 38% for all other influencers who have posted a promotion.

Gender

Influencers who are men and women tend to promote things at similar rates, but there are some differences in what they recommend. Women are more likely than men to promote personal care and appearance products (10% vs. 4% of influencers who promote) and apparel (8% vs. 5%). On the flip side, they are less likely to promote medical services than men (3% vs. 10%).

Influencer background

Influencer background	Share	group	Diff compared with average
All posts	38	1
Dietician/Nutritionist	46	2	8
Complementary, alternative and integrative health	45	2	7
Allied health	39	2	1
Conventional medicine	35	2	-3
Mental health	34	2	-4

Influencers with different backgrounds tend to recommend different products and services, and do so at different rates.

This pattern shows up when looking at influencers who are healthcare professionals.

Mental health and conventional medicine professionals, like doctors and nurses, are among the least likely to promote products. In contrast, dieticians and nutritionists and complementary, alternative and integrative health professionals (a category that includes functional medical practitioners, chiropractors and massage therapists) are among the most likely to.

Influencer background	Share of posts that promote supplements
No credentials	19
Athlete	17
Researcher	15
Complementary, alternative and integrative health professional	14
Allied health professional	12
Activist	11
Life experience	11
Dietician/Nutritionist	11
Entrepreneur	10
Author	9
Coach	9
Conventional medicine professional	7
Mental health professional	4

In general, health and wellness influencers tend to recommend products and services that align with their professional backgrounds. For example, athletes are the most likely group to promote apparel. Medical professionals are the most likely to promote medical services, including their own practices. And while influencers of nearly every background recommend instructional guides, this is more common among dieticians and coaches than others.

When it comes to supplements, influencers who don’t list any expertise in their credentials and athletes are among those who tend to recommend them the most. And complementary, alternative and integrative healthcare professionals are about twice as likely to include these recommendations as conventional medicine professionals.

Which posts are most likely to have promotion in them?

Topic	Share	Diff	group
All posts	38		1
OTC medications or supplements	66	28	2
Men’s health	56	18	2
Personal appearance	55	17	2
Longevity	52	14	2
Nutrition	52	14	2
Healthy habits	50	12	2
Women’s health	47	9	2
Health policy	29	-9	2
Not health or wellness	21	-17	2

Health and wellness influencers are more likely to include recommendations in posts about healthy living topics or medical topics than in posts about health policy or posts that are not about health or wellness at all.

But there are wider differences by subtopic. For instance, roughly two-thirds of posts mentioning supplements include a recommendation, as do half or more of posts mentioning men’s health, personal appearance, longevity, nutrition and healthy habits.

Which calls to action do health and wellness influencers use?

Influencers employ various calls to action to monetize their content. These range from free resources, such as guides, that may capture future engagement to affiliate links and promo codes that give them a commission on sales.

About one-in-ten posts with a recommendation (12%) promote free products or services. This is most common among posts that recommend informational products.

A smaller share of these posts (6%) include discount codes or affiliate links to stores selling the products they’re promoting. This is most common among posts that promote physical products.

How common is direct collaboration with brands?

About a quarter of health and wellness influencer posts that promote something include a direct sponsorship or collaboration with a brand. But no single brand makes up more than 1% of all posts with a recommendation.

The brands that appear in these posts most often are mostly clothing companies. Seven of the top 10 sell activewear, such as Gymshark, DFYNE, Oner Active and Alo Yoga. Two sell supplements, such as Transparent Labs and Raw Nutrition. The top 10 list also includes the media company Biohack Yourself.

Note: Here are the survey questions used for this analysis, the detailed survey responses and the methodology.

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