BeReal wants influencers to help chart its next era.
The social media app, which prompts users to quickly snap a photo or video within a two-minute window each day, is starting to proactively pitch creators in the US to get verified on the platform and post more regularly.
Ben Moore, BeReal’s US managing director, told CMO Insider that the company has been talking with creators who “have this very unfiltered, raw, and authentic way of engaging with their audience, that are a perfect fit for BeReal.”
He said the concentrated effort to begin courting US influencers began in the second quarter of this year. It builds on the outreach it kicked off in France and Japan in the first quarter, which helped it build deeper relationships with creators, including Léna Situations, Inoxtag, and Michou.
The move is part of a broader strategy to help the app regain some of the momentum from its breakout year in 2022, when BeReal went viral and topped app store charts.
The research company Sensor Tower estimates BeReal was downloaded about 8.5 million times in 2025, representing a 41% year-over-year decline. While BeReal’s current user base might be much smaller than rivals, the company says its audience is loyal. BeReal says it has 40 million monthly active users, with more than 50% of them opening the app 6 days a week.
BeReal doesn’t have an ad revenue-sharing program or a creator fund like other big social platforms. Instead, BeReal says it can help facilitate partnerships between creators and big-brand advertisers who use the platform. It also offers creators insights tools to help them understand the types of people who see their posts and which ones are gaining the most traction.
Moore said the company has worked with more than 500 advertisers since launching ads, including major brands such as Amazon, Apple, and L’Oréal. More than 60% of its clients in the US are repeat advertisers, Moore said.
Part of the pitch to creators is about expanding their potential audiences. BeReal says that around 27% of its US users aren’t on Snapchat, 25% aren’t Facebook users, and 23% don’t use TikTok, citing November 2025 data from the research firm GWI.
In its outreach to creators, BeReal emphasizes that its feed is populated by real humans and that it will “never have AI” or encourage infinite scrolling, Moore said.
BeReal “resonates with creators that want to show the behind-the-scenes and want to show a different side of themselves that they don’t post to other platforms,” Moore added.
Simon Andrews, founder of the digital marketing consultancy Addictive, said BeReal could struggle to compete with larger platforms like Meta, TikTok, and YouTube for creators.
Those platforms demonstrate “huge numbers, constant innovation, and clear evidence of the platform’s impact,” Andrews said. “Apps like BeReal feel like they are lost — installed but nowhere near the first screen where people keep the apps they constantly use.”
BeReal is hiring for a Paris-based head of growth who will report to the CEO and be responsible for scaling the platform globally, per a job ad on its parent company’s website.
BeReal’s creator-monetization strategy may create a tension with the app’s original ethos, said James Poulter, founder of digital transformation consultancy ThreePoint Labs.
“They set themselves out as the unfiltered, unedited, no-algorithm-in-sight social platform, but it’s exactly what breaks the moment creators start treating it as a monetization channel,” Poulter said.
“Creators optimize for engagement, and then authenticity goes out the window, and you end up with a slightly less polished Instagram,” he added.
This challenge isn’t insurmountable, Poulter said, but he added that BeReal will need to build more formal matching mechanisms between brands and creators, with clear rates and transparent terms, if it wants serious creator buy-in.
