Vendor reportKantar, 2026

Creator content outperforms standard digital ads on involvement, relevance, enjoyment, and both long-term equity and short-term sales, but lags behind on branding

Channel validation

Measure	Difference from digital ad norm (percentile points)
Active Involvement	12
Relevance	8
Enjoyment	6
Long term equity (meaningful difference)	5
Short term sales	1
Branding	-7

Creator content vs digital advertising performance, % differences

Reader Note:: Outperformance is measured in percentile points relative to digital advertising norms using Kantar’s models.
Evidence:: Modelled / projected
Vendor interest:: High — This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
Sample:: Analysis of 15,000+ pieces of sponsored creator content promoting products or brands across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube; selection method not clearly disclosed.

Good for

Planning with a rough expectation, and sanity-checking your own assumptions.

Not for

Reporting as what happened. This is what a model expects, not what anyone counted.
This is an aggregated or average number that covers very different cases. Real results in a particular segment may differ.
This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
The source never says how this number was measured.
The source never says when this data was collected. It could be considerably older than the publication date suggests.
The source says how much it looked at, but not how any of it was chosen.

4.4x

How much better an AI search visitor converts compared to an organic search visitor, on average

of Google searches that showed an AI summary ended with a click on a link inside that summary (US, March 2025)

20% of Gen Z and 17% of Millennials discover new brands through influencer endorsements, vs 12% of Gen X and 5% of Boomers

Share of each generation who discover new brands via influencer endorsements
Generation	Share who discover brands through influencers (%)
Gen Z	20%
Millennials	17%
Gen X	12%
Baby Boomers	5%

Go deeper on this topic

Our Substack turns the data behind these cards into full breakdowns: what changed, why, and what to do about it.

Fixing your influencer marketing campaign: How to get into the top 10% of advertisers

11.4%

of shopper sessions in the US involved an AI tool as of June 2026, up 2.3 percentage points from a year earlier

is the short-term ROI index for influencer campaigns in the UK, right on the market average with 4.5% of short-term sales (excluding campaigns that produced no result)

21–26%

of consumers in the US, UK, and Germany report using AI tools to research products online, per Statista's 2026 Global Survey (Jul 2025–Jun 2026).

Creator content outperforms standard digital ads on involvement, relevance, enjoyment, and both long-term equity and short-term sales, but lags behind on branding

Good for

Not for

Related cards

Go deeper on this topic