The Creator Game Plan (Kantar)

Summary:

This Kantar report is about how brands should judge creator marketing.

TL;DR: likes, comments, and views can look good but often do not tell you whether creator content will help a brand grow or sell more.

It was published by Kantar, a marketing data and analytics company that sells brand and creative measurement tools, including its LINK AI system. So this report has a clear vendor angle. The goal is to persuade CMOs to use stronger testing and measurement for creator campaigns, and not rely on platform engagement alone.

Kantar analysed more than 15,000 pieces of sponsored creator content across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. It combined in-market engagement data with Kantar's own AI-predicted measures for brand-building potential, short-term sales potential, and branding.

The biggest finding is that platform engagement and effectiveness line up in only about one in three pieces of creator content. Kantar says this means marketers following engagement alone are pointed the wrong way about two-thirds of the time.

The report also says creator content tends to beat normal digital ad benchmarks on involvement, relevance, enjoyment, long-term equity, and short-term sales, but trails on branding. It argues that creator content has its own strengths and should not be judged only by standard ad benchmarks.

On branding, one of the strongest simple moves is having the creator say the brand name out loud. It reports a 22-point lift in branding when the brand name is mentioned in audio.

The main catch is that much of the evidence rests on Kantar's own LINK AI predictions rather than direct observed business outcomes, so the evidence is modelled more than it may first appear. Kantar also sells the kind of measurement and optimisation the report recommends, which raises vendor-interest concerns.