The creator economy is booming, having evolved from a “test and learn sandbox” over the past decade to a core growth driver across business verticals. Influencers are no longer a nice to have, but a need to have for strategic marketing teams—and brands are proving the impact of creator partnerships through rapid randomized controlled trial (RCT) pre-testing.
At Quirk's Media NYC, James Slezak, CEO and Founder at Swayable, and Maddie Perkins, Associate Director, Strategy and Analytics at Influential, discussed key findings from a new meta-study exploring the impact of influencer marketing and how the channel is driving lift across different generations and industries.
"The big question is no longer whether people are watching influencer content. It’s about whether it’s actually working,” said James. “With RCT pre-testing, we can now definitively answer that."
Here’s a breakdown of four key takeaways that spotlight how agencies and brands are using creative testing insights to prove that creators are worth the investment:
Swayable and Influential’s metastudy conducted a systematic analysis across more than 70,000 consumer responses to influencer marketing campaigns tested on the Swayable platform.
The high-level outcome showed that influencer content nearly doubled brand favorability and compared to traditional ads. On top of this, influencer content also drove a slightly higher lift increase in purchase intent. This is a key indicator of why influencer marketing is experiencing exponential growth—it’s not only driving top-of-funnel performance, but also boosting mid-to-lower funnel metrics.
“What we find so powerful about the data from Swayable is that it shows real lift in areas brands don’t typically associate with influencer marketing—like purchase intent and ROI-driving outcomes,” said Perkins.
Gen Z and Millennials are a core influencer audience. However, there’s a misconception that only brands who target younger consumers should lean heavily on influencer content.
Contrary to common assumptions, data from the meta-study showed that influencer content outperforms other content formats across generations. Creators drive strong lift among Gen X and Boomers, just as much as younger demographics including Gen Z and Millennials.
These insights suggest that brands have unique opportunities to reach multiple demographics through creator-led ads.
“There’s a misconception that influencer content only works for Gen Z, but our data shows it’s driving real engagement and conversions among Gen X and Boomers too,” said Perkins.
While people typically associate creators with the fashion, beauty, and lifestyle space, the meta-study showed that consumer packaged goods (CPGs) is another industry where influencer content is driving higher lift than non-CPG and non-influencer content. In fact, with Gen Z specifically, influencer content for CPG brands drove a +9 percentage point increase in lift, outperforming the other two categories.
Influential is at the forefront of working with CPG brands to drive awareness, consideration, purchase intent, and recommendations through creator partnerships.
For dish detergent brand Finish Ultimate, the agency created a Super Bowl campaign that tapped influencers across cooking/food, comedy, and family to authentically illustrate that Finish Ultimate tackles tough messes so hosts don’t miss out on game day festivities. Using Swayable’s RCT methodology, Finish Ultimate proved the campaign drove lift with a +9pp increase in awareness and a +6pp increase in purchase intent (+3pp above industry benchmarks).
Influential also partnered with Swayable to measure the effectiveness of its Lolli Influencer Activation in 2025. The campaign aimed to drive awareness and consideration for Lolli products through elevated lifestyle, food and fashion influencer content. Influential proved success for Lolli by not only topping benchmark awareness (+43pp) and consideration (+12pp) lifts—the campaign also drove lift in metrics including recommendation, purchase intent, and brand recall.
Proving that influencer marketing works—by quickly measuring campaign lift—is key to increase creator buy-in from stakeholders and drive proactive, agile marketing operations.
“If you're trying to prove your content works, there’s nothing more powerful than a randomized controlled trial—it's the gold standard for measuring real impact,” said Slezak.
By automating RCTs—the gold standard for measuring brand lift—Swayable enables marketers to pre-test and select top-performing creative in a matter of days, before deploying their campaigns.
“Our partnership with Swayable has helped prove what we’ve always believed—that influencer content isn’t just engaging, but it also drives measurable brand lift across every stage of the funnel,” said Perkins.
Watch the Quirk’s session below to learn more about the meta-study findings and Influential’s work in the creator space:
Interested in proving the effectiveness of your influencer marketing campaigns? Book a demo with Swayable today.