Meta survey: 58% of consumers purchased a product in the past six months because of a creator’s recommendation

If its VidCon plans are any indication, Meta is getting serious about influencer marketing. The company’s platforms are strongly associated with e-commerce, and it wants its business class to contribute to the ever-growing creator economies on Facebook and Instagram.

So how does Meta convince brands that the phenomenon it calls “creator marketing” is worth their time? That question is answered with the pages of a “playbook” that is publicly available via a business-facing landing page. The 33-page playbook is filled with statistics, best practices, and case studies from across the creator marketing landscape. One figure that caught my eye comes from a Meta-commissioned survey of 12,063 consumers: 58% of them said a creator’s recommendation led them to a purchase during a six-month measurement period.

That figure, when combined with the others cited in the playbook, reminds us why the term “influencer” exists at all. According to a 2020 Edelman report, 63% of 18-to-34-year-olds care more about what creators say about a brand than what a brand says about itself. And Meta-commissioned research from Kantar found that 81% of respondents would try, purchase, or recommend a product if it had an inspiring message attached to it. The intended takeaway: Creators are able to form close connections with their viewers and sway their opinions.

This isn’t new knowledge, but Meta wants to make sure its partners are getting the message. The intro to the playbook champions creators’ “direct access” to their audiences. “Creators are people ‘like us,’ ‘authentic’ and ‘relatable’—individuals rather than corporations,” it reads. “And because of this, we tend to trust them more than we trust brands.”

Ok, so creator marketing is important, but why should brands do it on Facebook and Instagram? Meta has answers for that query as well. The company says that 71% of people strongly associate Instagram with the concept of “following creators.” In a Meta-commissioned Ipsos survey, 83% of respondents said Instagram helps them find new products. Facebook’s associations with influencer marketing might not be as strong as Instagram’s, but if the social media platform lacks creators, it makes up for it with raw scale. Meta says that 87% of consumers follow creators on its platforms, compared to 68% on YouTube and 48% on TikTok.

So, to sum up: As Meta struggles to reach the communities that match its new name, it is trying to position itself in the center of the creator economy. Should brands be convinced by the company’s pitch, they can access additional information to get guidance on how to brief creators.