Creator recs are leading to sales, and more research has arrived to prove it

The global impact of the creator economy has been a hot topic in recent years, and the value of influencer-focused ad buys is still rising. Two recent studies have studied the link between creator-led spots and the sales that result from those pieces of content.

One study, conducted by Public First, zoomed out and measured TikTok‘s economic impact in the U.K. The short-form video app added an approximate total of £10 billion (~$13.4 million) to the British economy over the past two years.

Small businesses are getting a piece of that pie. Public First estimated that those firms used TikTok to get a £3.4 billion (~$4.5 million) boost in 2025. ByteDance’s video app supported about 153,000 jobs, and 300,000 small businesses are selling on TikTok Shop.

Those businesses, however, don’t have to do all the selling themselves. Creator endorsements are powering a retail surge that Public First highlighted in its report. More than 10 million people in the U.K. visited a shop or restaurant after learning about it on TikTok. To account for the increased traffic 28% of businesses featured on TikTok hired extra staff. 84% of those respondents said that TikTok recs led to sales boosts.

The other report, from TikTok, WPP Media, and System1, dove deeper into the sales impact of creator-led media. In a report dubbed The Creator Effectiveness Playbook, those firms laid out the best practices for advertisers who work alongside creators.

The compilers of the Playbook crunched the numbers from 1,217 paid TikTok ads across eight markets and found that creator-led ads have the strongest long-term sales impact among all marketing channels. A “long-term multiplier” of 3.35 made creator-led media slightly more powerful than linear TV (3.27) and out-of-home (2.33) campaigns.

Advertisers are in the best position to reap those rewards when they prioritize “high emotion” and “high early branding” in their creator spots. But on average, no matter the approach, creator ads are 23% more effective than brand ads in the realms of brand awareness and ad recall.

Any holdouts who are still skimping on creator ad budgets should pay attention to these results. Multiple researchers are finding that creators are the key to higher sales, especially within the ecommerce wonderland TikTok has become.