Creator Ads: What engagement cannot tell you about your brand

As brands use the same platforms, data and formats, their communications risk becoming increasingly similar. In this standardised environment, content creators can reintroduce a distinctive voice, cultural codes and a recognisable relationship with a community. But their true contribution to the brand still needs to be measured.

We spoke to Matthieu Ouadjer, Head of Paid Social at WPP Media.

Likes, comments and shares have long been the benchmark for assessing social campaigns. But do they really tell us whether an ad is working for the brand?

The Creator Effectiveness Playbook, a global study conducted by WPP Media, System1 and TikTok among 182,550 users across eight markets, including France, highlights the limitations of engagement rate and, more broadly, sheds light on the conditions that drive creator effectiveness across the social ecosystem.

WPP Media: Should we stop using engagement rate?

Matthieu Ouadjer: No, but we need to stop treating it as a universal metric.

Engagement rate remains useful for determining whether content prompts a reaction, gets shared or has the potential to go viral. But it should not be used to measure brand recall.

The study demonstrates this clearly. Across 129.6 million engagements analysed, engagement rate explains only around 0.2% of the variation in Brand Memory Lift, with no relationship deemed significant. Even the ratio of comments to likes, which reflects a more involved response, explains just 11.3%.

Someone may like a video because of its creator, its humour or its format without remembering the brand. Conversely, they may remember an ad without liking it. These are different behaviours.

The mistake is to group metrics that answer different questions under the umbrella term “performance”. A like measures a reaction. Time spent reflects a form of attention. Brand Lift studies can assess ad recall or brand awareness. Finally, CPA, sales and ROAS provide insights into conversion and business impact.

The KPI should therefore be determined by the objective:

• Stand out: reach, impressions and attention;

• Prompt a reaction: comments, shares and engagement;

• Build the brand: Ad Recall, Brand Awareness and Brand Memory Lift;

• Drive action: clicks, conversions, CPA and ROAS.

WPP Media: What can a creator deliver that brand content finds harder to achieve?

Matthieu Ouadjer: First and foremost, a creator brings familiarity. When users recognise a face, a voice or a particular way of opening a video, they may stop scrolling and wonder what that person is about to tell them.

This is essential in an environment where we are exposed to ever-growing volumes of content, while our bandwidth has not increased. Users move rapidly from one post to the next and are becoming more selective.

Creators therefore offer more than just an audience. They bring their own storytelling style, codes and relationship with their community. The challenge for brands is to enter that world without distorting it.

Within the TikTok sample examined, Creator Ads deliver an average Brand Memory Lift 23% higher than ads produced by brands. However, this advantage is highly concentrated: only 29% of Creator Ads outperform the average brand ad.

A minority of highly effective content therefore pulls the average upwards. The top 20% of Creator Ads generate 45% of the category’s Brand Memory Lift, while the top-performing 10% deliver approximately four times more lift per ad than the remaining 90%.

Working with a creator is no guarantee of success. Poor casting, an unconvincing partnership or an overly restrictive brief can cancel out their advantage.

WPP Media: How do you choose the right creator?

Matthieu Ouadjer: Follower count is a measure of scale, not necessarily of quality.

A creator may have a large following but limited recognition among the brand’s target audience, or may have lost the close connection they once had with their community. Conversely, several smaller creators may have strong relationships with highly relevant audiences.

You need to consider the type of content they produce, how they produce it, how frequently they post, their relationship with their community and their fit with the brand.

If you market a food product, choosing a creator simply because they fall into the “food” category is not enough. You need to look at what they cook, how they communicate, the other topics they cover and whether your product can genuinely find a place within their world.

This is what the study calls Brand Fit: the brand’s ability to occupy a natural and credible place in the creator’s world. Within the sample analysed, the authors found that Brand Fit matters more than creator recognition alone.

The right question is therefore not simply, “How many followers do they have?” but rather, “Why would their audience accept seeing my brand in their content?”

WPP Media: How tightly should the brief be controlled to drive performance?

Matthieu Ouadjer: A brand needs to set clear parameters, but it should not turn the creator into an actor reciting an advertising script.

Creators understand the codes of their platform: its pace, language, sounds, trends and the techniques used to capture attention in the opening seconds. This expertise is one of the reasons brands work with them.

The brief should define the product’s role, the brand’s distinctive assets, the core message and what needs to happen at the beginning of the video. The creator should then be given the freedom to interpret that framework in their own way.

In the study, certain signs of overcontrol are associated with a weaker emotional response: -12% when numerous words appear on screen, -8.8% when the execution feels overly self-conscious and -7.3% when the call to action is too direct.

The brand should also be identified quickly, ideally within the first two seconds. But that does not mean imposing an enormous logo. Branding can take the form of an element integrated into the setting, the brand name being spoken or written, or an audio signature.

Within the sample examined, combining audio and visual cues results in 53.1% early brand recognition, compared with 25.7% for visual cues alone. The authors identify the most effective range as between two and four distinctive brand assets within the first two seconds. Beyond that point, observed attention begins to decline.

The brand therefore needs to be both named and shown, without interrupting the content.

WPP Media: How can you measure a creator’s true contribution?

Matthieu Ouadjer: First, you need a point of comparison.

Compare creator content with the brand’s usual communications, using the KPI that corresponds to the objective. If you are looking for attention, consider the quality and duration of exposure. If you are looking to build the brand, measure recall and awareness. If you are looking to drive conversion, examine purchase intent and business metrics.

Creative quality must also be factored into the analysis. In the study’s model, the combination of emotional response and early brand recognition is associated with 54.6% of the variation in Brand Memory Lift—4.8 times the explanatory power of the strongest engagement metric tested.

The most entertaining content also achieves an emotional response score 21% higher and attracts 82% more attention during the first six seconds than the least entertaining content.

Performance therefore comes from combining the right creator, a credible role for the brand and creative content designed both to be watched and to be attributed to the advertiser.

What Does This Mean for Your Brand?

Choosing the right creator, preserving their codes, developing an effective brief and measuring their contribution require an integrated approach. WPP Media’s Paid Social and Influencer Marketing teams support advertisers from objective-setting through to activation and measurement, notably through Partnership Ads, Brand Lift studies and WPP Open’s Creative Analytics tools.

Would you like to assess or optimise your Creator Ads strategy? Contact your usual WPP Media representative.