In the last ten years, as influencer marketing has taken off, most marketers have relied on influencers for top-of-funnel branding campaigns.

Sure, there were social commerce campaigns that compensated the influencers for sales, thanks to unique download pages or links on the influencer’s bio page, but those campaigns were the exceptions.

Fast-forward to 2025, with economic uncertainty due to tariffs, marketers will be focused on performance marketing as they make cuts to their branding initiatives. And performance-driven influencer marketing will be part of their marketing arsenal in 2025.

The year of the Performance-Influencer Campaign

One of the big predictions for 2025 is the growth of performance-influencer marketing. As marketers learn what works (and what doesn’t work) in their creator campaigns, they’re increasingly able to provide creators with feedback to produce videos that deliver performance.

For a utility app, we turned to five very different creators – each from a different niche and with a distinct audience – asking them to create videos to generate app installs via in-stream ad campaigns on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.

Though all five creators generated videos that achieved our Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), results varied according to the platforms. This highlights one of the most important lessons of creator marketing: When everything is measured, it can also be tested.

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Measure actual performance metrics

The videos created achieved organic video views from the low 100s to the high thousands. And because creator marketing is full of curveballs, the video with the most views wasn’t the one that generated the most app installs. That’s why it’s necessary to measure actual performance and not rely on vanity metrics such as views or clicks.

This campaign generated an immediate uplift, with most new users downloading and installing the app immediately after watching the video, generating incremental install uplift versus the baseline for other organic campaigns. Prospective users jumped to the creators’ bio page to access the link and download the app.

According to our post-campaign analysis, this effort resulted in a Cost Per Install (CPI) of less than $1, which exceeded our pre-campaign target.

Post-Campaign Takeaways

The first takeaway from this campaign is to work with creators who can produce content that achieves campaign KPIs organically. We’ve even tested creators from different verticals/market niches to see which would convert best. Budget-permitting, one can always pay to run the creator videos as ads, but performance metrics will be better if campaign goals can be achieved organically.

The second takeaway is to test everything. Though testing is more critical for paid campaigns, even with organic campaigns, early testing can save time and resources spent on creator content that isn’t achieving the defined KPIs. And once marketers and creators see what’s working, the next creative output will be stronger and more effective.

The third takeaway is to ensure that campaign performance is measured. Whether you’re working with a measurement or attribution vendor or have the internal tools to measure performance, it’s business-critical to measure and attribute campaign results according to your defined KPIs. And if you can’t do that, perhaps it’s time to revisit the defined KPIs and the company’s marketing stack to ensure that you have the tools to measure and attribute marketing events according to the marketing and sales goals.

Working with creators is a great and cost-effective way to engage authentically and organically with a marketer’s (and the creator’s) target audience. Campaigns can be turned around in days or even hours at a fraction of the cost, and are more environmentally friendly than a location shoot. But marketers need to make sure that they’re monitoring and measuring creator campaigns to ensure that they’re meeting their goals. And they need to be testing new platforms, channels, and opportunities in today’s dynamic media environment.