With platforms prioritizing automation, creative is becoming the primary lever to reach segmented identities: Diverse, high-volume creative assets feed algorithms and fuel personalization.
As AI accelerates and social platforms dominate consumer attention, brands must rethink how they connect with audiences. At the heart of this transformation is creative, the relevance of which cannot be overstated with current appetite for content. But perhaps the most notable change is the convergence of creative and media, enabled by AI’s ability to analyze creative performance at scale, identify what resonates, and rapidly optimize in real time. To truly break through the noise, brands must build authentic, emotionally intelligent campaigns powered by data — and grounded in a deep understanding of human behavior and individual motivations.
Influencer Marketing & Paid Social Converge: The Unification of Content and Commerce
Gone are the days of siloed social media strategies. This year there will be more US social network users than linear TV viewers and influencer marketing is the fastest growing segment, with Goldman Sachs forecasting that the global creator economy will approach a staggering half a trillion dollars by 2027. As the ecosystem continues to mature and social platforms command a significant share of consumer attention, paid social efforts will need to meet influencer marketing in one seamless, unified strategy that targets individual identity with a granular understanding of their interests, beliefs and values. It’s no longer about partnering with an influential voice or figure. Our work hinges on selecting creators who consistently produce high-quality content and who can reframe a brand or product in ways that drive engagement, deliver value, and resonate with the audience they speak to, and from. As marketers, then, our strategy must converge on holistic planning that aligns influencer partnerships with paid social ads, blending the two to create granular, authentic and seamless campaigns.
By integrating their social strategies and evolving measurement to encompass all touchpoints, brands may establish a data-driven approach to assessing the impact creator content across the customer journey. Getting the balance of brand and creator content right yields performance gains; meta-analysis from advertisers who added partnership ads to their BAU campaigns on Meta observed an average of 19% lower CPA and 53% higher CTR. Capturing value and optimizing influencer collaborations, and assessing and adapting as platforms and regulations shift, are key to consistency in reaching consumers and maximizing ROI on every dollar spent.
Creative as Targeting: Data-Driven Personalization through AI-Enhanced Creativity
Creative is no longer one component of a campaign but a fundamental targeting strategy in itself. Creative has moved from being a branding tool to a tactical lever that drives performance, helping brands engage audiences more effectively and efficiently across digital touchpoints. The key difference today is that creative diversity, liquidity and volume matter; this variety is essential to fuel platform algorithms and help brands to resonate with diverse audience segments.
With platforms increasingly prioritizing automated, objective-driven solutions that collapse traditional campaign activation levers, creative assets are the primary way to connect with specific consumer segments. Leveraging advancements in Generative AI and LLMs, marketers are increasingly able to deliver the right message, in the right format, to the right consumer, increasing both relevance and engagement. The next step is the ability to hyper-personalize content at scale, and optimize creative based on real-time performance insights.
Authenticity and Relevance: Data-Driven Emotional Connections with Consumers
And as platforms and economies mature, noise crescendos. To break through the noise and capture consumer attention in 2025, brands need to move beyond surface-level personalization and embrace a deeper understanding of individual intent, motivations, and emotions. Key to understanding emotion?
Data analytics.
Authenticity will remain a cornerstone of effective marketing. Authentic marketing boosts engagement, increasing user value and favor with platform algorithms, resulting in wider reach and lower costs of serving ads.
The only way to put authenticity into practice is through data intelligence that enables brands to anticipate and respond to consumer needs in real-time. In real life and on social platforms, conversations are dynamic and fluid. This presents a challenge for marketers, as data sources are disparate, high velocity, and to activate around real-time moments in media requires a new way of operating.
Advanced data analytics enable us to identify and validate relevant triggers and align messaging accordingly, keeping the conversation dynamic and fluid on social platforms. At Performics, we define relevance as the intersection of timing, connection and suitability. Validating these components enables us to evaluate opportunities faster, to capitalize on the moments that make the most business sense.
Understanding consumer behavior on a granular level is the foundation of hyper-relevant, emotionally resonant content. As platforms automate delivery, performance on social now comes from shaping real conversations, amplifying the right people and ideas, in the right contexts — while AI scales the relevance that turns attention into outcomes.
About the author:
Natalie Carder is Head of Product Strategy, Social at Performics.