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New long-term insights from Caddle and Ad Standards suggest that while influencer marketing is deeply ingrained in Canadians’ daily scrolling habits, its persuasive impact on purchasing could be plateauing.

Despite the fact that 48% of Canadians are familiar with influencers, 50% say they follow at least one and 53% say they trust recommendations from such platforms, only 30% said they are interested in learning about products from influencers and just 20% say they are likely to purchase from an influencer in the future.

“Influencer marketing is mainstream in Canada, but persuasion is flattening,” Caddle CEO Ransom Hawley said during an online presentation of the data on Wednesday. “The shift is not in awareness, it’s in momentum … this signals, not a collapse, but a plateau. The channel is really established, but incremental, persuasive lift is just harder to generate.”

The data-insight platform’s “Attitudes Towards Influencer Marketing” report surveyed consumers across three waves of data in September 2021 (3,000 polled), February 2023 (3,348 polled) and October 2025 (2,242 polled).

Across the survey period, relevance proved more impactful than reach, with 65% of participants saying they learn about products from micro-influencers (those with 5,000 to 30,000 followers), ahead of 48% form macro-influencers (30,000 to 500,000 followers), 44% from nano-influencers (less than 5,000 followers) and 38% for celebrity influencers (500,000-plus followers).

“What we saw in the data is that if I’m a singular pair of eyeballs and I’m seeing a product that an influencer is sharing, a factor that’s reducing in importance is how many followers that influencer has,” Hawley said. “It would appear that if you had $100 and you could put it on one celebrity or 10 micro, the micro should, according to the data, convert at a higher rate than than the single celebrity endorsement.”

Influencers also continue to be a strong driver of discovery, with 73% of those polled responding that they learn about products from influencers weekly and 32% daily. Approximately 75% said they have purchased because of an influencer recommendation and roughly 34% said purchase at least monthly, indicating habitual trial behaviour.

Seventy-one per cent agreed they are comforted by disclosure requirements, with 54% saying they recognize “paid promotion” labels and 48% recognizing #ad or #sponsored indicators. Seventy-six per cent said they believe influencers are paid for their posts and 47% think most posts are paid, pointing to a continuing trend of skepticism.

Gen Z (53%) and millennials (48%) polled highest when it comes to understanding disclosure rules ahead of Generation X (30%), Baby Boomers (19%) and the Greatest Generation (16%).

“Awareness of influencers is strong, but regulatory literacy is more limited and this gap matters when evaluating the expectations around compliance,” Hawley said. “Consumers may expect transparency without really understanding the rules, so there’s risk, meaning always err on the side of education and clarity.”

The polling showed 63% of Canadians are unaware of AI influencers entirely and only 24% said they feel confident distinguishing AI from human creators, compared with 42% who said they are not confident. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a majority view AI influencers as less relatable (65%) and less effective (58%) than humans. Seventy-eight per cent believe AI influencers must clearly disclose their identity and 57% said AI reduces their likelihood to purchase.

“I’m sure many among us have seen some of these videos where someone’s engaging with an AI personality and there just seems to be some subtle nuances and interesting disconnects,” Hawley said. “We’re kind of right at the cusp of this and we expect rapid growth in the coming months. And I think everyone can agree that they’ll become more indistinguishable.”