Digiday+ Research Briefing: A look at the potential of Gen X and baby boomer influencers
By Li Lu • April 17, 2025 •
Ivy Liu
This research is based on unique data collected from our proprietary audience of publisher, agency, brand and tech insiders. It’s available to Digiday+ members. More from the series →
In Digiday+ Research’s end-of-year survey in 2024, we learned that marketers expect to grow their investments in influencer marketing in 2025 compared with 2024. Of marketer respondents, 57% said their company would increase their budget for influencer marketing in 2025, the highest among the asked channels. Influencer marketing also had the lowest rate of marketers saying the budget would remain the same, at 38%, highlighting the focus marketers have for the strategy in the upcoming year.
But before they can dig into influencer marketing investments, marketers must first get a handle on social media use overall. In our Q1 survey, we found that brand and retailer pros’ use of TikTok fell by 17 percentage points in Q1 2025 compared to Q3 2024 — a number that will likely continue to fluctuate as the U.S. TikTok ban remains uncertain.
With TikTok’s future uncertain, it’s worth noting that a recent report by Salesforce found that YouTube, Instagram and Facebook were the top three platforms for product discovery (an important piece of the marketing puzzle). Thirty-eight percent of respondents reported using YouTube as their primary platform for product discovery, followed by Instagram at 35% and Facebook at 34%.
In the same report, Salesforce noted that almost half (46%) of Gen-X respondents and nearly a third (36%) of baby boomers said they use social media for product discovery. When it comes to social marketing, the focus is often on younger audiences, but this illustrates the potential of marketing to members of older generations across platforms.
Of further note, generations older than millennials (those 45 and older) account for about half of global spending at 49.8%, with Gen X accounting for 23.5% of spending overall. In other words, the spending power is there when it comes to marketing to older consumers.
However, marketers have to keep in mind that older generations use social media differently than their younger counterparts, which has to factor into marketing strategies. For instance, in last month’s briefing, we detailed data from Pew Research that showed the main social media platforms for users ages 50 and older are YouTube and Facebook. This aligns with Salesforce’s analysis, and emphasizes that YouTube and Facebook are important platforms for targeting Gen X and baby boomers.
For marketers who do decide to pursue older generations of consumers, how do they go about targeting that older audience? As Digiday recently reported, the answer could be influencers age 55 and older, or “silver influencers.” Brands including Progresso Soup, Harmless Harvest and Dove have started including these older creators in their marketing strategies, turning to established influencers like Angie Schmitt, whose Hot and Flashy YouTube account has more than 1.2 million followers, as well as groups that manage these so-called silver influencers. As Digiday reported, the plus with silver influencers is that their content can resonate with younger consumers as well and is not exclusive to older demographics.
https://digiday.com/?p=575298
