By: Janet E Silver
Seventy-eight per cent of youth (aged 15 to 30) follow an influencer, according to Pol Comm, an academic research group at the University of Ottawa, in an April 2025 report. Canadians across all demographics are turning to Influencers on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube for a wide range of information, including product recommendations, news and politics. The rise in the sheer number of influencers, content creators and their followers on social media is reshaping the information ecosystem.
Analytics firm Nielsen Canada reported in September 2025 that there were more than 882,000 active influencers in Canada.
- 64 per cent of Instagram influencers are female.
- 62 per cent of TikTok influencers are under 25 years old.
- 78 per cent of YouTube influencers are males under 35.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, the earliest known use of the word influencer was from the mid 1600s in reference to a person who wielded spiritual authority. In recent times, influencer is one of a couple of descriptions used to describe those who have acquired large followings on social media.
Ask many students today what they would like to do when they finish school, and the common refrain is, “I want to be an influencer.” And who can be an influencer? Thanks to the technology of our uber-connected world, anyone with a mobile phone and an internet connection can become an influencer. Marketers hire influencers based on their audience size, or demographics or geographical location. There are different levels of influencers: nano influencers have less than 10,000 followers, micro influencers have six figure audiences and celebrity influencers have a reach that can climb into the millions of followers.
For influencers who promote products, the payoff can be substantial. The Journal of Business Research October issue reports that, “the global influencer advertising market (is) projected to exceed $80 billion by 2030 (Statista, 2025).” While influencers with smaller following earn on average $60,000 Canadian a year, those micro and celebrity influencers typically earn more than $200,000 Canadian a year.
Abdullah Zaidi, known as @thisguyabdullah on social media, is a successful full-time influencer posting entertaining videos for various brands. With 1.2 million followers on TikTok and over 700,000 followers on Instagram, Zaidi says that with this success, there is pressure for him to use his platform to address issues.
“I feel like there's a lot of energy being spent in the comments sections…trying to pressure an influencer or a celebrity to talk about something,” Zaidi told CPAC. He refuses to engage because he does not want to be a news or political influencer. “I think that there's a lot of damage that can be done in speaking out.”
For the past five years, Frank Domenic has spoken out. He is a political content creator Frank focusing on news and political events.
“I can talk for a minute, for 90 seconds, and then I'm done … you don't have to watch me for half an hour, but you do use broadcast. … social media has made it so traditional news is harder to digest,” Domenic said.
Increasingly, consumers, including news and political consumers, are turning to influencers as a trusted sources of information. Elizabeth Dubois, Research Chair at Pol Comm at the University of Ottawa, says that while journalists and media organizations are important, consumer trust in influencers is impacting the way news is being produced and disseminated.
“(R)eporting is still really essential, and there are really important demographics and cohorts in the population who rely almost exclusively on those sources. And influencers are not a part of their diet,” Dubois said. “But for young people, it's increasingly part of the picture. And so, we need to think about how the information environment is shifting and changing.”
Aengus Bridgman, Assistant Professor, Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University in Montreal says the rise of influencers in the news and political ecosystem is “consequential for all sorts of reasons.”
“(M)edia organizations have a degree of responsibility in the content they produce … the team knows there is a set of professional obligations that you are subject to that require sort of a degree of adherence to a factual reality that require a degree of professionalism and source citing and due diligence. That is just part of a media approach, “Bridgman said. “Influencers are not subject in any way to that.”
CPAC will air an eight-part series on Our Information Ecosystem over the coming months. Part Two, The Rise of Influencers and The New Royalty airs on October 10 at 6:30 pm ET and October 11 at 5:30 pm ET and 9:30pm ET. See it on CPAC.
This project has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada.
