The news: Creator ads rank highest among ad types buyers are most focused on increasing investment in for 2026, per the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) 2026 Outlook Study.
Fifty-seven percent of buyers say influencer ads and partnerships are their top priority this year—up from 48% in 2025. According to IAB, this increased emphasis on creators reflects brands’ push for more human storytelling in an AI-first era.
Why influencer marketing works: Marketers associate influencers with trust, engagement, and flexibility across brand goals.
Influencers viewed as authentic can deliver greater trust and credibility than many other advertising channels, as consumers tend to place more faith in recommendations from real people than traditional ads. Effective influencers can weave a brand’s products into personal narratives that help audiences visualize real-life use cases and experiences before purchasing.
Performance data helps explain this confidence. A 2024 CreatorIQ report, based on Fortune 100 brand data, found creator content drives 17 times more engagement and 12 times more impressions than brand-owned content. Ninety-four percent of organizations using influencer marketing cited higher ROI against traditional digital ad content.
Influencer marketing supports a breadth of business goals. Two-thirds (66%) of social media marketers worldwide cite brand awareness benefits, while more than half pointed to audience engagement (59%), building credibility and trust (55%), and revenue growth (55%), per a 2025 Sprout Social report.
Implications for marketers: Marketers are increasingly betting on influencers to drive results by building trust and human relationships.
- Prioritizing repeat partnerships consistently generate higher clickthrough and conversion rates, per Agentio.
- Planning for multiple exposures is sound, since consumers typically need to see an influencer promote a product three to four times before making a purchase, according to an EMARKETER and impact.com survey.
- Working with influencers who are actual customers will prove valuable; campaigns featuring real people and authentic testimonials generally perform better than overly polished, scripted sponsored content.