How Influencer Marketing Is Changing in 2026
In 2026, influencer marketing budgets are set to grow for another year running. But best practices are evolving, as one-off, pay-to-post influencer deals fail to cut through the noise. Instead, creators will take on the role of consultants, as brands develop more substantial partnerships with the talent that now make up such a core part of their marketing strategies.
As creators evolve their content strategies in response to a social media environment in which video is king, aesthetic stills no longer generate the numbers they once did, with many leaving traditional brands in the dust. Instead of simply tapping creators to promote their products via one-time posts and affiliate links, brands will need to think about how to work collaboratively with talent on the strategy side, experts agree.
That means breaking out of social media feeds, as consumers grow tired of being sold, to seek out alternative discovery channels. Here, community-focused initiatives will be key, whether it’s online via platforms like Substack, or in-person meet-ups. While brands dipped their toes in 2025, creators diversified their platforms by developing these spaces with their communities.
This engagement will be all the more important as brands weigh when and how to use AI in their marketing strategies, says Eve Lee, founder of marketing agency The Digital Fairy. “Everyone’s racing to the bottom to automate cultural intelligence, but AI can’t read the room or scrape the messiness of human desire,” she says. “It relies on data sets from the past to create more of the same, [and] it can’t get inspiration from new things it has no reference for.”
For 2026, experts advise brands to tap into the human element by leveraging the loyal audiences of creators as a means of content distribution. “To date, it’s traditionally been self-produced day-in-the-life content of a creator’s personal life. Viewers are tuning in to be informed and entertained,” says Benjamin Almeter, founder of brand and talent agency Dispatch. “Through that lens, we’re exploring what the creation of more produced and structured content looks like across our talent’s platforms — and how to integrate brand presence throughout.”
Lee is so sure of this evolving brand-creator relationship that she is launching Source Material, a business that will match brands with creators to deploy the latter as consultants, rather than just faces. “We’re making the shift from influencer-as-reach to creator-as-counsel,” she says. The downside is that this investment in creator perspective doesn’t have a clear, measurable return on investment (ROI), she concedes, which is why it remains a nascent strategy. But, this year, brand founders are keen to bring creators and influencers into the fold earlier on, and develop feedback and consulting mechanisms to work more closely with talent behind the scenes.
Continuing trends from recent years, creators are the marketing tool in which CMOs are planning to increase spend the most in 2026, beating out AI-driven search, paid search and paid social, according to a study by LTK and Northwestern University, which surveyed 204 marketing leaders. Ninety-seven percent of CMOs surveyed say they plan to increase their creator marketing budgets for the year ahead. Roughly a quarter of brand’s marketing budgets are being funneled to influencer engagement, according to Shana Davis, founder of influencer marketing agency Ponte Firm. But, as it does every year, the way this budget is spent is shifting.
As the role of the creator changes, how are brands strategizing for the year ahead and what should they be adding to their to-do lists?
New sales channels
Brands and creators are no longer limited to social media feeds to reach consumers. If they haven’t already, brands need to begin showing up beyond the usual scroll.
