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.
Email marketing is rising in importance — only this time, it’s influencers in our inboxes. Brigade Talent agency owner Max Stein says that 2024 and 2025 marked a turning point for his talents’ prioritization of email, namely Substack. Amid ever-crowded algorithmic feeds, there’s value in this direct line of communication.
In 2026, it will become easier than ever for brands to tap into influencers’ Substacks. In December, the platform introduced a pilot that enabled some creators to integrate ads into their newsletters. Brands have already been sponsoring newsletters (Rhode sponsored a back-to-school edition of “Feed Me”, for instance), but this year, they will be able to buy space as they would on a website.
Lee also attributes the rise of Substack to the evolution of creators themselves; followed not just for their aesthetics, but for their perspectives, too. This type of creator has proved the sophistication of audiences seeking depth, taste and substance — not brainrot, she says.
This focus on perspective is feeding into innovation across affiliates, too. Affiliates may not be sufficient enough to stand alone, but the sales tool had its own revamp in 2025, with the launch of various creator-centric platforms. ShopMy launched direct-to-consumer (DTC) creator storefronts, while Vogue parent company Condé Nast announced its forthcoming platform Vette. “There is no curation online anymore — everything is just a very broad assortment of product, and curation comes from having a point of view,” Lisa Aiken, Vogue’s executive fashion director and Condé Nast’s SVP of commerce, told Vogue Business at the time. As brands increase spend on creator strategy and storytelling, these new sales channels offer a more concrete ROI. Still, brands must be cautious not to induce fatigue among consumers by over-indexing on creators as commercial salespeople.
Expert voices
This year, experts anticipate influencers will become increasingly involved in the creative process when collaborating with brands, with some adopting a more consultant-style role. The shift has begun: 40% of brands now give creators full creative control, per LTK.
The definition of ‘influencer’ has expanded to include anyone with cultural influence and perspectives worth paying attention to, Lee says. Audiences are drawn toward creators with opinions and views they can relate to, beyond those just promoting aspirational lifestyles and aesthetics. A thought-leadership element will be vital in the year ahead, Stein says. “Brands are going to continue to work with people that have platforms and audiences, but also have an authority and a reason to say what they’re saying,” he explains. Many of Brigade’s clients speak on panels and consult with brands, as well as posting on Instagram based on a brief (what he calls the “traditional influencer project”).
With influencers no longer silent promoters, brands will need to get more comfortable with content guidelines that allow creators to be themselves. This is already underway, as customers turn on content that feels scripted and distant from the creators’ voice they know and love. Influencer Alix Earle made this point at Vogue Business’s Gen Z Summit in November, noting that her best-performing branded content tends to be her less-polished, off-the-cuff videos that aren’t dictated by brands — which not all partners are willing to cede to yet.
Accessories brand Freja spent 2025 testing audience and building what founder Jenny Lei calls its “Freja crew”. In 2026, the brand will focus on fewer and more specific creators who perform well (not necessarily with the highest follower counts) via IRL events, longer partnerships and storytelling-focused campaigns with the talent. Heaven Mayhem, which hasn’t invested heavily in influencer marketing to date, will also be upping its efforts this year. Founder Pia Mance says she’s hosting her first “community design panel” with Heaven’s influencer community, on which they will fully direct the design and campaign for an upcoming collection. “[It’s] an amazing way to involve community to develop a product they actually would want to purchase and use themselves,” she says.
Brands need to budget accordingly. Stein always asks brands their budgets when they reach out to collaborate with talent, to determine whether it can account for a more consulting-style process, versus a simple post. Still, many influencers, at this early stage, will take on this role at no extra cost, Davis points out. “Our influencers want to feel part of the creative process, often willing to serve as a creative consultant at no cost alongside content execution.”
As creators become more involved in the process, all brands should have at least one in-house influencer marketing role, rather than relying solely on agencies, Stein says. “The more degrees you are away from me and my client, it’s harder for communication, it’s harder to build the relationship,” he says.
Moving forward, Lee believes that brands should actually be allocating not creator partnership budgets, but R&D, strategy and intelligence budgets to creator-turned-consultants. “[It’s] the spend that currently goes to traditional consultancies and trend forecasters, some of whom are offering static reports or automated intelligence at scale,” she says. “This won’t give brands the right answer.”
Half unplugging
Influencers may remain a top-trusted source for consumers, but in 2026, audiences are keen to log off. ‘Unplugging’ has become a valuable currency for brands, complicating the notion of influencers as an online-first marketing mechanism.
Founders in the space see this as an opportunity to lean further into in-person activations, a trend that gained steam in 2025.
In Anfisa Skin co-founder and CCO Aly Korchemniy’s view, that people want to log off this year only sharpens the role of influencers. Her logic is that if users spend less time online, they’ll be more selective about who they listen to when they are logged on. “Trusted creators continue to function as modern word of mouth, which makes authenticity and credibility even more important,” she says. “This also ties into our increased focus on IRL connections, where those relationships can extend beyond the screen.” Anfisa Skin is investing more in physical placements, posters and out-of-home moments to combat the inundation of online content, Korchemniy adds.
Others are skeptical whether a digital detox will really stick. “I don’t think anyone’s going to log off,” Stein says. “It’s just where everyone spends their time. You’re at a restaurant, you’re waiting for your friend to come, you scroll. There’s a commercial on the TV, you scroll.”
Cutting through the noise
Even as users resolve to spend less time online this year, cutting through the noise remains a challenge for brands and creators alike. To this end, it’s become increasingly more difficult for influencers to stand out amid busy marketing moments.
Because of this, Brigade’s Stein is hoping for less influencer trips in 2026. “There are so many trips,” he says. Stein asks that his talent is paid to attend. because, though brands invest heavily in hosting trip, they ultimately content. In this case, brands might be better off saving on the trip and paying for the content and collaboration. That said, Stein isn’t confident this strategy will phase out in 2026, at least not in the first half of the year. (He’s already fielded many invites over the past week.)
Brands would be better off using their dollars to invest in working with select influencers for the long haul, experts agree. This year, influencer marketing ought to be thought of as a brand-building tool, rather than a mere sales mechanism. “The strongest strategies in 2026 will combine tastemakers, experts, and long-term brand advocates to build both cultural relevance and credibility,” Davis says.
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