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2026 Marketing Data Insights: Influencers Are Outperforming Celebrities and Shoppers Still Don’t Trust AI
Two numbers from Power Digital’s 2026 State of Social Media Trends Report, based on survey responses from nearly 1,500 consumers, tell a story worth paying attention to if any part of your marketing budget touches influencers, creators, or customer-facing AI. The first number is 74 percent, the share of shoppers who say they have converted directly from influencer content, now outpacing celebrity endorsements by a wide margin. The second number is 63 percent, the share of consumers who say they are less likely to engage with AI-generated visuals.
Read on their own, these look like two unrelated marketing trends. Read together, they describe the same underlying shift in what audiences actually want from brands right now.
Key Takeaways
- Power Digital’s 2026 State of Social Media Trends Report found 74 percent of shoppers have converted directly from influencer content, now outpacing celebrity endorsements by a wide margin.
- Influencer-led ads deliver nearly double the click-through rate of brand ads, with 25 percent lower cost per click, and comparable ROAS and average order value.
- 63 percent of consumers say they are less likely to engage with AI-generated visuals, and nearly half form a negative opinion of brands that use AI to handle customer replies. Only 7 percent trust AI recommendations as much as human ones.
- Both trends point to the same shift: audiences reward visible human presence in creator content and customer interactions, and penalize brands that let automation stand in for a real person.
- The practical takeaway is not to avoid AI, but to keep it behind the scenes and keep real people, whether creators or your own team, in the moments your audience can actually see.
Influencer Content Is Winning the Conversion Race
The days of a celebrity face being the most persuasive voice in an ad campaign appear to be fading. Power Digital’s report found that shoppers now trust a sponsored post from an everyday creator more than a celebrity endorsement, and that trust is translating directly into purchases. The creators driving that shift are rarely the biggest names on the platform. They are the ones who still feel reachable, the kind of person a shopper could imagine actually replying to a comment.
The report backs this up with performance data beyond the headline conversion number. Influencer-led ads are delivering close to double the click-through rate of brand-produced creative, with cost per click running about 25 percent lower. Revenue metrics like return on ad spend and average order value are holding steady compared to brand ads, which means the lower cost is not coming at the expense of results. For brands still weighing influencer partnerships against a bigger celebrity deal, the numbers increasingly point in one direction.
The Same Audience Is Pulling Back From AI
At the same time creators are pulling ahead, audiences are growing more wary of AI in customer-facing marketing. According to the same report, 63 percent of consumers say they are less likely to engage with AI-generated visuals, and nearly half form a negative opinion of a brand that uses AI to handle customer replies. Only 7 percent of consumers say they trust an AI-generated recommendation as much as a human one.
This is not a rejection of AI as a tool. It is a rejection of AI standing in for a person in the moments where a shopper expects to be talking to one. Brands that automate content production behind the scenes are not the ones losing trust. Brands that let AI answer a customer directly, or that lean on AI-generated imagery in place of real creator content, are the ones taking the hit.
Why Both Trends Are Really the Same Story
Put side by side, these findings describe one consistent preference: audiences want to know there is an actual person behind what they are seeing and who they are talking to. Influencer content wins because it reads as one real person’s honest take, not a polished campaign. AI-generated visuals and AI customer replies lose because they read as the opposite, a brand automating away the very thing that made the content or the interaction feel trustworthy in the first place.
The same report found that consumers are rewarding responsiveness more broadly. Three out of four shoppers say they feel more loyal to brands that reply to comments and direct messages, and a similar share notice when a brand is actively present in its own comment section. None of this is about rejecting technology. It is about audiences drawing a clear line between where automation is welcome and where a human voice still matters.
What This Means for Your Brand
None of this means AI has no place in your marketing. It means the line between backend and front-facing matters more than ever. Using AI to help plan a content calendar, analyze performance, or draft an early outline is unlikely to cost you any trust, because the audience never sees that part of the process. Using AI to generate the visuals a creator would normally shoot, or to write the reply a customer expects from a real person, is a different situation entirely, and the data suggests it carries real reputational cost.
If your influencer strategy has been leaning toward fewer, bigger names, this is a good moment to reconsider. The data points toward a wider bench of smaller, more relatable creators outperforming a handful of high-profile faces. And if AI has crept into your customer service or content workflow in ways your audience can actually see, it is worth auditing where those touchpoints are and whether a human presence needs to be more visible.
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