The beginning of the millennium didn’t just give us blogs and bad Flash websites.
It gave regular people something that used to be reserved for celebrities: distribution. And once normal people got distribution, they did what humans always do - they formed tribes.
That’s the real origin story of influencer marketing.
Today, influencer marketing is everywhere. It’s also occasionally messy, overpriced, and misunderstood.
So the obvious question shows up in every budget meeting: is influencer marketing tapped out?
Sprout’s Q3 2025 Pulse Survey answers that pretty cleanly: 64% of consumers say when a brand partners with their favorite influencers they’re more willing to buy.
Influencers aren’t going away. But the way brands source them, pay them, and scale them is about to change.
What is the future of influencer marketing? The past and present hold clues
Goldman Sachs estimates there are 50 million global creators contributing to a creator economy worth roughly $250 billion - and that figure is expected to double by 2027.
That’s not a “trend.” That’s an industry.
Also: algorithms are getting weirder in a very specific way. They’re getting more niche.
Which means creators who own a topic (not just a demographic) become more valuable. And brands that can consistently ship creator-style content become harder to beat.
This is where a lot of teams quietly hit a wall.
Traditional UGC is often ~$200/video once you factor in creator fees, revisions, usage rights, and the “please resend the raw files” tax.
EzUGC flips that math: ~$5/video for AI-powered UGC with consistent quality, fast turnaround, and AI avatars that look real and speak 32+ languages.
Not to replace creators. To make your creator engine actually scale.
How influencer marketing forever changed the media landscape
Goldman Sachs also found that only 4% of creators pursue a full-time online career.
That sounds surprising until you remember how this all started.
Blogs were side projects. Early internet fame was accidental. People wrote because they couldn’t find their story in traditional media.
Taylor Lorenz put it plainly: blogs let people self-publish. Women wrote candidly about daily life - like breastfeeding or postpartum depression - and built massive audiences. She argues that women, BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ people built this industry.
And they got punished for it.
They were harassed. Discredited for not having “real” jobs. Mocked as narcissists.
Lorenz points out that “Selfie” became the word of the year in 2013. That’s how mainstream the sneer got.
“So many early people on these platforms were outcasts. They didn’t have a lot of social capital. They didn’t have a voice in traditional media. They built these revenue models that so many people have come to profit off of.”
Then the pandemic happened.
Everyone moved online. And a lot of people finally noticed the thing creators had been doing all along: they alchemize culture.
Brands depend on influencer marketing
The credibility gap is shrinking fast.
More than half of people ages 18-60 say they would quit their jobs if they could become a full-time influencer.
And marketers aren’t exactly subtle about the performance.
From Sprout’s Q1 2025 Pulse Survey:
- 9 in 10 marketers say sponsored influencer content outperforms brand content in engagement
- 83% say it converts better
- 65% are very confident leaders see the business value
Budget follows results.
Sprout found almost two-thirds of marketers plan to partner with more influencers this year. That maps to:
- Around 80% of marketing leaders increasing influencer budget
- About 25% divesting from traditional marketing channels to fund it
So no, influencer marketing isn’t peaking.
It’s becoming a core channel. Which means it’s about to get more operational, more specialized, and less forgiving.
4 predictions for the future of influencer marketing
Platform shakeups. Economic confusion. AI everywhere.
It’s easy to get lost in the noise.
Here are the four changes that actually matter.
1) AI will drive operations, not stand in as talent
Sprout’s 2024 State of Influencer Marketing Report found 37% of consumers are more interested in brands that work with AI influencers.
Lorenz thinks that’s a fad. Her take: people want reliability, and AI influencers don’t engender trust - humans do.
Sprout’s Q3 2025 Pulse Survey backs up the skepticism: almost half of consumers say they’re not comfortable with brands using AI influencers. Full stop.
And the concerns are real:
- Intellectual property misuse
- Content originality
- Real creators getting squeezed out of the creator economy
But here’s the nuance most hot takes miss.
AI is still going to win - just not as the face.
It wins as the production layer.
AI makes high-quality content easier to produce. Tools like Jasper and Writer help with writing and editing. Wondershare Filmora and Descript speed up video editing.
Lorenz says it well: AI lowers the barrier so influencers can create better content with less effort.
That same logic applies to brands.
If you’re a DTC brand or agency running paid social, you don’t need an AI “influencer.” You need creator-style ads on demand.
EzUGC is built for that: generate UGC-style video ads in minutes, with realistic AI avatars, consistent delivery, and multilingual output (32+ languages).
2) Influencer discovery and sourcing will be rooted in topic relevancy, not demographics
The old model was basically:
- Filter by age, location, follower count
- Scroll forever
- Hope their vibe doesn’t go sideways in week two
The new model looks more like how algorithms already work.
Your For You Page isn’t built on your gender or zip code. It’s built on topics.
So sourcing will shift toward what creators talk about - not who they are on paper.
Historically, this has been manual even with influencer marketing software. Marketers still:
- Spend significant time vetting
- Comb through piles of data
- End up with brand safety surprises anyway
What changes this is natural language discovery.
Instead of “female, 25-34, US,” you search for “post-workout skincare routine” or “budget meal prep for runners.”
That’s how you get creator content that matches your message.
And once you know the topics that convert, you can scale them without begging creators for five more variations.
That’s the hidden advantage of AI UGC: you can iterate the same winning concept across hooks, languages, and personas for ~$5/video instead of paying ~$200/video and waiting days.
3) Influencer marketing won’t be limited to social media
The State of Influencer Marketing Report found 80% of consumers are more likely to buy from brands that partner with influencers beyond social content.
Think:
- In-person events
- Brand trips
- Multi-channel ad campaigns
We’re already seeing influencers take spokesperson roles that used to go to actors and athletes.
And brands are building bottom-of-funnel creator partnerships through storefront programs like:
- Lowe’s Creator Network
- My Sephora Storefront
The implication is simple.
One-off posts won’t cut it. Brands will need long-term relationships and creator input across the funnel.
Also, the deliverable list will expand.
A creator might shoot the “authentic” organic content. Then your performance team needs 20 paid variations with different hooks, offers, and CTAs.
That’s a perfect handoff for AI UGC tooling - not to replace the creator, but to multiply what worked.
4) Influencer marketing career paths will flourish
The Impact of Social Report found that three-quarters of marketing leaders anticipate growing their team in the next year.
Influencer marketing managers are among the top five roles they’re likely to hire for.
That matters because it signals something bigger than headcount.
Influencer relationship management is becoming a foundational pillar and ROI driver.
You can’t scale an influencer program if it’s stapled onto someone’s job alongside:
- Organic content
- Reporting
- Community management
- “Can you also run paid social?”
It deserves at least one dedicated role.
And the best people in that role will look less like “talent bookers” and more like operators.
They’ll know how to:
- Build repeatable creator briefs
- Track creative performance like a growth team
- Repurpose winning narratives into paid ads fast
The future belongs to brands that embrace influencers
Influencer marketing didn’t just add a channel.
It rewrote the rules of media.
The brands that win next won’t be the ones chasing vanity metrics or betting the farm on AI “people.” They’ll be the ones who:
- Build authentic creator partnerships
- Source by topic relevance, not demographics
- Expand creator work beyond social
- Use AI to scale production without wrecking trust
If you want the practical version of that last bullet: ship more creator-style video ads, faster, for less.
EzUGC helps DTC brands, agencies, and performance marketers create UGC video ads in minutes - at ~$5/video instead of ~$200/video.
Create your first videos here: https://app.ezugc.ai