A new survey from link-management company Bitly finds that independent creators differ from brand marketers across several stages of the link-click journey, from the destination they route traffic to, to how much consumers trust them with a transaction, to their ability to measure what happened after someone clicked. The report surveyed more than 1,500 consumers, marketers and creators between July 27 and August 5, 2026.
Creators Route Less Traffic to the Destination Consumers Want
Sixty-one percent of consumers said they expect a social media link to lead directly to a product page. Marketers deliver that experience 66% of the time. Creators deliver it only 40% of the time, according to the report.
The gap shows up in where creators send traffic instead. A multi-link directory or link-in-bio page accounts for 24% of creator-driven clicks, compared with 17% for marketers, and third-party marketplaces pull in 17% of creator traffic against just 7% for marketers. A generic homepage, the single largest driver of link abandonment in the survey, still accounts for 30% of creator traffic and 39% of marketer traffic. Overall, 34% of marketers and creators surveyed acknowledged that their own social video links usually route to a generic homepage rather than a specific product.
Consumers Trust Brands Over Creators for Nearly Every Transaction
The report found that corporate brands outrank independent creators on trust across every content category tested. The gap is widest for app or software downloads, where 88% of consumers said they trust a brand’s link compared with 12% for a creator’s link. Brands also lead on categories including product pages and service sign-ups, according to the survey.
The single exception is curated resource lists, where trust splits evenly at 50% for brands and 50% for creators, the only category where creator trust matches brand trust. The report frames the pattern as a distinction between transactional trust and recommendation trust: consumers trust brands to handle a purchase, but extend creators comparable confidence when the ask is a suggestion rather than a sale.
Creators Face a Different Attribution Problem Than Marketers
Cross-channel tracking was the top attribution challenge for both groups, cited by 41% of marketers and 30% of creators. But other attribution pain points diverge sharply by role. Twenty-nine percent of marketers struggle to connect platform analytics to website or campaign data, compared with 17% of creators. Creators instead report more difficulty with in-app browsers stripping tracking parameters or cookies before a click ever reaches its destination, a problem for 27% of creators versus 18% of marketers.
The report attributes the divergence to where each group operates: marketers can typically see activity once traffic reaches a site they control, while creators lose visibility earlier, inside the app itself, before a click leaves the platform.
What’s at Stake
Marketers and creators surveyed said they expect links in social profiles and content to generate an average of 39% of their revenue over the next 12 months. Against that expectation, 79% of consumers said they have abandoned an action because a link led to a generic homepage instead of the specific product they clicked for, the single most common trigger for abandonment identified in the report.
Personal trust in the creator or brand sharing a link mattered more to Gen Z consumers (50%) than to Gen X (38%), and transparent sponsorship labeling such as #ad or #sponsored followed a similar generational pattern, mattering to 39% of Gen Z consumers compared with 31% of Gen X. Ninety-three percent of consumers said they avoid clicking certain links on purpose to keep their algorithm from serving them more of that content, a behavior most common among Gen Z and Millennials, both around 45%.
Methodology: Bitly surveyed 1,006 U.S. consumers and 501 U.S. marketers and creators online. Marketer and creator respondents were 45% independent creators, influencers, or small-business owners and 55% agency, freelance, or in-house marketers. Consumer respondents spanned four generations, with the largest cohort (30%) born between 1981 and 1996.
Image source: Bitly The full report is available here
Dragomir is a Serbian freelance blog writer and translator. He is passionate about covering insightful stories and exploring topics such as influencer marketing, the creator economy, technology, business, and cyber fraud.
A new survey from link-management company Bitly finds that independent creators differ from brand marketers across several stages of the link-click journey, from the destination they route traffic to, to how much consumers trust them with a transaction, to their ability to measure what happened after someone clicked. The report surveyed more than 1,500 consumers, marketers and creators between July 27 and August 5, 2026.
Creators Route Less Traffic to the Destination Consumers Want
Sixty-one percent of consumers said they expect a social media link to lead directly to a product page. Marketers deliver that experience 66% of the time. Creators deliver it only 40% of the time, according to the report.
The gap shows up in where creators send traffic instead. A multi-link directory or link-in-bio page accounts for 24% of creator-driven clicks, compared with 17% for marketers, and third-party marketplaces pull in 17% of creator traffic against just 7% for marketers. A generic homepage, the single largest driver of link abandonment in the survey, still accounts for 30% of creator traffic and 39% of marketer traffic. Overall, 34% of marketers and creators surveyed acknowledged that their own social video links usually route to a generic homepage rather than a specific product.
Consumers Trust Brands Over Creators for Nearly Every Transaction
The report found that corporate brands outrank independent creators on trust across every content category tested. The gap is widest for app or software downloads, where 88% of consumers said they trust a brand’s link compared with 12% for a creator’s link. Brands also lead on categories including product pages and service sign-ups, according to the survey.
The single exception is curated resource lists, where trust splits evenly at 50% for brands and 50% for creators, the only category where creator trust matches brand trust. The report frames the pattern as a distinction between transactional trust and recommendation trust: consumers trust brands to handle a purchase, but extend creators comparable confidence when the ask is a suggestion rather than a sale.
Creators Face a Different Attribution Problem Than Marketers
Cross-channel tracking was the top attribution challenge for both groups, cited by 41% of marketers and 30% of creators. But other attribution pain points diverge sharply by role. Twenty-nine percent of marketers struggle to connect platform analytics to website or campaign data, compared with 17% of creators. Creators instead report more difficulty with in-app browsers stripping tracking parameters or cookies before a click ever reaches its destination, a problem for 27% of creators versus 18% of marketers.
The report attributes the divergence to where each group operates: marketers can typically see activity once traffic reaches a site they control, while creators lose visibility earlier, inside the app itself, before a click leaves the platform.
What’s at Stake
Marketers and creators surveyed said they expect links in social profiles and content to generate an average of 39% of their revenue over the next 12 months. Against that expectation, 79% of consumers said they have abandoned an action because a link led to a generic homepage instead of the specific product they clicked for, the single most common trigger for abandonment identified in the report.
Personal trust in the creator or brand sharing a link mattered more to Gen Z consumers (50%) than to Gen X (38%), and transparent sponsorship labeling such as #ad or #sponsored followed a similar generational pattern, mattering to 39% of Gen Z consumers compared with 31% of Gen X. Ninety-three percent of consumers said they avoid clicking certain links on purpose to keep their algorithm from serving them more of that content, a behavior most common among Gen Z and Millennials, both around 45%.
Methodology: Bitly surveyed 1,006 U.S. consumers and 501 U.S. marketers and creators online. Marketer and creator respondents were 45% independent creators, influencers, or small-business owners and 55% agency, freelance, or in-house marketers. Consumer respondents spanned four generations, with the largest cohort (30%) born between 1981 and 1996.
Image source: Bitly
The full report is available here
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