Creator marketing has moved past the campaign model entirely, according to the fourth annual “Creator Marketing Study” from LTK and Northwestern University’s Retail Analytics Council. The research found that 91% of brands now operate creator programs with an always-on component. Of those, 62% describe their approach as a hybrid of campaigns and continuous activity, while 29% call their programs fully continuous. No respondent described their program as ad hoc or experimental.
Conducted in June 2026, the study surveyed 209 C-suite marketers and senior decision-makers at brands investing in creator marketing, with most respondents representing organizations generating more than $100 million in annual revenue. LTK and Northwestern note that changes to the survey’s sample and questionnaire this year mean year-over-year comparisons should be read as directional rather than exact.
Rosters Are Growing, and So Are the Teams Touching Them
The shift to continuous programs is showing up in headcount. Fifty-two percent of brands now work with 100 or more creators, up from 44% in 2025, according to the study. That scale is pulling in departments beyond marketing: creator programs now span social (65%), media (61%), brand (60%) and shopper marketing (40%) teams, while affiliate and PR involvement grew 7 and 15 percentage points year over year, respectively.
Lifestyle creators remain the most important category for brands at 55%, but category-niche specialists (50%) and certified experts such as chefs, dieticians and home designers (49%) are close behind. Certified-expert importance rose 18 percentage points year over year, the largest gain of any category tracked, ahead of a 6-point gain for category-niche creators.
Creators Lead Trust Rankings by a Widening Margin
Marketers rank creators as the most trusted source of consumer information at 44%, ahead of social ads at 34% and celebrities at 22%, according to the study. LTK and Northwestern report that the gap between creators and both ads and celebrities widened by 6 points year over year. Respondents cited clear, useful product information (62%) and transparency about paid relationships (60%) as the top reasons creator recommendations feel trustworthy to consumers, followed by genuine category expertise (54%) and honest comparison of alternatives (51%).
Commerce Impact Extends Across the Funnel
The study found creator recommendations now influence the full customer journey rather than just the top of the funnel. Respondents cited conversion and loyalty as the stages most influenced by trusted creator recommendations, both at 55%, ahead of consideration (52%), discovery (50%), and repeat purchase (48%).
Brands also reported gains across several business outcomes attributed to creator work between 2025 and 2026: lead generation rose from 29% to 48%, brand sentiment or perception from 55% to 60%, sales from 46% to 49%, and customer lifetime value from 36% to 41%. On measurement, campaign sales and conversion rates each gained double digits year over year as reported priorities, up 14 and 11 percentage points, respectively, while reach stood at 28% and return on ad spend at 21%.
Net Influencer has previously reported that creator-driven sales infrastructure, from TikTok Shop integrations to closed-loop attribution platforms, is becoming the primary mechanism by which brands measure creator value rather than a secondary benefit of awareness campaigns. The Northwestern and LTK findings on conversion and loyalty align with that trajectory: brands surveyed are no longer treating creator content as a reach play and are instead instrumenting it the way they would any other revenue channel.
Creator Content Is Moving Into AI Search and Paid Channels
While 92% of brands said they use creator content in social advertising, the study found growing use elsewhere: 52% in content and email, 50% in display advertising, 39% in affiliate marketing and 36% in connected TV. Forty-one percent of brands now use creator content specifically to influence what AI-driven search surfaces about their products, which LTK and Northwestern describe as two in five brands using creator content to shape generative search results. Fifty-seven percent of brands said generating content is now a goal of creator campaigns in its own right, up from 42% the prior year.
AI Adoption Is Near-Universal, but Workflows Lag
Ninety-five percent of marketers surveyed said AI capability is either a must-have or important when evaluating creator marketing platforms, according to the study, with the highest-rated use cases being audience-level personalization (57%), performance forecasting (52%) and AI-assisted annual or quarterly planning (51%). Creator discovery and fit prediction ranked lower, at 46%.
Despite that appetite, the study found a gap between ambition and execution: 90% of brands said they want a less complex creator marketing technology stack, and 45% said they still rely on manual processes, including spreadsheets, email and direct messaging, to run their programs.
That gap echoes reporting Net Influencer has done on the broader creator marketing industry, where AI-native platforms have begun automating the discovery, vetting, and reporting work that agencies historically billed as manual labor, compressing timelines that once ran months into days. The Northwestern and LTK data suggest brand-side adoption of that intelligence layer is still catching up to demand for it.
Image source: “Northwestern University Retail Analytics Council &
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.
Creator marketing has moved past the campaign model entirely, according to the fourth annual “Creator Marketing Study” from LTK and Northwestern University’s Retail Analytics Council. The research found that 91% of brands now operate creator programs with an always-on component. Of those, 62% describe their approach as a hybrid of campaigns and continuous activity, while 29% call their programs fully continuous. No respondent described their program as ad hoc or experimental.
Conducted in June 2026, the study surveyed 209 C-suite marketers and senior decision-makers at brands investing in creator marketing, with most respondents representing organizations generating more than $100 million in annual revenue. LTK and Northwestern note that changes to the survey’s sample and questionnaire this year mean year-over-year comparisons should be read as directional rather than exact.
Rosters Are Growing, and So Are the Teams Touching Them
The shift to continuous programs is showing up in headcount. Fifty-two percent of brands now work with 100 or more creators, up from 44% in 2025, according to the study. That scale is pulling in departments beyond marketing: creator programs now span social (65%), media (61%), brand (60%) and shopper marketing (40%) teams, while affiliate and PR involvement grew 7 and 15 percentage points year over year, respectively.
Lifestyle creators remain the most important category for brands at 55%, but category-niche specialists (50%) and certified experts such as chefs, dieticians and home designers (49%) are close behind. Certified-expert importance rose 18 percentage points year over year, the largest gain of any category tracked, ahead of a 6-point gain for category-niche creators.
Creators Lead Trust Rankings by a Widening Margin
Marketers rank creators as the most trusted source of consumer information at 44%, ahead of social ads at 34% and celebrities at 22%, according to the study. LTK and Northwestern report that the gap between creators and both ads and celebrities widened by 6 points year over year. Respondents cited clear, useful product information (62%) and transparency about paid relationships (60%) as the top reasons creator recommendations feel trustworthy to consumers, followed by genuine category expertise (54%) and honest comparison of alternatives (51%).
Commerce Impact Extends Across the Funnel
The study found creator recommendations now influence the full customer journey rather than just the top of the funnel. Respondents cited conversion and loyalty as the stages most influenced by trusted creator recommendations, both at 55%, ahead of consideration (52%), discovery (50%), and repeat purchase (48%).
Brands also reported gains across several business outcomes attributed to creator work between 2025 and 2026: lead generation rose from 29% to 48%, brand sentiment or perception from 55% to 60%, sales from 46% to 49%, and customer lifetime value from 36% to 41%. On measurement, campaign sales and conversion rates each gained double digits year over year as reported priorities, up 14 and 11 percentage points, respectively, while reach stood at 28% and return on ad spend at 21%.
Net Influencer has previously reported that creator-driven sales infrastructure, from TikTok Shop integrations to closed-loop attribution platforms, is becoming the primary mechanism by which brands measure creator value rather than a secondary benefit of awareness campaigns. The Northwestern and LTK findings on conversion and loyalty align with that trajectory: brands surveyed are no longer treating creator content as a reach play and are instead instrumenting it the way they would any other revenue channel.
Creator Content Is Moving Into AI Search and Paid Channels
While 92% of brands said they use creator content in social advertising, the study found growing use elsewhere: 52% in content and email, 50% in display advertising, 39% in affiliate marketing and 36% in connected TV. Forty-one percent of brands now use creator content specifically to influence what AI-driven search surfaces about their products, which LTK and Northwestern describe as two in five brands using creator content to shape generative search results. Fifty-seven percent of brands said generating content is now a goal of creator campaigns in its own right, up from 42% the prior year.
AI Adoption Is Near-Universal, but Workflows Lag
Ninety-five percent of marketers surveyed said AI capability is either a must-have or important when evaluating creator marketing platforms, according to the study, with the highest-rated use cases being audience-level personalization (57%), performance forecasting (52%) and AI-assisted annual or quarterly planning (51%). Creator discovery and fit prediction ranked lower, at 46%.
Despite that appetite, the study found a gap between ambition and execution: 90% of brands said they want a less complex creator marketing technology stack, and 45% said they still rely on manual processes, including spreadsheets, email and direct messaging, to run their programs.
That gap echoes reporting Net Influencer has done on the broader creator marketing industry, where AI-native platforms have begun automating the discovery, vetting, and reporting work that agencies historically billed as manual labor, compressing timelines that once ran months into days. The Northwestern and LTK data suggest brand-side adoption of that intelligence layer is still catching up to demand for it.
Image source: “Northwestern University Retail Analytics Council &
LTK Creator Marketing Study”
The full study can be found here
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