What’s that you say? Possible 2026 wasn’t a creator marketing conference? Open Influence Vice President of Partnerships Allison Spagle and VP of Brand Partnerships Willis Duran beg to differ.
Spagle and Duran were on the scene in Miami Beach, where for the first time, this year’s event featured an entire room and panel series dedicated to creators, and they shared their observations from several of those panels.
Let Creators Cook
The consensus was that the best work by creators is produced when brands retain the non-negotiable elements of their campaigns, but reach a middle ground where creators have the freedom to make the ideas they express feel native and believable to their followers.
As difficult as it may be for a chief marketing officer to relinquish some control over the messaging, brands should consider loosening the reins, crafting briefs that provide guardrails without stifling the creator’s voice, and they should refrain from over-scripting and using the same creators over and over.
True collaboration between the brand and the creator is key, which makes longer-term partnerships far more effective than one-off posts. Brands must earn the trust of creators, and creators should not be afraid to turn down brands that they don’t believe in.
During a panel by EMARKETER, “No Safe Channels: The Strategic Reset of the Digital Shopping Journey,” the research outfit noted that influencers are becoming more trusted among consumers, particularly Generation Z. EMARKETER found that 56% of Gen Z respondents (adults 18 through 29) made purchases based on creator recommendations in 2025, up from 41% in 2023.
Search Party
EMARKETER also focused on the rising importance of creators in search, recommending that brands expand their search engine optimization and generative engine optimization efforts beyond their own websites and extend them to their partnerships with creators.
The researcher stressed that “creators dominate all types of search,” noting that creator content is no longer simply awareness content, and it must now prove effective on surfaces like Google, ChatGPT, Claude, social assistants, and artificial-intelligence-driven discovery.
By the Numbers
Continuing the sector’s push away from vanity metrics, comments, shares, community engagement, and relationship depth are far more important for measuring the success of creator marketing campaigns than views and likes.
Efforts should focus on content that spurs people to respond, share, feel represented, or take action, rather than just viewing the post and moving on.
Frequency was also a topic of conversation, not in terms of posting the same content repeatedly, but rather in building presence, consistency, and emotional reinforcement across moments, formats, and relationships.
Real Connection
Culture is built in comments. Despite the emergence of creators, AI, surfaces like TikTok’s For You page, and new platforms, the fundamentals still matter: emotion, feeling, consistency, frequency, and human connection.
People share content that says something about them, and not just content they liked.
Brands struggling to convert their concepts into engagement and active actions should ask themselves: What community does this make feel seen?
As for creators, they can build engagement through consistency and looking at themselves at public servants: They are not above anyone, and it’s OK for them to admit when they are wrong and be themselves.
Platform Notes
There was much discussion about short-form formats such as TikTok, Reels, and YouTube Shorts complementing longer-form content like podcasts and longer videos on platforms like YouTube.
Formats like YouTube Shorts help build followers, but longer-form content helps build community, and subscribers on YouTube, in particular, are seen as more valuable than those on other platforms.
Podcasts should rely on discovery via short-form outlets like TikTok and Instagram Reels, as well as longer-form YouTube content.
And no matter what platform content is destined for, the first three seconds, hooks, and headlines are vital for grabbing attention. One speaker noted that Reels can function almost like free A/B testing to determine what will work in a longer-form setting.
AI’s Role in Search and Shopping
Ai was described as a supplement to creativity, and not creativity itself, and as part of the consumer journey, but not a substitute for human behavior. The consensus was that it should be invisible (with its usage clearly disclosed) and useful, but not gimmicky.
Traditional search and AI search are moving closer toward combining, and people will soon be unable to distinguish between them. Brands must consider AI discovery, referral traffic from AI, answer engine optimization, and the ways that different AI tools cull information from different sources.
For consumers, while they may use AI for research, they tend to migrate to Google, retailer websites, and brick-and-mortar stores for actual purchases.
The trend that seems to be emerging is consumers using social for discovery, retailer sites for validation, search for comparison, and AI to help them sift through an abundance of choices, finally completing their purchases on whichever surface the friction is lowest on.
As journeys to purchase become noisier, consumers will rely more on trusted voices, and creator-led content can help brands win at each moment of those journeys.
EMARKETER said during its panel that while AI will change the shopping journey, it will also make credible, searchable, high-volume creator content a more important part of that journey.
The importance of social platforms is not diminishing, as the researcher found that 39.2% of shoppers in the U.S. first saw or learned about recent purchases on those platforms, topping the list.
EMARKETER also noted that AI is causing platforms to demand more creative assets to break through, recommending that brands consider doubling their output on that front, but cautioning that they must be careful with how they use AI, as consumers dislike obvious AI content in ads and social media posts.
AI can help with scale, but it cannot replace the authenticity that people respond to.
Key Takeaways From Possible 2026
Creators are no longer just people who post on social platforms, and they should not be considered as simply “media placements.” They are becoming agencies, brands, and studios, and even surpassing television in some cases.
Therefore, brands must stop thinking of creator marketing as a bolt-on media tactic and begin treating it as a core part of culture, commerce, community, and trust building.
The brands that will succeed will be those that craft better briefs, allow creator autonomy, invest in longer partnerships with creators, measure deeper engagement, and combine human creativity with surging technologies such as AI search, while retaining the emotional connection that truly drives consumer behavior.
Open Influence’s team stays on top of the latest trends and is here to help you maximize your creator campaigns. Open Influence is a leading global creator marketing agency dedicated to creating engaging campaigns.