# D+ Research: Marketers hesitate to adopt AI for influencer and CTV marketing > Source: > Published: 2026-07-09 04:01:00+00:00 Connect with execs from Axios, The New York Times, Paramount and more. [VIEW PASSES](https://digiday.com/events/digiday-publishing-summit-sep-26/?source=display&utm-source=display) # D+ Research: Marketers hesitate to adopt AI for influencer and CTV marketing This research is based on unique data collected from our proprietary audience of publisher, agency, brand and tech insiders. It’s available to Digiday+ members. [More from the series →](https://digiday.com/series/research/) Earlier this month, Digiday+ Research [reported](https://digiday.com/media-buying/marketers-ai-for-social-retail-media-skepticism-in-ai-ad-buying/) that advertisers are embracing AI for social media and retail media marketing. However, advertisers are slower to adopt AI for influencer and CTV marketing. This is according to a Digiday+ Research survey of more than 100 marketing professionals in first-quarter 2026. Only one quarter of marketers (25%) said they use AI for their influencer marketing work, according to the survey. One possibility for that reluctance is consumer demand for authenticity from influencers. According to an [April 2025 study](https://wfanet.org/knowledge/item/2025/04/28/major-brands-wary-of-using-ai-influencers) by the World Federation of Advertisers, 96% of brands that have no plans to work with virtual influencers cite consumer trust issues as their reasons for caution. Unlike human influencers, virtual influencers are fully AI-generated avatars whose appearance, voice and actions are fine-tuned by an individual or team of individuals behind the scenes, such as virtual influencer Mia Zel who [went viral](https://digiday.com/media/in-graphic-detail-virtual-influencers-click-with-young-audiences-yet-brands-interest-wanes/) with a Wimbledon-inspired post last year. Among the 25% of marketers who said they are using AI in their work with influencers, the majority (75%) said they use AI to analyze data. More than half said they use AI to create content (63%) and for influencer outreach (56%). Skin care brand Beekman 1802 partnered with AI analytics firm Bezel to [analyze its vast amounts of first-party data](https://www.glossy.co/beauty/how-beekman-1802-uses-ai-to-humanize-digital-marketing/). By feeding CRM and Shopify insights into large language models, Baker’s team uncovered customer personas that now guide everything from campaign strategy to product messaging. “We were able to throw all of our data at a large language model and really understand deeply who this consumer is and how many subtypes of consumer we have,” Beekman 1802’s chief digital officer David Baker said at Digiday, Glossy and Modern Retail’s AI Marketing Strategies virtual event in October 2025. Independent influencer agency Later uses an AI system to [discover human creators](https://digiday.com/marketing/ai-influencer-discovery-tools-are-changing-how-agencies-cast-creators/) that brands may want to work with. The tool matches campaign briefs with influencers and models potential content performance on historic engagement data. “That’s a much richer picture that gives me confidence that I’m going to get a high ROAS on my campaign,” Later CEO Scott Sutton told Digiday in March. Sutton said the change reflects the realities of today’s market, where brands partner with a large number of creators to compete for visibility on social platforms, and manual campaign organization isn’t practical. “More and more brands want to work with more creators,” he said. “The mechanics of operating creative programs in a highly effective way require you to use more influencers — generally, smaller to mid size influencers — in a more targeted way.” Influencers are also using AI to [find brand opportunities](https://digiday.com/media/the-state-of-generative-ai-in-the-creator-economy/) and to streamline work processes. According to a report from Wondercraft, [80% of creators](https://www.wondercraft.ai/ai-content-creation-report-2025) use AI at some point in their workflow. Creator app POP.STORE recently launched its AI ECHO ME program, an agentic commerce platform meant to help creators identify revenue opportunities, generate content and engage with fans. POP.STORE CEO Gautam Goswami told Digiday in May that the platform can connect to an influencer’s social media account, sort through DMs, and eventually emails, to determine whether a message is coming from a brand or a creator. It will identify their size, and if the message has a clear monetary proposition. “Creators are basically chickens with their heads cut off running around all day long, and within that craziness, trying to come up with creative ideas and shoot great content and always worried that they may get lost in the algorithm,” Goswami said, alleging that creators have told him that “80% of DMs go unanswered.” ## Marketers use AI for CTV less than for other channels When Digiday asked marketers whether they are using AI in their CTV campaigns, the majority of survey respondents (82%) said they are not using AI for marketing in streaming. That’s a stark contrast to other channels like social media and retail media, where 49% and 42% of marketers, respectively, told Digiday they were using AI for marketing. “AI adoption in CTV has historically lagged because TV was built on a broadcast mindset, whereas social media was built on data,” Brian Albert, YouTube’s managing director of U.S. video deals and creative works, said in an email for [Digiday’s 2026 guide to CTV](https://digiday.com/future-of-tv/digiday-research-the-marketers-2026-guide-to-a-shifting-ctv-landscape-including-youtube-peacock-and-roku/) in May. However, CTV has become significantly more addressable over the past several years, with advertisers increasingly able to target households and audience segments using first-party data, attention signals and contextual intelligence rather than relying solely on geography, channel context or daypart. “AI is starting to creep into the CTV space in a lot of different places,” said Harry Browne, vp of TV, audio and display innovation at performance marketing agency Tinuiti. “First and foremost, audience targeting … as well as contextual targeting to understand the context that is airing and whether that’s where an advertiser wants to place their ad.” Among the 18% of marketers who said they are using AI in their CTV marketing campaigns, the majority (69%) said they use AI to analyze data. More than half (54%) said they use AI to create content and buy ad placements, respectively. Amazon offers AI tools for marketers to both create content and buy media. Its Complete TV tool gives AI-powered recommendations to help TV buyers [optimize their spending](https://digiday.com/marketing/amazon-tightens-its-grip-on-tv-ads-with-ai-tool-built-for-upfront-negotiations/) across Prime Video and other premium streaming publishers. Its AI Creative Studio and Audio Generator tools allow advertisers to [design video, image and audio creative](https://press.aboutamazon.com/2024/10/amazon-ads-launches-new-ai-tools-for-advertisers-ai-creative-studio-and-audio-generator) which they can deploy across Amazon’s ad inventory, including Prime Video. Roku partners with AI companies on creative production, particularly within its Ads Manager platform, which is primarily used by smaller DTC or local brands, according to Sarah Harms, Roku’s vp of ad marketing and measurement. “Before, entrance into TV was prohibitive because brands needed either to be in the upfront or to have a fully produced TV creative. So, that’s helped democratize access to advertising on CTV,” Harms said. “On the other hand, there’s a lot of bad AI content out there, and we haven’t really seen that infiltrate CTV like it has in the social platforms… That’s not to say AI content or ads cannot be premium. We just have great control over it for now.” Cory Treffiletti, chief marketing officer of AI-driven ad tech company Rembrand, said the ease of integrating AI into CTV advertising depends on where in the tech stack it’s being applied. “For example, with interruptive ad formats, the barriers are structural and include fragmented identity resolution and siloed measurement,” Treffiletti said in an email. Nevertheless, real-world applications of AI for CTV campaigns continue to grow. In April 2026, a group of AI researchers, including several Netflix employees, [debuted](https://digiday.com/future-of-tv/future-of-tv-briefing-netflixs-void-peeks-at-the-future-of-virtual-product-placement/) an AI tool called VOID that can be used to remove objects from video clips, detect and understand the relationships between objects in a scene and alter the video altogether. The team behind VOID wrote in a research paper about the tool, “Void [sic] does not just recall simple visual cues from its training data, but applies high-level reasoning and world knowledge from the VLM [vision-language model] and underlying video diffusion model to video editing. As such, it is likely to benefit as more capable generative models become available.” Tinuiti’s Browne said it will take time before AI is regularly used in CTV campaigns. “CTV is the type of creative that advertisers are most precious about. They have the most pride in what they put on the biggest screen in the house,” he said. “There is hesitancy to turn that over to an AI creative technology, where if something looks a little bit off, it could make the whole creative fall apart.” a benefit for advertisers,” he said. “The more time and work that is saved, the more cost savings can be passed on to advertisers, and the more effective their campaigns can be.” ### More in Marketing #### [ OpenAI set to expand ads to France, Germany and Ireland ](https://digiday.com/marketing/openai-set-to-expand-ads-to-france-germany-and-ireland/) The ads solutions vacancies in those markets signify that OpenAI will have achieved a presence in every major global advertising region within less than a year. #### [ How Bandit Running is expanding internationally while staying hyperlocal ](https://digiday.com/marketing/how-bandit-running-is-expanding-internationally-while-staying-hyperlocal/) Bandit’s focus on core running communities has helped it grow enough to start expanding outward. #### [ Criteo is subject to a takeover bid, further proving private equity’s continued interest in ad tech ](https://digiday.com/marketing/criteo-is-subject-to-a-takeover-bid-further-proving-private-equitys-continued-interest-in-ad-tech/) Vista Equity and Quinti Capital place a 50% premium on stock, raising questions over where the PE firms see value.