Are We at Peak Influence?

Social media is more powerful than ever, affecting every aspect of our lives. Now Al influencers want in on the action

- By Taylor Lorenz

You may not have done the 12-3-30 workout (yet), but you've probably purchased a product or watched a show you heard about from a podcast, cooked a recipe or tried an exercise you saw on Instagram, or turned to a YouTube expert for advice on fixing something around the house or adjusting your aching back. Influencer marketing is now a $16 billion industry in the U.S., and the broader "creator industry" is set to double to half a trillion dollars by 2027, according to a report from Goldman Sachs.

Since the pandemic pushed everyone more online, these trends are becoming increasingly pronounced: 90 percent of people now trust an influencer over a celebrity when making a purchase, and among 18-to-24-year-olds, 65 percent have made a purchase based on an influencer's recommendation, according to a 2022 Adweek survey. That figure jumps to 72 percent among 25-to-34-year olds. "It's the niche communities that drive trends, purchases, and behaviors," says Brendan Gahan, partner and chief social officer at Mekanism, a creative agency.

Those niche communities are growing. There are around 32,300 YouTube channels with more than 1 million subscribers, according to Socialblade. There are up to 4.1 million active podcasts, according to Podcast Index. In March, Substack announced that it had surpassed 35 million newsletter subscriptions and that readers had paid writers more than $300 million through the service.

Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, and myriad smaller social apps all have their own swarms of creators.

The rise of the influencer industry has been economically liberating for millions of people, many of whom, like women and people of color, were traditionally shut out of legacy systems. It's provided a new form of entertainment and a new road map for entrepreneurial success. It can be enormously positive. For instance, the ice-bucket challenge raised more than $200 million for ALS research.