Influencer marketing in India didn’t begin as an industry. It began as a habit. People followed bloggers, YouTubers and early Instagram creators not because they were paid to, but because they felt familiar. They spoke the same language, shared the same humour, and felt closer than celebrities ever did. Trust came first. Followers followed later. In those early years, influence lived in dance videos, personal opinions and meme-worthy moments that travelled fast and felt organic. There were no dashboards, no performance clauses, no post-campaign reports. A recommendation worked simply because it came from someone audiences believed in.
That world no longer exists.
Today, influencer marketing has grown into a structured, multi-crore industry where influence is no longer a vibe — it’s a business input. Campaigns are planned, contracts are detailed, and outcomes are expected. Brands are no longer asking who looks good on a feed. They are asking who can move product, drive action and deliver returns.
Valued at `3,600 crore in 2024 and growing at 25% annually (IBEF 2025), the industry is in the middle of a reset. Follower counts and aesthetics still matter, but they no longer lead the conversation. What leads now are conversions, trackable sales and return on investment. Posts don’t end at posting - they extend into dashboards, affiliate links, coupon codes, UTM tags and performance reviews that decide whether a creator partnership continues or quietly disappears.
The shift is subtle but fundamental. Influence is no longer assumed. It is evaluated. As brands demand proof, collaborations are being redesigned from the ground up. Awareness-led partnerships still exist, but performance-linked models are quickly gaining ground, especially in categories where attribution is clearer and accountability is non-negotiable. The question driving the industry forward is no longer ‘Who can get us views?’ but ‘Who can drive outcomes?’
Ramya Ramchandran, Founder and CEO, Whoppl, a new-age influencer content-to-commerce company, captures this transition clearly, “Nearly 70% of our influencer campaigns today are linked to performance or affiliate-based outcomes, whether through trackable coupon codes, UTM-linked conversions, or direct sales impact. Traditional paid collaborations still exist for awareness and storytelling, but the balance has decisively shifted. Our goal is to make every piece of influencer content sell, not just trend.”
And the results are no longer vague. Ramya adds that in categories like D2C and FMCG, Whoppl. has been able to directly attribute 25–40% of monthly sales spikes to creator-led campaigns integrated with performance layers.
Other agencies are experiencing the same shift, though not at the same pace. Deepak Bhati, Co-Founder, DigiWhistle, offers a reality check. He says, “At DigiWhistle, approximately 15–20% of our influencer partnerships follow affiliate or performance-based models, while 80–85% remain traditional paid collaborations. This strategic distribution reflects our commitment to authentic, long-term relationships with creators rather than purely transactional arrangements. Also, almost 70% of brands prefer long-term collaborations.” But he notes that this is changing fast, with hybrid models becoming the middle ground between creativity and accountability. Brands want results while Creators want sustainability. And so agencies are combining base fees with performance incentives, a structure that rewards both influence and impact.
Offering a broader perspective, Karan Pherwani, Vice President, Chtrbox, outlines how this transition is unfolding globally and in India. “Globally, brands are fundamentally rethinking how influencer partnerships are structured. In India, traditional paid collaborations still dominate. While a few brands like Nykaa have adopted affiliate models with creator-friendly commission structures, these remain exceptions rather than the norm.” According to Pherwani, performance-led payouts are most effective in micro, nano and campus ambassador programmes, where attribution is clearer. Storytelling isn’t disappearing—it’s being held to a higher standard: the ability to drive measurable outcomes.
Backing up this growth, Suraj Nedungadi, Associate Vice President – Strategy, YAAP, says, “Affiliate models are helping bridge the gap between influence and business results, but they can’t replace storytelling. We integrate affiliate layers only where they feel authentic, converting trusted recommendations into measurable action. These models work best in high-intent categories such as beauty, lifestyle and D2C, where creators already play a role in shaping purchase journeys. A growing share of campaigns now includes performance linkages, not to commodify creators, but to demonstrate their real commercial impact. Influence should drive outcomes—without undervaluing creativity.”
However, this shift towards performance is not only changing how creators are paid but also how they are evaluated. Success today is no longer defined by likes or reach, but by measurable business outcomes. Vivek Das, Chief Digital Officer, Madison World, notes, “Beyond traditional impressions and engagement, success is now defined by metrics including conversion rates, cost-per-acquisition, customer LTV (Lifetime Value), ROAS (Return on Ad Spends), and direct sales attribution. Our proprietary and third-party tech stacks ensure every rupee invested translates into measurable business impact.” This explains why renewals are now tied to dashboards, not just visibility. Creators, too, are adapting by tracking their own performance more seriously.
As brands began demanding performance, credibility quickly became the pressure point. Tying payouts to conversions exposed an uncomfortable reality: not every follower was real, and not every interaction was organic. Fake followers, engagement pods, bot-driven comments and sudden spikes in activity had long existed beneath the surface of the creator economy. Before brands could measure impact with confidence, they had to establish authenticity. AI became the industry’s answer to that challenge.
For agencies like RepIndia, the process of influencer selection begins long before a campaign brief. Introducing the problem with precision, Nazneen Joshi, Senior Vice President – Business & Strategy (West), RepIndia, says, “We leverage AI-led tools such as HypeAuditor, Qoruz and others to vet influencer audiences. According to HypeAuditor, ≈ 55% of Instagram influencers show signs of fraud (fake followers / inflated engagement). For influencers with 500K–1M followers, fraud-impact is reported at nearly 59.7%.” She adds that to minimise risk, “We typically require: (1) Audience Quality Score ≥ 60; (2) No engagement-spike anomalies in the last 90 days; (3) Minimum genuine-to-fake follower ratio threshold; and (4) Contracts where 30-50% of the fee is tied to validated outcomes.”
But fraud detection is not just about eliminating the bad, it’s also about discovering the authentic. That’s where platforms like KlugKlug have become essential. Kalyan Kumar, Co-Founder & CEO, KlugKlug, explains, “KlugKlug’s AI system almost completely addresses the challenges of limited data transparency for regional and micro creators by becoming audience-first. We drill down to city-level geos and decode their cultural and linguistic DNA. It’s not about follower counts. It’s real engagement, steady growth, and zero audience duplication.”
His data-backed view is critical that influence isn’t disappearing, it’s just moving away from inflated numbers to verified relevance. But at the same time, this shift has changed how brands negotiate. Contracts now include disclosure clauses, authenticity benchmarks, and penalties for manipulated metrics. Renewals are no longer driven by creator popularity, they’re driven by dashboards. And in this new system, influence isn’t just about reach. It’s about whether that reach is ‘real’. But, Sayak Mukherjee, Co-founder, Creatorcult presents the opposite side, “For larger brands operating across multiple channels, it’s often challenging to isolate influencer-led ROI. We encourage our clients to share performance metrics post-campaign to close this loop.”
But as processes grew more layered and brand expectations tightened, demanding not just performance but proof, artificial intelligence quietly moved from the background to the centre of the ecosystem, evolving from a supporting tool into the industry’s filter, validator and planner, shaping how influence is chosen, measured and trusted. AI entered the room when follower counts and aesthetic feeds were no longer enough to justify marketing spends.
Kunal Sawant, Business Head at GOAT, WPP Media India, describes this shift from instinct to intelligence, “In my view, the shift we are witnessing in influencer marketing is not an evolution—it’s a Great Reset, driven entirely by the indispensable role of Artificial Intelligence across the entire value chain. I no longer rely on manual processes; I see AI as the structural backbone enabling hyper-efficient, accountable campaigns. At WPP Media and Goat, our process mandates that discovery moves beyond follower vanity to targeted resonance, where AI-powered platforms like Brand.AI, conduct immediate Authenticity Audits, rigorously vetting millions of profiles for fraud and executing precise Audience Segmentation to find the perfect customer-creator fit. This data then flows directly into ideation and planning.”
And one of the major reasons this shift became inevitable was the scale of inauthentic activity. It wasn’t just a few inflated profiles- it was systemic. As Kalyan points out, “Around 60% of followers for more than 50% of Indian influencers turn out to be bots or inactive accounts. Another giveaway is when followers themselves follow a ton of accounts but rarely engage. That’s usually a sign they’re not genuine. You also spot fake patterns through sudden spikes in likes or comments that don’t fit natural growth. And accounts with no recent posts or activity? Those are often just dormant or fake profiles.” His observation explains why AI is no longer optional in selection, it is necessary to separate genuine influence from manufactured visibility.
This is why platforms and agencies have moved beyond manual vetting. This backbone — AI, now underlies the most critical decisions: who to onboard, what to pay them, whether their audience is real, and if they can influence more than an algorithm. Agencies are using AI not just to pick creators but to prevent expensive misjudgments.
Shivangi Kothari, Head of Paid Media, Agency09, captures this shift clearly when she says, “We’ve embedded AI-powered audience analytics and authenticity audits into our influencer identification process. These tools allow us to evaluate follower authenticity, engagement quality, audience geography, and overlap across campaigns. As a result, influencer selection has shifted from a perception-based decision to a data-certified partnership model. We now prioritize creators with a verified 70%+ authentic audience base and consistent engagement quality over sheer reach.”
This larger shift, signals AI is not reacting to campaigns, it is shaping them. It does not just ask whether a creator is popular; it asks if they are credible, relevant to the category, and likely to deliver tangible outcomes. Kejal Teckchandani, EVP - Influencer Outreach, FCB Kinnect, explains how deeply data and AI have become embedded in this space. “Our creator evaluation process is a blend of human intuition and smart analytics. We deploy a powerful audience-audit platform to validate creator relevance, follower authenticity, sentiment, and niche fit and then apply the filter of cultural and strategic judgment that only people can bring. AI gives us precision, but our teams bring perspective. They can sense tone, contextual nuance, and community alignment that algorithms can’t decode. This hybrid model ensures that every creator we collaborate with is both culturally resonant and performance-verified.”
Rather than replacing human judgment, AI has become the layer beneath it. It can confirm whether an audience is genuine and whether past content drove clicks or purchases, but it cannot determine if a creator’s tone aligns with a brand’s cultural identity. This is where strategists and marketers still step in, to balance data with brand intuition. Data decides ‘who qualifies to influence’, but brands ultimately decide ‘who deserves to’. While agencies invest in AI filters, dashboards and fraud-detection systems, brands continue to prioritise coherence, identity and the slow work of building long-term trust.
Anika Agarwal, Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer, Orient Electric, articulates this shift with precision, “Our influencer choices are driven by authentic resonance and relevance over pure reach. We look for creators whose content naturally blends with our brand voice i.e. modern, design-led, and purposeful. Each influencer is evaluated through a 3-point lens: audience trust (engagement quality), content originality, and category fitment.” Her view reflects a sentiment: ‘Influence, without identity, is just advertisement.’
Nishant Kedia, CMO, Rebel Foods, shares a similar philosophy — one that balances intuition with intelligence. “Today’s influencer partnerships depend on genuine alignment, not just popularity driven by algorithms. We look at the quality of engagement, the relevance of their audience, and how well their values match ours, using AI tools to measure sentiment and brand fit. Partnerships based on authenticity outperform those focused on vanity metrics, achieving nearly 1.5 times more engagement and recall among our target audiences.”
And Sayak backs it up with an example of Creatorcult’s campaign with Tira Beauty for the launch of a global skincare in India, “A single macro collaboration (costing the brand `2.8 lakh) generated `18 lakh in launch weekend sales, purely driven by audience-product relevance and timing. This underlines that relevance drives ROI, more than reach alone.”
But relevance and relatability, isn’t always found in the biggest accounts or the loudest voices. As brands tighten their filters and expectations, influence is beginning to shift again, this time from scale to precision. From celebrity creators with pan-India appeal to voices who speak the language of local streets, regional habits and everyday culture. And this is where the spotlight quietly moves from mainstream influencers to micro and vernacular creators, the ones who might not have millions of followers, but have something far more powerful: ‘community.’
As this shift unfolds, brands are rediscovering the power of smaller, culturally rooted voices. Anupam Bansal, Executive Director, Liberty Shoes, explains why scale is no longer the only measure of success, “Smaller creators are delivering stronger trust-to-conversion ratios. Regional and niche influencers have an unmatched ability to connect with audiences in their own language, emotion, and context. Over the past year, we’ve shifted a major portion of our influencer budget toward these creators, particularly across Tier-2 and Tier-3 markets. Campaigns featuring them have not only driven higher engagement but also deeper loyalty.”
Yet, this shift towards smaller and more rooted creators has done more than change casting choices, it has redefined what brands expect influence to achieve. It’s no longer just about visibility; it is about retention. And agencies are restructuring their strategies accordingly. Simantini Ghosh, Senior Vice President – Sports & Entertainment, Branded Entertainment & Influencer Marketing, dentsu India, explains that campaigns today are designed to drive impact across every stage of the funnel, not just awareness but also preference, consideration and measurable behaviour. She explains, “As influencer marketing matures, our approach has evolved. We design campaigns where creative storytelling is anchored to clear business outcomes across the funnel. At the top, we track awareness metrics like reach quality, share of voice, and sentiment uplift. Mid-funnel, we focus on engagement depth, content saves, and click-through rates to gauge interest and intent. At the bottom, metrics like cost per acquisition, attributed conversions, and long-term brand lift help us measure tangible impact.” According to Ghosh, creativity is still critical, but now it must prove its ability to shift behaviour, not just spark emotion.
However, not every agency believes that performance alone can define the future of this industry. Some argue that numbers without narrative create campaigns that look efficient but feel soulless. At PivotRoots, part of the Havas network, creative purpose still determines performance. Hetal Khalsa, Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer, PivotRoots, a Havas company believes, “At PivotRoots, we have always believed that performance and creative storytelling go hand in hand. For performance to work, storytelling really needs to do the job of bringing the product’s features and benefits to life. Moving beyond the traditional KPIs of reach and engagement, we also look at the impact of influencers translating into bottom-funnel metrics like traffic increase and assisted conversions.”
And this tension between storytelling and sales is shaping a new kind of creator economy, one built not just on influencer reach but on influencer responsibility. Manish Solanki, COO and Co-founder, TheSmallBigIdea, explains how the brief itself has evolved to reflect this duality. “The shift to performance-driven influencer marketing hasn’t taken the magic out of storytelling; it’s just made us more accountable for it. Every campaign we build now has two clear goals — tell a story people actually care about, and make sure it moves the business needle. We’ve stopped chasing vanity metrics. Instead, we look at engagement quality, not just volume. We run recall studies to understand brand lift, and we link influencer work directly to tangible results like cost per acquisition or even customer lifetime value.”
But as brands ask for conversions and agencies demand accountability, another conversation has been rising quietly, that of ethics, transparency and compliance. With paid partnerships increasing across platforms, audiences have become more sceptical and regulators more vigilant. Danny Advani, Head of Business Strategy & Planning, Dot Media, explains how the industry is attempting to bring structure to this space. “Leading agencies and platforms now enforce strict ASCI guideline compliance by building audit steps right into campaign workflows — including pre-campaign influencer education, standardised hashtags, and post-publishing checklist reviews. This landscape is rapidly professionalising, with more transparency, measurable impact, and regulatory awareness than ever before.”
Ramya underlines how compliance is ensured, “We have a central compliance tracker that ensures every influencer post follows ASCI disclosure norms, right from the briefing stage. Our contracts and internal dashboards mandate the #ad and #collab tags where applicable. We audit every campaign post-delivery, and currently, over 95% of our influencer posts are ASCI-compliant, which protects both the brand and the creator community.” And influencer marketing agencies like, RepIndia, CreatorCult, Chtrbox and Digiwhistle, all abide and strictly comply with the ASCI guidelines. All creators are required to follow ASCI’s disclosure norms, which are reviewed during the internal QC process before final approval.
However, Danny points out that regulation alone cannot guarantee responsibility. “While all of this is being practised, there are always slip-ups and misses because you can control the content outcome and not the creator themselves. Last I read, ASCI found 69% of influencer posts failed to meet disclosure rules in 2025, often due to lack of awareness or carelessness.” His observation brings the debate full circle, compliance may be evolving, but culture still needs to catch up.
While compliance and credibility have strengthened the foundation of influencer marketing, the business model itself is still evolving. But Vishal Prabhu, Creative Director – Strategy, White Rivers Media, believes in slow shifting, “The balance between creativity and performance is no longer an either-or. The idea still leads, but it now has to prove its worth in numbers.” He adds that affiliate-led campaigns are no longer experiments but essentials because they connect storytelling, influence and purchase.
Yet, even as business expectations mature, the sustainability of creators themselves becomes an unavoidable question. The constant pressure to perform, post, comply, analyse and still appear ‘authentic’ has made creator life less glamorous than it seems. While most experts acknowledge this informally, few say it directly. However, Deepak mentions that nearly 70% of brands now prefer long-term associations rather than one-off deals because, “Sustained narratives deliver better trust and recurring sales than sporadic viral moments.” For larger consumer-facing brands, creators are no longer just amplifiers, they are becoming collaborators in planning, messaging and retention. And in many ways, the move toward long-term partnerships over one-off campaigns is not just strategic, it is a quiet response to creator fatigue, offering stability over fleeting virality.
Because beyond creators, the definition of influence itself is changing. As the industry looks ahead, technology will not just audit influence, it will start generating it. Influence is now measurable, regulated and data-verified. So if data can track conversions and algorithms can validate authenticity, then what will truly set influence apart in the next phase: creativity, credibility or conscience? And when every click can be measured, will influence remain human, or become an algorithm?
