A week after Omnicom’s consumer study reset the conversation around advertising’s diminishing influence, the implications for brand strategy are becoming harder to ignore.
The research, conducted in October 2025 among 1,000 U.S. adults, quantified what many marketers have been experiencing anecdotally: advertising is no longer the primary trigger for belief or decision-making. Human opinion remains the strongest influence, but it now operates alongside AI-generated guidance and creator ecosystems that increasingly shape consideration before a brand message is even encountered.
The numbers are telling. Seventy-one percent of respondents said what people say about a brand matters more than advertising. For 45 percent, AI-generated insights carry greater weight than ads; for 43 percent, influencers matter more. Advertising, once the dominant entry point, is now often a secondary signal—reinforcing perceptions already formed elsewhere.
This recalibration carries particular weight in markets such as India, where annual advertising spends exceed ₹1 lakh crore, and marquee advertisers individually commit ₹1,000–4,000 crore annually to marketing and promotions. A growing proportion of this investment—now more than half—for many startups 100 percent–is directed towards digital and social media channels, reflecting both changing consumer behaviour and the demand for measurable engagement.
Increasingly, ad dollars are flowing into influencer marketing, signalling a shift from traditional reach-based campaigns to trust- and relationship-driven ecosystems. This pivot suggests that brands are recognising influence as a strategic lever, not just a tactical extension of advertising, and are recalibrating their media, creative, and experiential investments to align with a more complex, multi-layered consumer decision journey.
What is changing is not simply where consumers spend time, but how belief itself is formed. Today’s consumers interrogate claims, triangulate inputs across peers, creators, reviews, and increasingly AI-generated summaries. Influence is no longer asserted by brands; it is assembled by consumers across multiple touchpoints.
Industry leaders argue that three forces are accelerating this shift: declining certainty in mass media, platforms that reward authenticity over authority, and a technological layer that filters, prioritises, and sometimes decides on behalf of users. In such an environment, influence is cumulative, not transactional—and advertising’s role is increasingly to amplify trust rather than create it.
However, not everyone is convinced with the idea of diminished relevance of advertising. Binit Kumar, AGM – Marketing at Dabur India, argues that the problem lies less with advertising itself and more with how its role is being misunderstood and measured.
Read: People, AI & Influencers–Marketing’s new power trio; ads in supporting role: Study
How Brand Leaders See the Shift?
For B2B marketers, the implication is clear: influence is now a system, not a line item. Brands that invest in credibility, human-led advocacy, intelligent experience design, and sustained cultural presence will stay relevant. Those relying solely on polished messaging risk sounding increasingly distant in a market that values context, conviction, and lived validation.
Brands Can no longer Run Advertising, PR & Influencers in Silos: Deepali Naair, Biocon Biologics
Deepali Naair, Global Head of Brand & Corporate Communications, Biocon Biologics, frames the shift as structural rather than tactical. “The new brand growth model is hybrid, and it exposes an uncomfortable truth. Brands can no longer afford to treat advertising, PR, influencers, content, and performance marketing as parallel tracks,” she says. “The future belongs to brands that build real human connection while also optimising for machines—from AI-led search and algorithmic recommendations to generative summaries shaping choice.”
She cautions that fragmentation is now a direct growth risk. “When brand ownership is split across functions with different leaders and super-specialised skills, influence fragments too. Today, influence depends on coherence across touchpoints—not on one big influencer moment. Influencer marketing must move from activation to strategy, driven by narrative and fit. In a distributed influence economy, orchestration becomes the brand leader’s job.”
Influence as strategy, not tactic: Ajinkya Hange, Two Brothers Organic Farms
From a D2C lens, Ajinkya Hange, Co-founder, Two Brothers Organic Farms, stresses that influence must be institutionalised. “Brands need always-on creator ecosystems—not one-off posts,” he says. “This includes micro and macro influencers who act as long-term category voices. Influence should sit at the core of the marketing framework, not as a social media tactic.”
On credibility, he notes: “It’s no longer about polished messaging, but independent, consistent, and competent voices. Consumers look for lived experience, proof, and community sentiment—often in comment sections. Influence works because it distributes proof at scale.”
Advertising repositioned, not replaced: Abhinav Pathak, Escape Plan
Abhinav Pathak, Co-founder & CEO, Escape Plan, a next-generation travel platform, argues that advertising hasn’t disappeared—it has been demoted in the sequence of belief.
“Influence now sets direction; advertising follows,” he says. “People form opinions much earlier through peers, creators, reviews, and AI-led summaries—long before a campaign enters the picture.”
He links this to the well-known 7-4-11 rule of customer acquisition: seven hours of exposure, across four platforms, and eleven touchpoints before decision-making. “Advertising alone can’t deliver that depth anymore. Influence through people, content, and experience fills those touchpoints far more effectively. Advertising works best today as reinforcement—amplifying what consumers already trust.”
For marketing teams, this means planning must begin well before launch moments. “Budgets need to move closer to product experience, creator ecosystems, community conversations, and post-purchase validation.”
On credibility in an AI-shaped environment, Pathak adds: “AI and creators don’t create trust—they reflect it. If the product and experience are strong, AI summaries accelerate belief. If they’re weak, advertising only speeds up rejection.”
Advertising works best when informed by real consumer conversations: Deepthi Nair, Happy Monk
For Deepthi Nair, Co-founder, Happy Monk, influence hasn’t replaced advertising—it has redefined its role.
“Influence often builds the first layer of belief; advertising amplifies it,” she says. “In D2C, digital ads may create curiosity, but belief is built through creators, storytelling, and on-ground experiences. Advertising works best when informed by real consumer conversations.”
On AI, she adds: “AI helps with discovery and scale, but trust still comes from human experience. Creator advocacy cannot be performative. Audiences recognise real engagement instantly.”
Advertising is not going anywhere: Binit Kumar, Dabur
The notion that advertising has become less relevant is not universally accepted. Binit Kumar, AGM – Marketing at Dabur India, believes the real challenge lies in a flawed understanding and measurement of advertising’s role.
“Advertising is not going anywhere,” Kumar says. “Obituaries for advertising are being written because our expectations of what advertising should deliver need a reality check. Advertising effectiveness has to be judged through evidence, not anecdotes or WhatsApp-forward wisdom.”
He points out that advertising’s ability to drive immediate sales is structurally limited. In categories such as FMCG, only about 3–5% of consumers are in a buying situation at any given time. “Advertising’s real job is to create and refresh memory structures, making life easier for consumers when they are ready to choose,” he notes.
Kumar is also critical of the industry’s growing obsession with performance marketing, hyper-personalisation and pin-code-level activation. “Large brands have started behaving like small brands,” he says, warning that short-term optimisation is increasingly coming at the cost of long-term brand equity.
“Global evidence supports this concern. Recent analyses by WARC and Analytic Partners, drawing on multi-market data sets, show that brands allocating more than 50% of their budgets to performance marketing deliver significantly weaker commercial returns than those investing the majority in brand building.”
There is, Kumar adds, a deeper creative misunderstanding at play. “Noticing and remembering are two different things. The brain notices novelty, but remembers patterns. As an industry, we have learned to celebrate differentiation, while neglecting distinctiveness—the very thing that builds memory over time.”
What Agencies Are Seeing?
If brands are recalibrating how influence is built, agencies are already living the consequences of that shift on the front lines. Across creative, media, and digital firms, the consensus is clear: advertising has not weakened, but its role has fundamentally changed. Trust is now formed upstream—through people, communities, creators, and increasingly AI—long before a brand message enters the frame.
Advertising’s power today lies less in persuasion and more in amplification, validation, and scale. The agency challenge, therefore, is no longer about making louder messages, but about helping brands earn the right moments where advertising can still matter, industry experts say.
Advertising amplifies trust; it no longer creates it: Nisha Singhania, Infectious
Nisha Singhania, CEO & Managing Partner at Infectious Advertising, sums it up succinctly: “Advertising hasn’t lost power. It’s lost primacy. Belief is now formed before brands speak—through people, creators, communities, and AI. Advertising amplifies trust; it no longer creates it.”
She warns: “The danger isn’t weaker ads. It’s over-investing in persuasion and under-investing in influence.”
Advertising still creates awareness & choice: Nimesh Shah, Windchimes Communications
Nimesh Shah, Head Maven, Windchimes Communications, adds nuance: “Advertising still creates awareness and choice. People and influencers build trust and relevance. AI isn’t replacing advertising—it’s replacing search. The bigger shift will be advertisers learning to optimize for AI systems, not just consumers.”
He points to a looming transformation: “Ad algorithms will soon need to ‘speak’ to AI agents making decisions on behalf of users—a massive technical reset the industry hasn’t fully grasped.”
Advertising works best when interest has been sparked: Aakash Goplani, SoCheers
Aakash Goplani, Vice President – Business, SoCheers, believes the shift is less about abandoning advertising and more about changing its order of appearance in the consumer journey.
“Advertising isn’t becoming irrelevant; consumers today seek context before persuasion,” he says. “They want to understand a brand’s intent, story, and personality before engaging with its products. Influence-led content and authentic storytellers establish that context far more effectively than traditional ads.”
For Goplani, the real change is in sequencing. “Advertising works best after interest has been sparked. When brands invest early in storytelling and cultural presence, their advertising delivers greater impact later. This isn’t replacement—it’s reprioritisation.”
On AI’s growing role in shaping credibility, he adds: “Platforms like ChatGPT or Gemini reflect what is consistently visible and validated across the internet. When people consult AI, they’re trusting a synthesis of signals, not brand claims. That makes content optimisation for AI-led discovery critical to maintaining consideration.”