Creator marketing and AI discovery

We went to Creator Connect this week, the IAB Australia and AiMCO event.

Two points stood out to us:

1. AI now shapes how people find products, and
2. Creators increasingly influence what AI puts in front of consumers.

The micro-influencer explosion

Australia has 1.3 million content creators with more than 1,000 followers each, a figure presented at the event. The market now runs on a long tail of mostly micro creators across every category. Big names in influencer marketing are now a small (but powerful) component of a much larger industry.

For marketers the challenge becomes the logistics where ten creator partnerships that ran last year now explode into a hundred this year, and each one adds more content and more claims to track until manual processes buckle under the volume.

Where AI discovery actually ranks

One number stood out to Tim Chapman and me. In the ranking of what feeds AI discovery, creators came in at 7th.

Ratings and reviews came in at 1st (not a surprise there).

I felt that gap will close, fast.

But the Ratings and reviews is soooo critical - you'll never SEO / GEO out-run bad product reviews, if you have them that's where you need to invest FIRST - brilliant basics of listening to the customer, the feedback and addressing the product and service issues.

If you don't, AI will use ratings and reviews AGAINST you. Not too many Creators will be able to unscramble that egg.

Creator content does influence what AI puts in front of people, but ratings and reviews still carry more weight.

In the US, marketers rank creators the 3rd most important channel to invest in, and the one where spend will rise fastest.

Automotive alone has a reported $1.6 billion going into US creator investment in 2026.

In ANZ, 18.1% of consumers say creator content matters most when they research a product.

Those came from the event panel, which included Fabulate, YouTube and WPP.

Trust and the compliance catch

Authenticity drives conversion, a trusted creator can move product, as long as the audience believes the post is genuine.

Transparency was a key topic during the debate, and AiMCO members had (I think if I heard it correctly over 99% compliance here) - but with transparency came a drop in conversion...so a bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario.

Volume is where it gets really hard for marketers, and we heard a lot around how organisations will need to re-organise their marketing teams to have roles like Head of Creators type functions.

Volume also creates claim and compliance challenges across brand guideline compliance, brand safety and legal and regulatory code compliance.

Every product claim in a creator's post is a claim someone has to defend, and regulated categories leave no room for a miss.

Alcohol, finance, health and automotive each sit under a legislated code, and the code covers a creator's words the same as a brand's ad. The pressure is the number of hands now producing that content, most of whom have never read one.

Across 1.3 million creators, checking claims by hand stops working, and this is where platforms like Checked It accelerate creator compliance.

A purpose-built system handles high-volume, rules-based checking far better than a general chatbot, and an early warning of an issue before a legal review is needed.

What this means for AI-first builds

Two build problems fall out of the day.

1. Being found. AI discovery is a channel now, and it favours content a model can read and cite. Ratings and reviews and creator content both carry weight, so a brand needs systems that keep them current and machine-legible.
2. Standing behind the claims. Claim volume rises with creator volume, so checking each against the relevant legislation or brand guidelines fast and at scale, is regulatory AI.

Discovery is moving to AI, with reviews carrying it today and creators close behind, and compliance is the piece that will put significant strain on all involved and platforms and tools will need to step in to support.

We build exactly these at Hiaitus.

If your team is weighing this and wondering how to build for it, that is a conversation we enjoy.

Worth 20 minutes? Email hello@hiaitus.ai and I'll reply inside one business day.