1. From Paid to Owned: Creators Are Reshaping the Engagement Playbook

For years, paid media served as the growth engine for digital-first brands. But rising customer acquisition costs, platform dependency and privacy shifts have upended that model. As these pressures mount, we’re seeing some of the best-performing brands move toward channels they can control—while tapping into the authenticity and trust that creators uniquely offer.

Creators have become a scalable, high-performing complement to owned engagement. Their content feels native, not intrusive. Their communities are built on trust, not targeting. And increasingly, their reach is being integrated into direct communication strategies like email, SMS and brand-owned social channels.

Klaviyo enables brands to activate and personalize communication with their own audiences, turning first-party data into measurable revenue. Later, which includes Mavely’s creator discovery and performance tools, helps brands tap into creator partnerships that deliver authentic content and fold naturally into owned channels.

What we’re seeing in the market is a return to marketing fundamentals—build your list, speak directly to your customer and deliver consistent value. The difference now: the creator economy is helping brands do this at scale.

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2. Commerce Is Everywhere: Discovery and Conversion Are Now One Motion

The storefront has been unbundled. Discovery no longer begins exclusively with a search; it can happen in a feed, a video or a direct message. The same environment that sparks product interest is increasingly where purchase decisions are made. For brands, this shift presents a challenge and an opportunity: be where your customers are and make it easy to act.

Manychat enables brands to turn conversation into commerce. Through integrations with messaging platforms like Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, it is designed to allow marketers to convert interest in the moment—without redirecting customers to external landing pages or checkout flows.

Later supports the top of this funnel by helping brands find and activate the right creators, amplify product discovery and extend reach across high-engagement platforms. When coordinated effectively, these solutions can shorten the customer journey and reduce friction from consideration to conversion.

As commerce becomes increasingly decentralized, we believe success lies in building a presence in the environments where consumers already spend their time—and making those environments transactional.

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3. Performance Is the Currency: The Creator Channel Must Prove Its Value

As the creator economy becomes a core part of the marketing mix, expectations for performance have risen. What began as a brand-awareness channel is now being evaluated against the same benchmarks as paid search or social.

Marketing leaders want clear attribution, full-funnel visibility and the confidence to allocate budget at scale. Later and Mavely are helping meet those needs—delivering data, tools and insights to help track creator performance from initial engagement through to conversion.

With visibility into impact, companies can move beyond experimentation and approach creator partnerships with the same rigor as any other high-performing acquisition strategy.

As marketing budgets come under greater scrutiny, the platforms gaining traction are those that deliver measurable impact—fast. For growth-stage businesses focused on driving rapid, profitable growth, balancing efficiency and expansion, that clarity matters.

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4. AI Is the Accelerator: Enhancing Creativity, Targeting and Scale

Artificial intelligence is driving a step-change in how both creators and brands operate. It's enabling faster content creation, smarter targeting and more efficient allocation of spend—all of which are critical for teams under pressure to do more with less.

For creators, AI is reducing friction in the content development process, helping them brainstorm, produce and iterate more efficiently across formats and channels. This acceleration allows for more frequent collaboration with brands and higher-impact campaigns.

For brands, AI is powering everything from campaign optimization to message personalization. StackAdapt uses AI to help marketers manage spend and measure campaign performance across the open internet with a level of control and insight typically associated walled gardens. Manychat applies AI to real-time customer interactions, helping brands to guide consumers through high-conversion experiences in a scalable, personalized way.

These capabilities aren’t just about automation, they’re about unlocking new ways to compete. As AI continues to evolve, it’s becoming a connective layer across the commerce stack, enabling smarter, faster decision-making from content to conversion.