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Influencer marketing to baby boomers hits different — and not in the way brands intended.

Research from Morning Consult, conducted exclusively for Business Insider, reveals a stark generational divide in attitudes toward influencers. Boomers — people born between 1946 and 1964 — are distrustful of influencers, skeptical of their recommendations, and more likely to find their content "annoying."

In the survey of roughly 2,000 US adults conducted in September, 31% of boomers said they trust influencer recommendations at least somewhat, compared with 62% of Gen Z and 64% of millennials. Two in five (40%) boomers surveyed said they trust influencers less than they did a few years ago.

Sure, plenty of adults become set in their ways and harder to persuade as they age. But advertising pros said there's another factor that could help explain boomers' wariness of influencer marketing: brands themselves continue to overlook the older generation.

"Brands are terrified of taking any dollars away from speaking to young people," said Jennifer Meehan, an EVP at the communications agency Edelman.

That fear also extends into the creators they look to partner with.

Florian Dost, a marketing professor at Brandenburg University of Technology in Germany, interviewed influencer agencies and talent managers as part of a recent study. Some of the managers his team interviewed found that older influencers often drove higher campaign conversion rates, but brands rejected them.

"Agencies may know that," Dost said. "They certainly sometimes try to put it forth because they also see the numbers. But clients don't want to hear."

Boomers' distaste for influencers presents a challenge for CMOs.

The generation is a considerable consumer force, accounting for 42% of spending among affluent US households, according to Visa research from last year. With US marketers forecast to spend $40 billion on creator economy partnerships and ads this year, per Business Insider sister company EMARKETER, brands risk leaving a lucrative audience on the sidelines.

Getting boomers to click

Stewart Reynolds, 56, a Canadian comedy creator who posts under the name Brittlestar, said that older consumers rarely see themselves reflected in influencer marketing, which tends to favor young, attractive influencers.

Reynolds, a Gen Xer, said 45% of his audience is over 45 years old. And while he has landed plenty of brand deals with the likes of Yorkshire Tea, Yoplait, and Dairy Farmers of Ontario, he jokingly admits he's jealous of the opportunities that his son, Gregor Reynolds, another successful comedy creator, receives.

"He's getting brand deals and campaigns that I wouldn't get because I'm not young and fit," Reynolds said.

It's not just the brands, though.

Marketing insiders said some of the disconnect could be explained by influencers failing to create content that's relatable to an older audience. About a quarter (26%) of boomers surveyed by Morning Consult said influencer content made them feel annoyed — the highest proportion of any generation. Only 5% of boomers said it made them feel happy, versus 28% of Gen Z, 30% of millennials, and 13% of Gen X. Other generations said influencer content was most likely to leave them feeling "entertained," while boomers' top choice was "annoyed."

A separate study published earlier this year by Edelman, which surveyed more than 17,000 respondents worldwide, found that just 24% of boomers said they followed a content creator, compared with 86% of Gen Z, 77% of millennials, and 51% of Gen X.

The age of the influencers older generations see on their screens isn't the only factor at play.

"It's less about finding someone who's the same age and more about finding someone they can see something of themselves in," said Lucy Kruszynski, global head of brand at influencer marketing agency Buttermilk.

Shared interests and experiences can be more powerful than demographic similarities, she said. As boomers enter retirement, many have more time to rediscover hobbies and passions that took a backseat during their working lives. Brands could tap into those interests by partnering with creators who share their enthusiasm for pursuits like music, art, or home improvement.

Some of the most successful boomer creators have scored deals that lean into these passion points. The boomer weightlifting influencer Marlene "Granny Guns" Flowers has more than 4.5 million followers across her social platforms and has collaborated with brands such as YoungLA and Ryse Supps. Barbara Costello, who is in her 70s and known as "Brunch with Babs," has more than 9 million followers and has scored partnerships with brands that range from the furniture brand Birch Lane to Nellie's Eggs and Walmart.

Brands may also have to exercise patience when trying to convert older consumers. The Morning Consult survey found that 43% of boomers said they had never purchased a product based on an influencer's recommendation.

For brands accustomed to measuring influencer marketing success in clicks and immediate sales, that could require a rethink. Kruszynski said some boomers follow creators for months, sometimes up to a year, before feeling comfortable purchasing something they've recommended.

"Even though there is absolutely a level of annoyance and a lack of trust, I don't think that baby boomers are immune to influencer marketing," Kruszynski said. "Brands need to think about how creators can build credibility through consistent content over time."

• TikTok is moving on quickly after losing access to Meta's ads platform in some markets.
• It's shifted ad spend to YouTube, Pinterest, and mobile-app networks, according to Sensor Tower.
• TikTok was a prominent ad spender on Meta before its ousting on October 8.

TikTok's message to Meta: If you won't take our ad dollars, your competitors will.

Meta took a bold stance this month by blocking ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, from running ads on Meta apps in some markets. Why? Well, Meta's answer was pretty straightforward. It didn't want to "run ads from a competitor whose goal is to pull people off our apps."

TikTok is now redirecting that ad spend elsewhere.

Since the ban went into effect on October 8, TikTok has shifted its ad budgets to other platforms like YouTube and Pinterest, according to allocation estimates provided to CMO Insider by the analytics firm Sensor Tower.

The share of TikTok's ad spend that went to YouTube rose to 17% between October 9 and October 16, up from 9% in the first week of October. Meanwhile, its ad spend on Pinterest grew to 9% during the same period, up from 3% in the first week of October. A majority of TikTok's spend — 58% — went to mobile-app ad networks like Google's AdMob, up from 19% at the start of October, when Meta was still an option.

Meta's move against TikTok "highlights the growing intensity of the competition across the digital landscape and across the two of them," said Kate Black, EVP of social strategy at Horizon Media. "For marketers, this really just reinforces the need to be agile and build balanced media strategies — and not having all your eggs in one basket."

Meta's TikTok ousting isn't unprecedented. Other platforms like Amazon have previously blocked competitors from running ads, while Twitter in late 2022 restricted users' ability to link to their accounts on social apps like Instagram and Mastodon, calling it "free promotion."

"Declining promotional services to a competitor is a normal business practice across industries," a Meta spokesperson said. Meta's changes will impact advertising policies in the US, Canada, Egypt, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

For Meta, a company that pulled in $117 billion in revenue in the first half of 2026, losing one advertiser won't hurt much. Still, TikTok and ByteDance were notably prominent spenders on Meta's apps, according to Sensor Tower.

Meta will also lose ad spend from third-party marketers that link to TikTok or other ByteDance properties in their ads, further increasing its potential losses. Direct-to-consumer brands that may want to drive potential customers to TikTok Shop will miss out.

No Meta, no problem

For TikTok, losing access to Meta's more than 3 billion monthly users is a setback.

Like any social media giant, TikTok is incentivized to grow, grow, grow. Ads that target new users and drive new app downloads are part of the playbook — a strategy Meta uses to promote its own apps, like Instagram, too.

One TikTok staffer focused on user acquisition, James Gao, posted a LinkedIn callout on Sunday asking people to get in touch if they had ad inventory that could help the company meet its goals.

Horizon Media's Black said that while Meta controls the "lion's share" of social budgets, there are plenty of viable alternatives when it comes to using an ad to drive an action like an app download. Besides Google, YouTube, and Pinterest, marketers are increasingly turning to other platforms like Snapchat and Reddit, she said.

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The latest hot marketing KPI: RSVPs.

Creators ranging from Substackers to "SNL" stars are jumping off the screen to in-person events — and marketers can't get enough.

"IRL is the No. 1 brand equity builder of all the channels," said Justin Thomas-Copeland, CEO of the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As).

As it becomes harder to reach customers online, in-person events offer a way for brands to connect with their biggest fans — and hopefully inspire a flurry of social content.

One night last month, Snapple turned a decommissioned Staten Island Ferry into a floating comedy club featuring Colin Jost and Pete Davidson.

Lindsay Burstein, a top marketer at Snapple parent Keurig Dr Pepper, said the night resulted in about 200 pieces of user-generated content.

"It is the buzziest thing that the brand has done in a very long time," she said.

Events aren't a new phenomenon, but interest from marketers is surging. In its annual survey of marketers, Linqia found that 53% said they planned to work with influencers on events in 2026, up from 34% in 2025.

"We've seen an uptick in both custom brand pop-up experiences and brand activation at large events," Linqia's chief strategy officer Keith Bendes said.

Influencer marketers are becoming event planners

IRL activations and events can also help brands gauge the depth of a creator's connection with their audience — and how valuable partnering with them might prove.

Substack creators, for instance, have "rabid fans and followers" who are hungry to connect in person, said Rothy's VP Anna Doré.

After Substacker Erika Veurink's article for New York Magazine featuring Rothy's shoes went viral, Rothy's struck a partnership with the writer that included a vintage pop-up experience at a Rothy's in New York City.

The Rothy's pop-up drew over 200 people and grew the store's foot traffic by 75% that day.

There can be category-specific reasons some brands are going all in on events. Flushable wipes maker Goodwipes, for one, leans on IRL experiences, said SVP of marketing Meredith Diehn, "partially because it's an intimate category, but there's a lot of questions around flushability and why should I leave toilet paper for Goodwipes."

Still, it can often be harder to measure success from an IRL event and prove it's an efficient use of marketing dollars.

"Live experiences is not an efficient business," Bilt CMO Zoe Oz said. "It's like the most inefficient, unscalable thing you can possibly do. But we found those to be 10 times more effective than the other ways we used to spend money."

Events also aren't a foolproof strategy, Copeland of 4As said.

There's a lot that goes into an experience, and if one part goes wrong or a creator is involved in an inauthentic way, criticism can spread quickly.

They present practical challenges as well, sometimes forcing marketers to wear yet another hat: event planning.

Burstein said that planning Snapple's comedy event — despite its eventual success — took her "blood, life, sweat, and tears."