The company is reorganizing teams and focusing on growing areas of its business, according to the report.

While some technology companies have cited their adoption of artificial intelligence as a reason for layoffs, LinkedIn did not do so, the report said.

The company employs more than 17,500 full-time workers, per the report.

Reached by PYMNTS, LinkedIn said in an emailed statement: “As part of our regular business planning, we’ve implemented organizational changes to best position ourselves for future success.”

Bloomberg also reported Wednesday that LinkedIn is cutting jobs, but the media outlet did not specify the scope of the reductions. It said the reductions affect engineering, product, marketing and other job functions.

The report cited a memo to LinkedIn employees from LinkedIn CEO Daniel Shapero, in which the executive said the company must deliver more to users and operate more profitably.

LinkedIn’s parent company, Microsoft, has been cutting jobs over the past few years as it invests in AI infrastructure, per the report.

Shapero became CEO of LinkedIn on April 22, according to a company press release. He is responsible for running the company and reports to Ryan Roslansky, executive vice president of LinkedIn and Microsoft Office, according to the release.

“LinkedIn’s leadership is changing, but our mission remains the same: connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful,” the company said in the April 22 press release.

During Microsoft’s April 29 earnings call, the company’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, Amy Hood, said that LinkedIn revenue increased 12% and 9% in constant currency during the latest quarter, with growth across all its lines of business, and that it is expected to see revenue growth of about 10% during the current quarter.

Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella said during the call: “LinkedIn has 1.3 billion members and we are seeing increased depth of conversation, and it’s the leading B2B sales and advertising channel for large and small businesses.”

At TikTok World, it’s sixth annual global ad product summit held Tuesday (May 12), the platform launched its TikTok Ads Model Context Protocol (MCP). The system connects AI agents directly to TikTok’s ad platform, giving them the ability to plan, launch and optimize campaigns without human intervention. Jose Villalobos, global head of product marketing for platform and core ads, Digiday reported, said the goal is to combine automation, control and AI to drive better performance for advertising partners.

What MCP Does to an Ad Platform

MCP is an open standard introduced by Anthropic in late 2024. PYMNTS reported that MCP lets AI models connect to live business tools and systems, moving them from passive assistants to active agents that can retrieve data, update records, and execute actions within approved boundaries. Before MCP, each connection between an AI system and a business application had to be custom built. The protocol standardizes that integration layer.

Applied to advertising, MCP turns the connection between an AI agent and an ad platform into a structured, programmable interface. Campaign setup, bid adjustments, budget reallocation, and targeting changes all become operations an agent can execute directly rather than tasks a human has to perform through a dashboard.

TikTok isn’t alone. Google has released an open-source Google Ads MCP server. Meta launched one that lets advertisers manage ad accounts through Claude and ChatGPT without touching its ads manager. Amazon has done the same. Digiday reported that the direction is consistent across every major platform: build the infrastructure to let AI agents, not human media buyers, handle the operational work of running campaigns.

Control the Connection, Control the Data

Adweek reported that the TikTok announcement also included support for third-party API agents, letting advertisers build custom infrastructure for their own workflows on top of TikTok’s ad systems. That interoperability extends the platform beyond its own AI tools into what Adweek described as AI-native ad infrastructure.

Adtech expert Shirley Marschall told Digiday the data angle is what’s actually driving the MCP race among major platforms. A platform that routes agent traffic through a third-party MCP loses visibility into how agents are querying it, what they’re comparing it against, and what’s driving conversion. In an agentic advertising environment, that signal is the most valuable data a platform holds. Large platforms are moving to control their own MCP connections before that data flows elsewhere.

The split, Marschall said, runs along scale: Large platforms race to set their own MCP standards; everyone else races not to depend on them.

The Ad Stack Underneath

TikTok paired the MCP launch with a broader slate of ad product updates at TikTok World. TopReach combines TopView and TopFeed placements into a single buy. TopReach Sequencing lets advertisers hold the first two high-visibility placements to run a continuous narrative. Search Hubs places branded pages at the top of TikTok search results. Creator AI Search, inside TikTok One, interprets campaign briefs and surfaces relevant creators automatically.

The company also integrated Dreamina Seedance 2.0, ByteDance’s video generation model, into its Symphony AI suite, and added profit optimization features to TikTok Shop’s GMV Max.

TikTok World came four months after the platform’s U.S. future was resolved through a U.S.-China deal that ended months of legal uncertainty. Three new executives led the stage alongside Villalobos, including Isobel Sita Lumsden, who took over as global head of business marketing last month.

For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.

With the new TikTok GO, users can discover experiences on TikTok through videos, search and locations; view details; check availability; and then complete a booking directly on the platform, TikTok USDS Joint Venture said in a Tuesday (May 12) press release.

“Every day on TikTok, millions of people discover where to eat, where to stay and what to do next,” Adam Presser, CEO of TikTok USDS Joint Venture, said in the release. “TikTok GO connects that moment of inspiration directly to the businesses behind it, and that’s good for creators, good for local businesses and good for communities.”

TikTok GO offers a wide range of travel inspiration and booking opportunities on the TikTok platform in partnership with Booking.com, Expedia, Viator, GetYourGuide, Tiqets and Trip.com.

For travel partners and local businesses, TikTok GO offers a new way to reach people who are looking for inspiration.

Mark van der Linden, vice president of partnerships at Booking.com, said in the release: “By bringing Booking.com directly into the TikTok journey, travelers can move from discovering a dream accommodation in a video to securing their stay in just a few taps — making it easier than ever to turn inspiration into unforgettable experiences.”

Johannes Reck, co-founder and CEO of GetYourGuide, said in the release: “Whether it’s visiting the Vatican or checking out a cooking class in Tokyo, we’re collapsing the time between inspiration and action.”

For creators, TikTok GO offers opportunities to earn through commissions and creator campaigns when they feature hotels, attractions and local services and connect their content directly to bookings.

PYMNTS reported in November 2024 that the integration of social media and eCommerce has led to the rise of social commerce, a model that allows consumers to make direct purchases within social platforms.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Generation Zillennial: How They Shop” found that 13% of U.S. consumers said they had made a purchase in the previous month at least partially because of a social media influencer or celebrity. Among Gen Z consumers, the percentage leapt to 28%.

It was reported in April that another TikTok offering, TikTok Shop, could increase its share of overall retail sales from 1% today to 10% in 2028 due to consumers’ adoption of the platform as a source of discovery and brand association.

ABC News identified dozens of similar operations across TikTok and YouTube, each using generative AI to manufacture founders, fake factory footage and synthetic brand narratives to move low-quality imported goods at premium prices.

Generative AI has collapsed what it once took to build consumer trust online. A direct-to-consumer brand used to need a real founder, original photography and operational credibility to justify charging $80 for a candle or $200 for a bag. Scores of companies now use AI to portray themselves as struggling small businesses, generating fake images and videos of craftsmen who don’t exist. That finished product can be assembled in hours.

The Trust Factory

The playbook follows a formula. Some operations use AI to make emotional appeals—one purportedly New York-based clothing retailer shared an AI-generated image of a damaged storefront with shattered glass and police tape to announce a “big sale.” Others simulate artisanship.

What makes these operations work isn’t production quality. It’s timing. ABC News noted that by the time consumers leave reviews or file complaints, the sites often go offline or move on to selling another product. The gap between launch and exposure is the margin.

Social platforms amplify the risk. These fraudulent sites thrive on social media, where consumers are often distracted and more likely to make a quick purchase. The scroll-and-tap dynamic that drives social commerce removes the scrutiny a buyer might apply elsewhere. The FTC reported that Americans lost $2.1 billion to scams originating on social media in 2025, an eightfold increase since 2020. The agency noted that most scams go unreported, putting the real total higher.

Platforms Caught Between Speed and Safety

The problem has forced marketplaces into a familiar position: moving fast enough to stay competitive while running detection systems capable of catching identities that never existed. Allure Security reported that TikTok rejected more than 1.4 million seller applications, blocked 70 million products before listing and removed roughly 700,000 sellers for policy violations in the first half of 2025. The company’s head of global governance called generative AI a tool for organized fraud networks operating at scale.

The numbers show platforms moving, but not fast enough. PYMNTS Intelligence found that 52% of businesses have deployed new AI models for fraud detection, with retailers using adaptive machine learning to reduce false positives by up to 85% while doubling compromised card detection. Only 37% use generative AI for fraud protection, even as 72% anticipate AI-driven fraud to be their top challenge by 2026.

The Verification Gap

Detection at the content layer is one piece. The harder problem sits at merchant onboarding.

According to Visa, cybercriminals are using generative AI to create synthetic identities, deepfake videos and forged digital documents that bypass traditional verification methods. A fabricated founder with a plausible backstory, a registered domain and polished AI-generated product videos can clear onboarding checks built for a different threat model.

For payment platforms, the question is no longer just whether a transaction is fraudulent. It’s whether the merchant behind it is real. AI-generated synthetic identities combine real and fabricated information in ways that let fraudsters bypass traditional verification systems.

FTC received 3 million fraud reports in 2025, with total losses reaching $15.9 billion, up from $12.5 billion the prior year. Impersonation scams ranked as the most reported category. The agency is scheduled to release updated guidance on AI-generated deception later this year.

For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.

Perplexity told WSJ that the two companies determined that the collaboration didn’t fit their product goals, according to the report.

“Perplexity continues to value Snapchat as a platform for reaching key audiences, remains active on the Snap platform, and expects to continue using Snap’s advertising products,” Perplexity said, per the report.

Snap said in a first quarter investor letter released Wednesday: “Our revenue guidance range assumes no contribution from Perplexity as we amicably ended the relationship in Q1.”

The company said in its previous, fourth quarter investor letter released Feb. 4: “Our Q1 revenue guidance range excludes any potential revenue from the Perplexity integration as we have yet to mutually agree on a path to a broader roll out.”

Snap announced the partnership in November, saying Perplexity would pay it $400 million over one year to integrate its AI-powered answer engine into Snapchat.

The company said this would mark the first integration of an external AI partner directly into Snapchat as well as the first step in Snap’s effort to make the app a platform where AI companies can connect with its 943 million monthly active users.

At the time, Snap said Perplexity would begin appearing in Snapchat in early 2026.

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said in a Nov. 5 post on X that Perplexity would become the default AI for all Snapchat users in the Snapchat app, starting in January 2026, and that the two companies planned to work on many more projects.

Meanwhile, Snap announced in a Wednesday earnings release that the company’s first quarter revenue increased 12% year over year to reach $1.5 billion.

The company said Snapchat’s global monthly active users increased 5% year over year to reach 956 million, while its global daily active users rose 5% to reach 483 million.

During the quarter, Snapchat launched a format called AI Sponsored Snaps that lets brands engage Snapchat users through interactive, AI-powered conversations.

The AI Stack Behind the Discovery Engine

At the center of Pinterest’s artificial intelligence strategy is its taste graph, built on hundreds of billions of user interactions over a decade. Every search, save and click adds signal. That signal trains the models that decide what each user sees next.

“When a user knows what they want but cannot quite describe it, an image can do what text cannot,” CEO Bill Ready said on the earnings call.

In Q1, Pinterest extended Pennock, its proprietary generative retrieval system, to serve content globally across all surfaces. Rather than separate models optimized for each surface, Pennock generates personalized results for each user simultaneously, informed by the full depth of their taste and interest history. The launch improved search fulfillment by about 180 basis points and drove a roughly 180 basis point reduction in cost per acquisition and cost per click for advertisers on search surfaces.

Pinterest also updated its search ranking model in Q1, extending user context windows by 30 times. The system now uses up to 16,000 user actions over a two-year period to inform search results. That launch improved search fulfillment by about 70 basis points and saves by about 390 basis points.

The company is also building Canvas; an in-house AI image generation model trained exclusively on Pinterest data. It already supports creative optimization for advertisers, dynamically editing backgrounds and transforming catalog images into lifestyle images. Pinterest says it operates at an order of magnitude lower cost than leading third-party models. The newest version supports real-time image editing in key verticals.

Where the Monetization Gap Lives

Pinterest has delivered five times more clicks to advertisers over the past three years. Revenue hasn’t grown at anything close to that rate. That gap is the business problem Ready is now organized around solving.

“We remain in the early stages of fully monetizing the engagement and commercial intent on our platform,” CFO Julia Donnelly said on the call.

Pinterest Performance Plus, the company’s AI-powered automated ad suite, is the primary vehicle. About 30% of lower funnel revenue now runs through Performance Plus campaigns. Advertisers using it are growing their lower funnel spend at nearly twice the rate of non-adopters. One fine jewelry brand ran a four-week test and saw a 46% increase in return on ad spend and a 62% increase in conversions.

It’s still early. Performance Plus only reached general availability about a year ago. Mid-market, SMB and international advertisers are still a fraction of what they could be.

The larger structural issue is measurement. Pinterest is piloting direct integrations with advertisers’ proprietary measurement systems, letting its AI bidding respond to each advertiser’s specific definition of value, whether that’s lifetime value, profit per order, or something else. In early testing with one advertiser prioritizing lifetime value, the integration drove a 15% to 20% improvement in lifetime value return on ad spend.

Large retailers, Pinterest’s biggest advertiser segment, remained a headwind in Q1. Tariff-related margin pressure is keeping that group cautious. AI-driven bidding optimizations partially offset the drag later in the quarter, but the structural issue hasn’t resolved.

“Of Pinterest’s more than 80 billion monthly searches, half are commercial in nature, whereas ChatGPT’s own data says that only 2% of their prompts are commercial,” Ready said.

What Else Stood Out

• Pinterest acquired TV Scientific in Q1, giving it the ability to extend its taste graph beyond its own platform into connected TV campaigns. Early results with one home furnishings retailer showed a 190% increase in incremental audience reach and a 159% increase in incremental sales. Ready framed CTV as a first move toward monetizing Pinterest’s audience data beyond the Pinterest app.
• Pinterest launched a native A/B testing tool in beta directly in Ads Manager in Q1, letting advertisers run structured tests comparing Performance Plus campaigns to standard ones. The company said early results are strong.
• Gen Z now represents more than 50% of Pinterest’s user base and is its fastest-growing demographic. Ready pointed to Pinterest’s decision to make accounts private by default for users under 16 in 2023 as the catalyst. He said the decision was expected to hurt Gen Z engagement. It did the opposite.
• Pinterest launched a new brand campaign in the U.S. and U.K. earlier this month targeting Gen Z and millennial audiences across television, streaming, cinema, out-of-home and digital channels through the end of the year.

Topline Results and Outlook

Q1 2026 revenue was $1.008 billion, up 18% year over year, or 15% on a constant currency basis, above the high end of guidance. Global MAUs reached 631 million, up 11% year over year, a record for the tenth consecutive quarter. U.S. and Canada revenue was $750 million, up 13%. Europe revenue was $186 million, up 27% reported or 16% constant currency. Rest of world revenue was $72 million, up 59% reported or 50% constant currency. Ad impressions grew 24%; average ad pricing declined 5%.

“The consumer clearly has adopted TikTok as one of the few spaces of discovery and brand association,” Cohen said, according to the report.

The WSJ also cited data from eCommerce data provider Charm.io showing that TikTok Shop’s U.S. sales nearly doubled year over year to reach $4.9 billion in the first quarter, and data from data provider Consumer Edge showing that consumer spending on the platform was up 46% year over year in the first three months of 2026.

This growth has drawn more retailers to the platform, according to the report.

Some of the latest retailers to open their own virtual stores on TikTok include Ralph Lauren, Olaplex Holdingsand Ulta Beauty. They joined early adopters of the platform such as Crocs, Revolve Group and L’Oréal, per the report.

TikTok Shop went live in the U.S. in September 2023 after undergoing testing in the country since November 2022, PYMNTS reported at the time.

The entire TikTok platform faced a threat in the U.S. beginning in April 2024 when then-President Joe Biden signed a law that would ban the platform in the country unless it was sold by its China-based owner ByteDance within a year. Supporters of the move argued that the threat of a ban was necessary for national security concerns.

That issue was resolved in December 2025 when a new TikTok U.S. joint venture was formed to enable the app to continue operating in the country.

According to Wednesday’s report from the WSJ, this transaction secured the platform’s future in the U.S.

Charm.io said in a March press release that the growth of TikTok Shop has been driven in part by the size and sophistication of the platform’s creator network.

Patrick Nommensen, head of strategic initiatives at TikTok Shop, told the company: “This has been a big driver of more and more big brands coming to the platform, because now there’s this community of creators for them to be able to work with.”

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Generation Pulse: Just How Influential Are Influencers?” found that more than half of U.S. consumers buy something recommended by an influencer at least once a year.

That question comes into sharper focus as X prepares to introduce X Money, a payments and financial services layer that is expected to begin early public access this month. As reported by PYMNTS last month, Elon Musk said the offering would launch in April, marking the latest step in a broader plan to turn the platform into a financial hub rather than a messaging and media venue.

X Money is designed to connect to debit cards, support instant funding through Visa Direct and allow users to move money between accounts and wallets without leaving the platform. The ambition, as described by Musk in prior remarks, is to encompass a user’s “entire financial life,” including payments, balances and potentially investment activity.

That scope implies X will be a category-blurring construct that blends elements of wallets, neobanks and brokerage interfaces. It also shifts the role of social platforms from influencing transactions to intermediating them.

From Influence to Transaction  

PYMNTS Intelligence data suggests that social commerce remains a discovery engine rather than a closed loop. More than half of U.S. consumers make at least occasional purchases based on influencer recommendations, and 12% do so frequently. At the same time, 95% of those consumers conduct additional research before completing a purchase, often consulting reviews, price comparisons or other sources.

The read across is that social platforms can initiate purchasing journeys, but they rarely conclude them without validation elsewhere. Even among frequent buyers, external verification remains a standard step.

As for X Money’s ambitions, moving payments into the platform addresses one layer of friction. Moving deposits and balances requires a different level of confidence. Users must be willing to leave funds inside a social ecosystem that has historically been used for content and communication.

Regulatory and Political Scrutiny

The question of trust has already surfaced in policy discussions. In a Tuesday (April 14) letter to Musk, Sen. Elizabeth Warren raised concerns about how X would manage financial products, citing issues that range from data privacy to the operational risks of offering yields on deposits. The letter also referenced prior regulatory actions tied to potential partners and questions how those relationships would be structured within a consumer finance context.

We note that X’s licensing progress offers one counterpoint. X has secured money transmitter licenses across most U.S. jurisdictions, laying the groundwork for nationwide functionality.

Balances, Not Just Payments

The strategic question for X Money concerns whether the platform can retain funds. That introduces competition for yield, convenience and liquidity.

Traditional banks offer insured deposits and established customer protections. Neobanks provide integrated digital experiences with savings features and rewards. Wallet providers focus on transaction speed and acceptance. Each category competes for a share of the consumer’s financial footprint.

X Money’s model attempts to combine these elements. By embedding payments into a social feed, it seeks to shorten the path from discovery to transaction. By enabling stored balances, it attempts to capture a portion of the funds that would otherwise sit in bank accounts or digital wallets.

The economics depend on both flows. Payments generate transaction-based revenue. Deposits create opportunities tied to float, lending or yield structures.

A Broader Shift Across Platforms

X is not alone in linking commerce and financial services. Social platforms have been integrating shopping features, creator tools and payment options for several years. Partnerships with payment networks and financial institutions have accelerated that process, bringing embedded finance into environments that were once limited to content sharing.

In one example this month, PayPal now allows Canva users to embed payment links directly into digital or printed designs, enabling transactions to occur without sending customers to external storefronts. In practical terms, that means a creator can move from content to checkout within the same workflow.

For X, the challenge is to demonstrate that a platform built for conversation can also operate as a reliable financial intermediary. That distinction requires clarity around how funds are handled and how users can access their money under all conditions.

The company said it is embedding AI end to end across its advertising platform, from creative development to campaign delivery and optimization, with a focus on direct-response outcomes and return on ad spend.

“To leverage AI to make it easier for advertisers to connect with Snapchatters while delivering stronger performance and more consistent returns by embedding AI across our advertising platform, from creative development and campaign setup to delivery and optimization,” CEO Evan Spiegel said.

The company said advertising success will be evaluated based on growth in advertising revenue and share gains over time as Snap balances community growth with profitability.

AI Becomes Central to Ad Execution

Snap said AI is now integrated across planning, launch and optimization workflows to reduce friction for advertisers and improve performance consistency. The company highlighted its smart campaign solutions, including smart targeting and smart budget, which automatically allocate spend across objectives and reduce manual setup and ongoing optimization.

In the fourth-quarter report ending Dec. 31, targeted ranking, format and delivery improvements for dynamic product ads resulted in a “55% reduction in cost per action for seven zero conversions and 45% reduction in cost per action for one zero conversions,” based on cumulative internal testing over the past year. Dynamic product ad revenue grew 19% year over year in Q4.

Snap said these gains were supported by expanded adoption of dynamic solutions among large advertisers and continued migration away from static formats.

Sponsored Snaps were highlighted as one of Snap’s most differentiated advertising placements, enabling direct engagement between brands and Snapchatters through conversation-driven formats. In Q4, Sponsored Snaps click-through rates grew 7%, while click-through purchases increased 17% from Q3 to Q4.

Snap cited multiple advertiser case studies demonstrating lower-funnel performance. Kon-Tiki used Sponsored Snaps to drive bookings, achieving a 283% increase in return on ad spend and a 72% reduction in cost per purchase. Saudi QSR brand Kudu combined AR lenses with Sponsored Snaps, delivering up to 40% more app installs at 76% lower CPI and 38 times more purchases at an 84% lower cost.

App Advertising and SMB Adoption Accelerate

Snap said its app advertising business accelerated in Q4, with revenue from in-app optimizations growing 89% year over year. The company attributed the increase to advances in foundational app models, broader adoption of the App Power Pack, and immersive formats such as Playables.

Small and medium-sized businesses remained a key contributor to advertiser growth. Total active advertisers increased 28% year over year in Q4, driven by improvements to Ads Manager workflows, campaign launch from partner platforms, and new integrations such as a global partnership with Wix.

Snap said it is also investing in AI agents to automate onboarding and recommendations for SMB advertisers, reducing decision friction and improving performance.

Topline Growth

Revenue grew 10% year over year in Q4, driven by contributions from both advertising and non-advertising sources. Advertising revenue reached $1.48 billion, up 5% year over year, supported by continued strength in the SMB segment and improved performance across newer ad formats.

Other revenue increased 62% year over year, driven by subscription growth. Subscribers grew 71% year over year to reach 24 million in Q4, supported by Snapchat Plus and memory storage plans.

Gross margin reached 59% in Q4 as revenue mix shifted toward higher-margin streams and infrastructure costs were recalibrated toward monetizable markets.

Global monthly active users increased by 3 million quarter over quarter to 946 million, while global daily active users declined by 3 million in Q4, reflecting a deliberate pullback in community growth marketing as Snap pivoted toward more profitable growth.

What Else Stood Out on the Call

• More than 200 million Snapchatters played games every month on average in Q4, representing a 90% year-over-year increase, driven by new two-player, turn-based games designed to create low-friction social interaction.
• Communicators increased 5% year over year in Q4, reflecting continued strength in direct messaging between friends and family.
• Active Snap Map users reached 435 million in Q4, up 6% year over year, creating organic engagement alongside monetization opportunities such as promoted places.
• Spotlight reposts and shares increased 69% year over year in the U.S., highlighting stronger content discovery and sharing dynamics across the platform.
• The company reiterated plans to launch Specs publicly in 2026, positioning augmented reality hardware as a longer-term growth vector beyond smartphones.

 

That was the central takeaway from the PYMNTS Intelligence report “Generational Pulse: Just How Influential Are Influencers?,” based on a survey of 3,196 consumers in the United States.

The research looked beyond headlines about social media stars and focused on how consumers behave once a recommendation appears on their screens.

The findings suggested that influencers matter, but mainly as one input among many rather than a final authority.

Influencer-driven shopping is widespread but rarely impulsive, the report found. More than half of U.S. consumers buy something recommended by an influencer at least once a year. In most cases, influencer content serves as a trigger that sends shoppers into research mode.

Within that research mode, consumers check reviews, compare prices and look for confirmation elsewhere before opening their wallets.

Three data points help clarify how this dynamic works in practice:

• Influencer recommendations drive 56% of U.S. consumers to make at least one purchase each year, while 12% do so more than six times annually.
• Among consumers who have bought an influencer-recommended product, 95% said they usually do additional research before buying, often consulting more than one source.
• Overall, 44% of consumers reported returning influencer-recommended purchases less often than other items, compared with 24% who said they return them more often.

The numbers revealed a shift. Influencers appear to help narrow choices rather than replace judgment. Shoppers may trust an influencer enough to explore a product, but not enough to skip their own checks.

Reviews from other buyers remain the most common research tool, followed by online forums, price comparisons and manufacturer websites.

The report also found differences by age and income. Young consumers are more likely to buy influencer-recommended products at least once a year, with Generation Z leading the way. Older consumers participate less often overall, yet they show a higher willingness to make quick purchases when they do engage.

More than 3 in 10 baby boomers said they are open to buying from an influencer after a first encounter, a higher share than younger groups. That pattern runs against common assumptions about who shops impulsively online.

Product category matters as well. Food and cooking influencers stand out across every age group. Nearly half of consumers who have made an influencer-based purchase said they trust food and cooking creators for recommendations, more than any other category.

Technology and beauty influencers follow at a distance. These categories combine practical advice with visual proof, which may help explain their reach.

Additionally, the report found that consumers are more likely to keep influencer-recommended purchases, especially older shoppers. That suggests expectations may be better aligned when products are demonstrated or explained by a familiar voice. Clear context reduces disappointment.

Taken together, the report painted influencers as effective guides rather than closers. They help consumers discover products, set expectations and frame choices.

The final decision still belongs to the shopper. That distinction matters for brands, platforms and payments providers trying to measure real impact. Influence, in this case, is about direction, not control.

At PYMNTS Intelligence, we work with businesses to uncover insights that fuel intelligent, data-driven discussions on changing customer expectations, a more connected economy and the strategic shifts necessary to achieve outcomes. With rigorous research methodologies and unwavering commitment to objective quality, we offer trusted data to grow your business. As our partner, you’ll have access to our diverse team of PhDs, researchers, data analysts, number crunchers, subject matter veterans and editorial experts.