Influencer marketing is now full-funnel, with ‘micro trust’ becoming the new KPI

New Delhi: Creators are no longer a “nice-to-have” channel, and the next phase of brand growth will be built on community trust, commerce-linked content and tighter measurement.

At the launch of the annual TYNY report of WPP Media, the agency leaders repeatedly returned to one shift in influencer marketing. They framed it as a move from “mega reach” to “micro trust”, arguing that creators now sit at the intersection of “commerce, content, media”.

According to the TYNY report, influencer marketing is moving from broad visibility to “hyper-local credibility”, driven by regional languages, measurable social commerce and “regulatory transparency”.

Vinit Karnik, Managing Director, Content, Entertainment and Sports South Asia, WPP Media, said the biggest change is that influencer marketing is no longer confined to one stage of the funnel. “Influencer marketing actually cuts across the marketing funnel,” he said.

He added that campaigns are now planned from the base of data and market nuance. “What works in Western Maharashtra may not work in Eastern Maharashtra,” he said, extending the point across states and languages.

He linked that approach to outcomes, saying influencer planning has to lead to brand impact and sales. “Geographical alignment becomes very, very important,” he said. “Category-level alignment becomes very, very important.”

Sairam Ranganathan, Head of Commerce, WPP Media, positioned the same shift as a commerce problem, not only a content problem.

He described the approach as “connected commerce” and said, “anything that happens can get connected to commerce, including content, including influencers”. He said the group has been working to make this “very data-led” and "scientific."

To support that, Ranganathan cited an internal tool and a measurement framework. He said WPP has a proprietary tool, “brand.ai”, that “recommends what should be the right set of influencers”, and evaluates options across “market level”, “genre level” and “audience level”.

He added that WPP is pushing “robust” measurement by tracking “input”, “output” and “outcome” metrics to link influencer programmes to marketing effectiveness.

The report also calls for stronger data stacks and longer partnerships. It says brands should move from “one-off transactional campaigns” to “long-term community partnerships” and enforce compliance to meet “ASCI disclosure standards”.

WPP executives distinguished between platform-led live commerce and what they called creator-driven commerce.

Ranganathan described “platform-based live commerce” formats such as “Amazon Live” and Myntra’s shoppable live content, but said it remains a small part of the market. “Still, it’s a small segment… sub 10 per cent,” he said, comparing India’s stage to China’s maturity.

He argued the bigger shift is affiliate-like selling via creators across platforms. “Creator-driven commerce is growing substantially,” Ranganathan said.

Ranganathan added that “a large part of creators have become the new affiliates” on platforms and are operating on “performance-driven models”.

He emphasised that India’s playbook differs from China’s event-led model. “That’s not how it’s playing out in India,” they said. “In India, it’s more about the platform using the influencers to drive commerce.” They described India as “community commerce-led rather than live commerce-led”.

Ranganathan also tied content and creator strategy to the compression of purchase windows in quick commerce.

He said the time from deciding to buy to actually buying can be “less than 60, 70 seconds”.

He said that forces planning to consider city, SKU, time of day and day of week to ensure the brand is visible at the moment of conversion.

Micro-dramas were pitched as the next branded storytelling format, built for habit and commerce.

The TYNY trends report stated that micro-dramas are shifting viewing from passive long-form to “transaction-linked, habit-driven storytelling”, and it urges marketers to move from “buying attention” to “owning the narrative loop”.

In the session, Karnik described micro-dramas as a format that came to India “from Korea” and grew as younger audiences began to “sample” it in snackable form.

He described a structure of short episodes that can scale. Micro-dramas can be “a two-minute or three-minute episode” and then run to “25, 30, 100, 500 episodes”, he said.

From the brand lens, he argued the format expands what branded content can do. “Micro dramas give an opportunity… to tell their story in a meaningful way,” he said. Instead of compressing everything into a TVC, he said marketers can build “five episodes or 10 episodes”.

Micro-dramas are shifting the landscape from passive long-form consumption to transaction-linked, habit-driven storytelling. For marketers, the rise of micro-dramas signals a shift from buying attention to owning the narrative loop.

But with audiences already present, the question at the TYNY 2026 launch was why large, legacy advertisers are still cautious about micro-drama platforms.

Ashwin Padmanabhan, COO South Asia, WPP Media, said audience growth alone will not unlock budgets. “We all know it’s not enough to get audience,” he said, arguing that platforms must “empower those audiences with enough technology” and “build those connectors” so brands can run meaningful trials and measure outcomes.

He said the immediate task is to make the value clear for advertisers. “We want to showcase value in micro dramas and create ideas based on what advertisers can do with that format,” Padmanabhan said, signalling that creative potential will not translate into spend without a sharper performance and measurement layer.

For WPP Media, micro-dramas are therefore a test case for 2026 planning: new formats will keep emerging, but adoption will depend on whether they can be bought, measured and audited with the confidence brands expect from mature media channels.

WPP leadership also spoke about how creator credibility is being built region-by-region, and how that credibility is now being monetised beyond ads.

One example cited was a creator turning entrepreneur. “Kabita’s Kitchen is an example of an influencer… who went on to create her own brand of masalas,” Padmanabhan said.

He linked such cases to everyday trust. “The following… is built on trust. It’s this content they create every day,” they said.

Altogether, the creator economy’s next phase will be decided less by headline reach and more by community fit, measured commerce outcomes, and newer branded formats that sit closer to everyday consumption and purchase behaviour.