For years, brands have treated creators as a media channel: a way to reach an audience, build awareness, and generate engagement around a campaign. But brands started noticing the shift. Take Pepperstone, one of the world's largest forex and CFD (Contract for Difference) brokers, as an example. Its creator program across APAC generated more than 18 million impressions and 1.2 million clicks, while localised, education-first content helped the brand build awareness and drive measurable traffic across new markets. Influencers weren't just building awareness, they were beginning to drive real conversions and sales.
In Southeast Asia today, a single piece of creator content does what used to take an entire media plan to accomplish. The creator introduces the product, demonstrates it, makes the recommendation, provides the affiliate link, drives the purchase, and generates the conversion data - all inside one video or one caption.
We can now see just how effective creators can be. The latest 2026 E-Commerce Influencer & Affiliate Marketing in Southeast Asia shows that 56% of SEA consumers have completed a purchase through an affiliate channel. Among them, 71% did so through an influencer or creator - ahead of cashback sites at 41% and review sites at 37%.
These purchases are also increasingly taking place within the content, with product tags in videos, links in descriptions and comments, and stories among the leading routes to conversion for influencer-driven purchases. Taken together, these behaviours suggest that creators are becoming part of the infrastructure through which commerce happens.
Trust is what's actually converting - and most brands aren't measuring it that way
The reason creators have become so effective at this stage of the journey is not reach alone. The research shows trust and validation motivate 49% of affiliate purchases, more than double the next most common driver, utility and convenience at 28%.
What makes a recommendation persuasive is often the sense that someone has actually used the product and is willing to share an honest opinion. Affiliate links do not appear to be undermining that relationship. In fact, 48% of consumers say they trust affiliate-linked recommendations more than they did a year ago, compared with just 10% who trust them less.
For brands, creators can play a multi-purpose role, increasingly spanning discovery, consideration, validation and conversion.
The evolving role of creators also challenges the way brands organise and measure their activity. Influencer marketing and affiliate marketing have traditionally been managed as separate disciplines, with different teams, budgets and measures of success. Yet the growing overlap between the two is becoming increasingly significant to Southeast Asian eCommerce.
The report also estimates that influencer and affiliate marketing together are linked to around 32% of Southeast Asia's eCommerce sales in 2026, equivalent to approximately $70 billion.
Creator content with embedded shoppable or affiliate links presents a significant potential. At an estimated $13 billion, this segment currently represents 6% of eCommerce sales, but that figure is rising.
The question for brands is therefore no longer whether creators influence commerce. The more important question is whether brands are managing that influence with the same rigour they apply to other growth channels - or whether creators are still sitting in a separate media budget.
AI speeds up discovery. Creators still close the trust gap
AI adds another layer to this changing commerce journey. More than half of Southeast Asian consumers (51%) have used a generative AI tool in their shopping journey in the past six months, and 28% now use one to research products before buying, roughly twice the share of those who turn to online forums.
But faster discovery does not automatically translate into trust. Consumers are nearly twice as likely to have bought something because of a creator's recommendation (67%) as because of a generative AI tool (37%). On a 0–4 influence scale, human creators (1.98) outrank generative AI tools (1.82), while AI-generated 'virtual' influencers score lowest at 1.42.
There is also a gap between where AI directs consumers and where creator influence sits. 62% of consumers say AI most often directs them to a marketplace or brand website, compared with just 3% who say it points them to an influencer's page. That leaves creator content at the edge of AI-led discovery, even as consumers continue to rely on creators for validation. What is clear is that as AI becomes more embedded in the shopping journey, creators remain the human layer that turns a fast answer into a credible one.
What marketers should do now
For brands, these findings should prompt a rethink of how creator commerce is managed. Marketers would benefit from considering how they can build longer-term relationships that let credibility compound over time.
Most importantly, creator, affiliate and commerce data is becoming more connected, with AI accelerating how consumers move from discovery to purchase. Brands can no longer treat influence and performance separately. They need to know who convinced consumers to buy, what influenced them along the way, and what sped up the decision. These pieces all connect, and how they combine shapes each consumer's purchase decision and journey.
Creators are becoming a new layer of commerce infrastructure in Southeast Asia. AI doesn't replace that infrastructure. It discovers, creators validate, and partnerships convert. The brands that get this right will tap into a new and growing stream of commerce opportunity.