For many years, the primary principle behind influencer marketing was that an influencer was only relevant if they had a large following. That principle is now officially changing.
In the age of algorithm-driven social media platforms, the algorithm determines your reach based on your interests, rather than the number of followers you have. As a result, brands must now rethink how they view creators.
In order to help solve this problem, a new kind of agency has come into existence; one that has been specifically designed for the post-follower world and the future of AI influencer marketing.
Devotion, a newly-formed, AI-driven influencer marketing agency, aims to help brands stop pursuing “star” creators. Instead, they want to enable brands to work with hundreds or thousands of smaller creators at once, in order to achieve scale, relevance, and real engagement. Devotion’s official website is not publicly listed yet in available sources, as the company launched today (March 2, 2026) after nine months in stealth, as reported by Vogue.
What is AI influencer marketing in the post-follower era?
Followers number does not define what Influencers on Social Media do.
Recently, TikTok and Instagram have begun to deliver content to feed items based off of performance and relevancy. As a result, there are instances when Creators who have a small following (such as 5K) may out perform larger creators (such as those with 500K) purely based off of the content’s placement within the feed.
With that said, this has opened up new creative opportunities for Brands. Additionally, it has resulted in a significant increase in Micro/Nano Creators.
Micro/Nano Creators tend to exhibit:
- Greater engagement.
- Increased levels of trust within their Community.
- More authentic styles of content creation.
- Reduced Costs to the Brand.
According to Vogue’s research, smaller creators can have up to 60% greater engagement than larger counterparts. However, Managing these smaller creators at a high level can become difficult.
This is where AI fits in. It gives marketers simple tools to help plan, create, and improve content through AI without needing technical skills.
How does Devotion change influencer campaigns at scale?
Parade’s Founder Cami Téllez and former TikTok executive Jonathan Kroopf created Devotion- an agency launched in March 2026 after 9 months of stealth work and $4 million in invested seed funding.
Core Insight: Brands can no longer build their brand by only working with 20-30 creators each month; they need to work with 500-1,000 creators simultaneously.
Achieving this manually is near impossible.
With the help of AI, Devotion can:
- Find creators who align with the values of a brand
- Automate outreach at scale
- Manage relationships and communications
- Track the performance of hundreds of posts
Although Devotion still operates as a traditional agency, we can leverage the power of AI to achieve a volume of work that is simply impossible for a human agency.
Why are follower counts losing relevance?
In the past, followers were a way of indicating how much influence someone has had. Now they are a way to show how long a user has been active. Algorithms now prioritize showing users recent performance (within the past year), not just previous popularity. Discovery-based platforms can provide users content from creators they have never followed.
The result is majorly altered outcomes for brands.
Macro Influencers are still effective in some instances; however, they are no longer safe when looking for reach and/or results. This rethink is pushing even legacy brands like Coca Cola to lean on AI marketing strategies instead of price or popularity alone. Smaller Influencers are able to receive more results because their content appears genuine due to being unedited, relatable, and fits within the average user.
This shift has shown that AI influencer marketing is now less about being a celebrity and more about finding patterns. AI is capable of finding out what humans cannot find.
How does AI improve creator discovery and performance?
With AI, brands are able to track key creators by using data points rather than just viewing their profile data as a profile.
Devotion will analyse engagement patterns, types of content, audience reactions, and posting patterns on platforms. When brands look for a creator to match with their campaign, they match a creator based on how well they fit into the campaign rather than the creator’s perceived level of fame.
Using Devotion, brands can:
- Run many small tests versus one major investment
- Quickly determine what styles of content perform best
- Discover what style resonates with each audience type
- Scale successful formats without overwhelming the audience
As per Advances in Consumer Research’s article, in countries like India, where trust and relationships are so important, by matching creators with the audience through these methods, the audience is more inclined to respond positively to the creator through relatability, versus aspiration.
AI quantifies relatability.
AI influencer marketing vs traditional influencer agencies
| Aspect | Traditional Agencies | AI-Driven Agencies |
|---|---|---|
| Creator focus | Large influencers | Micro and nano creators |
| Scale | Limited by manpower | Hundreds or thousands |
| Discovery | Manual research | Algorithmic matching |
| Cost efficiency | High per creator | Lower per creator |
| Optimization | Slow feedback | Real-time insights |
Is AI influencer marketing right for every brand?
Not always. And that is important to say.
Brands that rely heavily on prestige, luxury or controlled messaging will likely still prefer fewer creators; however, for the majority of consumer brands, reach is now based on relevance.
The best use case for AI influencer marketing is when brands want to:
- Isolate their testing message quickly
- Reach a diverse audience.
- Reduce their dependence on one creator.
- Create a long-term ecosystem of creators.
It focuses on a continual presence rather than just one-off campaigns.
How do brands get started with AI influencer marketing?
Brands don’t have to throw away their current strategy right away.
One way to begin this process would be as follows:
- Use AI for creator discovery
- Run test campaigns with a small number (50-100) of small creators
- Monitor both engagement and performance of content
- Enhance (scale) what works; Pause what does not work
The mental shift is the most significant change. Brands need to stop focusing on who is “known” and focus more on how their content performs. This shift is also changing how brands build their AI tools stack, It’s almost crazy how 90% of marketers are not aware of this AI marketing stack. It is based on scale and actual performance needs rather than visibility alone. This is what Devotion hopes for, this will be the mentality that Devotion has made a point of emphasis.
Wrapping it up
The AI influencer marketing industry is transitioning to a more systematic value approach rather than celebrity-based influence. Those that participate in this new era of post-follower marketing will be rewarded for their consistency, authenticity, and scale through an integrated approach, a system that allows for multiple teams to efficiently manage the new realities of a world where followers no longer hold the same value as signals and patterns and relevance.
The launch of Devotion is indicative of more than just another agency or creator; it is representative of a fundamental shift in how influence works and is utilized.
While user following numbers will still exist and be tracked, they will be less important than traditional metrics such as signals. The determining factor in who wins will not be the company with the largest creator base, rather it will be the one using smarter systems. AI influencer marketing will not only be achievable through the use of modern technology; it is becoming the new base for global influence. The same move toward agentic AI workflow automation is already reshaping how large brands run marketing at scale.
