Shoppers Who Trust AI Are 6x More Likely to Trust Creators, New PartnerCentric Research Finds

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 12, 2026--

PartnerCentric, a leading performance marketing agency, today released Recommended, Reviewed, Ready: A Holiday Playbook for Brands, a new white paper showing that 43% of surveyed shoppers bought a product recommended by an AI chatbot in the past three months.¹ AI-recommended buying is no longer experimental. It is entering the holiday season at scale.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260812208207/en/

The dual-panel survey of shoppers and creators also found that AI and creator trust rise together rather than compete. Among shoppers who trust AI, 54% rated creators important and 61% said they trusted creators, compared with 11% on both measures among lower-trust shoppers. AI gets products discovered; creators and reviews make them believable. Notably, 44% want reviews before acting on an AI recommendation. For brands, the implication is direct: budget AI visibility, creator content, and proof as one system this season, or risk recommendations stalling short of the sale.

The white paper translates those findings into seven seasonal plays, from becoming the recommended answer to making proof AI-legible, and organizes them around three shifts reshaping holiday commerce:

Brand leaders echoed the paper’s central theme: AI can accelerate discovery, but trust still depends on credible proof.

“AI is changing how consumers discover brands, but it cannot manufacture trust,” said Jack Jia, CEO and Founder of Musely. “Trust is earned through products that deliver real results, customers and creators who are willing to share their experiences, and word of mouth built over time.”

“Our customers are doing more homework before they buy, especially when the purchase carries higher consideration or cost,” said Jenny Campbell, Chief Marketing Officer at Frank & Eileen. “AI can help shorten that path, but only when the recommendation feels specific, sourced, and supported by real evidence.”

The study also found that AI shopping behavior varies by age, assistant, and conversion frequency, while disclosure and fulfillment carry more weight than many brands assume. Key data points:

Holiday creator campaigns, affiliate programs, and AI visibility efforts now need creator content that does more than build awareness. It has to create proof shoppers and AI assistants can both use, supported by consistent claims across every channel where shoppers discover, compare, and decide.

“For products customers expect to last, the path to purchase has always depended on confidence: how it performs, how it compares, and whether it is worth the investment,” said Meredith Bradford, Senior Director of Public Relations, Social Media and Influencer Marketing at ZWILLING J.A. Henckels. “AI makes that evaluation faster, but the brands that will benefit most are the ones giving shoppers clear proof, practical guidance, and consistent answers wherever they choose to look.”

“Holiday discovery is moving into AI answers, but trust still has to be earned,” said Stephanie Harris, Founder and CEO of PartnerCentric. “Brands that connect AI visibility, creator credibility, and proof will be better positioned to turn recommendations into revenue this season.”

The playbook’s remaining plays cover aligning creator content with marketplace conversion, prioritizing higher-consideration products, and seeding discovery early enough to influence peak-season demand.

To access the full white paper, visit https://url.partnercentric.com/2026_holiday_whitepaper

¹ The PartnerCentric Holiday Shopping Study was conducted June 29-July 3, 2026, across two mirrored survey segments: surveyed shoppers and creators. The analyzed base included 696 AI-influenced shoppers who reported an AI-recommended purchase in the past three months and 319 paid or affiliate creators with 5,000 or more followers. The surveyed shopper sample was not quota-balanced; all figures are directional and not projectable to the U.S. population.

About PartnerCentric

Founded in 2017 by industry veteran Stephanie Harris, PartnerCentric is the largest independent partnership marketing agency in the U.S., helping brands turn affiliate, creator, influencer, and AI visibility strategies into measurable growth. Built on transparency, independence, and award-winning innovation, PartnerCentric pairs deep affiliate expertise with patented technology and performance-driven services for a market increasingly shaped by search, social, marketplaces, and AI-powered answers.

PartnerCentric supports brands including Visible by Verizon, VSP Vision Plans, and NationalTree through tailored partnership strategies and patented FUSE Precision and FUSE Incrementality™ tools. Named the top U.S. affiliate agency by CLUTCH and recognized for technology and innovation, PartnerCentric helps brands build partnerships that perform in the AI era.

Learn more at partnercentric.com. Better Starts Here.

FAQs

What is the white paper about?

Recommended, Reviewed, Ready: A Holiday Playbook for Brands examines how AI-assisted shopping and creator influence are reshaping holiday discovery, with seven plays brands can run this season.

What is the headline finding?

Among surveyed shoppers, 43% bought a product on an AI chatbot’s recommendation in the past three months, signaling that AI-recommended buying is already a live behavior heading into the holidays.

Do AI and creators compete for the same budget?

No. Shoppers with high trust in AI were also far more likely to value creators (54%) and trust them (61%), versus 11% on both measures among lower-trust shoppers, so the two work best when planned together.

Source: AI & Creator Trust Chart from PartnerCentric's Recommended, Reviewed, Ready: A Holiday Playbook for Brands

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian anti-ship missiles and drones blitzed a major Russian naval base on the Black Sea coast in a “unique” nighttime operation, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday.

Cutting-edge drones developed by Kyiv since Moscow's full-scale invasion over four years ago have repeatedly targeted Russian ships in the Black Sea, including warships and oil tankers.

Ukraine's air and sea drones have succeeded in limiting the movements of Russia’s once-dominant Black Sea navy, Kyiv officials say, in one of the country’s biggest accomplishments of the war.

But Ukrainian officials believe Russian President Vladimir Putin is bent on pressing ahead with the war, despite his bigger army’s slow and costly progress on the battlefield and U.S. diplomatic efforts to find a settlement.

Putin is planning “an additional rapid mobilization of several hundred thousand Russians by the end of the year,” Zelenskyy said Tuesday night on social media, citing Ukrainian intelligence reports.

Those reports have said recently that Russia is expanding production of ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones, both of which are hard for Ukrainian air defenses to counter.

Ukraine also is trying to scale up its weapons manufacturing through agreements with partner countries.

Neither Putin nor other senior Russian officials have hinted at a possible major call-up of forces to fight in Ukraine. Some officials have accused Kyiv of trying to rattle the Russian public with talk of a mobilization.

Russian lawmaker Andrei Gurulyov brushed off reports of a possible autumn mobilization. “It is the enemy deliberately spreading rumors about mobilization in order to destabilize the situation inside Russia,” he was quoted as saying by pro-Kremlin online outlet Tsargrad in comments published Monday.

After the widely unpopular partial mobilization of some 300,000 men four years ago, Russia has relied on volunteers attracted by relatively high pay. However, the decree declaring the partial mobilization that Putin signed in September 2022 is open-ended, allowing authorities to resume it if needed.

The Ukrainian military “carried out a unique operation targeting the naval base in Novorossiysk — the last major stronghold of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea,” Zelenskyy said in a social media post Wednesday. The attack struck air defenses, piers and other port infrastructure, he added.

Russia relocated most of its ships to Novorossiysk after Ukrainian strikes on the base at Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula earlier in the war.

Hundreds of Ukrainian drones attacked Novorossiysk, Anapa and Gelendzhik and the Temryuk district of the region overnight, said Krasnodar Gov. Veniamin Kondratyev.

Russia's Defense Ministry said its air defenses downed more than 500 Ukrainian drones.

In Novorossiysk, an 8-year-old child was killed in the attack, and a person who was injured in the Temryuk region later died in the hospital, Kondratyev said. He added that 12 other people in the region were wounded.

Debris from downed drones fell on the grounds of four industrial plants and 21 residential buildings, Kondratyev said.

Novorossiysk also is home to the Grushovaya oil terminal, one of largest international hubs in southern Russia for petroleum products.

In February, the U.S. State Department expressed its displeasure about Ukraine’s attacks on Novorossiysk, saying they affected U.S. oil interests in ⁠Kazakhstan.

The Caspian Pipeline Consortium operates a pipeline from the Caspian coast in northwestern Kazakhstan to Novorossiysk. The pipeline handles much of the crude exports from three major Kazakh fields in which major U.S. energy companies, Chevron and ExxonMobil, have stakes.

On the Crimean Peninsula, which was illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014, air defenses downed 115 Ukrainian drones over Sevastopol overnight, said Mikhail Razvozhayev, the city’s Russian-installed head. He added that 10 apartment buildings and 25 private houses were damaged.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia fired 138 long-range drones as well as an unspecified number of missiles during the night, with damage recorded at 16 locations.

In the Kherson region of southern Ukraine, a large-scale Russian drone attack overnight killed two people and wounded two others, said regional head Oleksandr Prokudin.

The attacks also destroyed a shopping mall in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, according to authorities.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with navy officers on board of the Varyag missile cruiser of the Pacific Fleet during a military exercise near Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, on Sakhalin Island, Russia, Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026. (Gavriil Grigorov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and Russian Pacific Fleet Commander-in-Chief Admiral Viktor Liina attends a meeting with navy officers on board of the Varyag missile cruiser of the Pacific Fleet during a military exercise near Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, on Sakhalin Island, Russia, Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026. (Gavriil Grigorov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

In this photo provided by Ukraine's 93rd Kholodnyi Yar Separate Mechanized Brigade press service and taken Monday, Aug. 10, 2026, Ukrainian soldiers walk along the street in the frontline town of Druzhkivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine. (Iryna Rybakova/Ukraine's 93rd Mechanized Brigade via AP))