Veronica L. Thomas, Old Dominion University

Kendra Fowler, Youngstown State University

Influencer marketing has evolved from a niche social media tactic into a core component of contemporary brand communication strategies. During this time, research on influencer marketing has proliferated, helping to define and broaden our conceptualization of influencers, while providing key insights into how influencer marketing functions, and situating influencer marketing more broadly within society.

At the same time, the influencer marketing landscape is undergoing rapid transformation. Advances in generative AI, the emergence of synthetic and virtual influencers, evolving platform governance structures, and the increasing professionalization of creators raise important questions about whether dominant assumptions, frameworks, and empirical regularities continue to hold. Many widely cited findings were developed under technological, cultural, and platform conditions that are now shifting in fundamental ways.

As a result, the field faces an inflection point. While continued refinement of established effects remains valuable, there is a growing need for research that moves beyond incremental extensions and instead rethinks how influence operates, who influencers are, and how value is created and contested in contemporary influencer ecosystems. This includes revisiting core constructs, interrogating emerging managerial challenges, and introducing new theoretical lenses capable of capturing these changes.

In this special issue, we call on researchers to move beyond continued incremental contributions and instead to focus on broader questions and truly novel insights. Such insights may be gleaned by examining influencer marketing through a new theoretical lens, considering how technological, societal, or cultural shifts have altered the influencer landscape, or exploring emerging managerial challenges and strategic implications that will alter how advertisers will utilize influencer marketing in the future.

We encourage authors to build on prior work while also critically revisiting core assumptions in the literature. At the same time, we caution against submissions that primarily replicate well-established findings without offering meaningful theoretical extension or new boundary conditions.

The Journal of Advertising Research invites proposals for this special issue aimed at advancing theoretically grounded, methodologically rigorous, and managerially relevant insights into how influencers shape advertising and marketplace dynamics.

Potential topics

• How are deepfakes and synthetic media altering how consumers process and engage with influencer marketing?
• How are influencers incorporating AI tools into content creation, audience management, and monetization, and how do these practices reshape influence?
• How do influencer collectives, creator economies, and platform governance structures reshape influence and value creation?
• What are the power dynamics that occur across influencer–brand–platform relationships?
• How has the influencer ecosystem changed, or how does it need to change, to address increased opportunities for influence beyond social media platforms or the use of AI tools to facilitate content creation?
• How is influence extending beyond traditional social media into commerce, entertainment, education, and hybrid digital physical spaces?
• How do influencers function as brands, entrepreneurs, and marketing organizations rather than merely as endorsers?
• What competitive threats do influencers face from other creators, platforms, AI generated content, or brand owned media?
• How do influencers adapt, reposition, or professionalize as their audiences, technologies, and revenue models evolve?
• How can influencers themselves be protected from exploitation, burnout, harassment, or reputational harm?
• How should firms design influencer strategies across different stages of the customer journey and across multiple platforms?
• How does influencer marketing effectiveness vary across cultural, geographic, and market contexts?
• What strategic trade-offs do firms face between reach, authenticity, control, and risk in influencer partnerships?
• How should brands evaluate influencer fit, performance, and spillovers in increasingly algorithmic environments?
• How do misinformation, manipulated content, and brand safety risks emerge and spread within influencer ecosystems?
• How can influence, engagement, and persuasion be more accurately measured in dynamic, algorithmically curated environments?
• How can field experiments and platform-based data be leveraged to enhance external validity?
• How can researchers capture spillover effects, halo effects, and cross-platform influence in influencer campaigns?
• What new metrics or analytical approaches are needed to study influence at scale and over time?
• How should advertisers select influencers to fit their specific strategic needs?
• Are existing influencer typologies still relevant, or are new classification frameworks needed?
• Where do existing theories of persuasion, social influence, and communication fall short in explaining consumer–influencer relationships today?
• How should foundational theories be extended or revised to account for AI-mediated and platform-driven influence?

Timeline

• July 1, 2026: Submission window opens
• October 12, 2026: Manuscript deadline

Linda Tuncay Zayer, Loyola University Chicago

Jing Yang, Boston University

Shu-Chuan (Kelly) Chu, DePaul University

With the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence, social media algorithms, robotic interfaces, and immersive technologies such as virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR), the boundaries between technology, persuasive influence, and human activities have blurred. In this evolving landscape, the individual and collective well-being of consumers, as well as society at large, is increasingly at risk and warrants critical scholarly attention.

Consumer well-being is a multidimensional concept that encompasses individual and shared experiences, which can be manifested through cognitive, affective, and psychophysical states. Moreover, well-being is contextualized, with advertising holding the potential to enhance or diminish well-being at various micro, meso, and macro levels. At a broader level, societal well-being extends these concerns to collective equity, inclusion, and information integrity, highlighting how advertising technologies shape civic life, cultural representation, and public trust.

Emerging technologies such as generative AI have revolutionized how advertising messages are created, optimized, and delivered. While AI promises efficiency and personalization, research has also highlighted the risk of deception, diminishment of authenticity, and misrepresentation. At the same time, when human-AI collaboration is transparent and meaningful, it may enhance empowerment, creativity, and perceived control.

Robotic and embodied agents, such as in-store robots or voice-enabled AI assistants, are emerging as persuasive venues. These technologies can increase comfort and engagement, such as through emotional support, but may also evoke discomfort or distrust if perceived as overly human-like or manipulative. Their deployment raises new ethical questions about safety, accessibility, labor replacement, and the equitable distribution of technological benefits.

Examining the ethics and well-being impacts of social media platforms, drawing on advanced algorithmic targeting, is crucial due to the prevalence of deepfakes, misinformation, and extreme and misogynistic content. Although algorithms can enhance the relevance of information and increase efficiency and effectiveness, there could be negative results for consumer and societal well-being. Building digital literacy among vulnerable populations and diminishing the harms of social media must be a priority for future scholarship.

Immersive and metaverse advertising further redefines persuasion through embodiment and sensory engagement and holds sociological and psychological implications as well as new challenges to consumer well-being and consciousness. The heightened presence might enhance the learning and persuasion outcomes but could also result in consumer vulnerability if the ad boundaries or data protection are unclear. Ethical design, consent, inclusion, and transparency are crucial to protecting autonomy in such sensor-rich environments.

These transformations signal both opportunity and responsibility. This special issue seeks contributions that advance conceptual, empirical, and policy insights to ensure that innovation in advertising remains human-centered, ethical, and responsible and enhances well-being. All methodological approaches are welcome.

Potential topics

• Ethical implications of AI, social media, AR, VR, metaverse, and other emerging technologies
• Ethics and well-being related to AI companions, bots, and virtual influencers
• Personalized content generation and psychological manipulation concerns
• Algorithmic amplification of beneficial versus harmful advertising content
• Anthropomorphic design ethics and emotional manipulation through physical presence of AI/Robot
• Consent and autonomy in human-robot advertising/marketing communication interactions
• Parasocial relationships with advertising/marketing communication robots and their exploitation
• Consumer understanding and control of integrated AI advertising experiences
• Data sharing and privacy concerns across social media platforms and emerging technologies
• Building AI and digital media literacy
• Children's well-being related to AI, social media and new technologies
• Elderly consumers and potential exploitation through advertising systems embodied by emerging technologies
• Consumer involvement in advanced advertising system design and governance
• Professional ethics for AI-automated decision-making
• Deepfakes and synthetic media ethics in commercial contexts
• Synthetic data and digital twins in the advertising context
• Automation and replacement of advertising industry employees by AI
• Bias detection, measurement, and mitigation strategies across digital applications
• Bias and representational harms of AI-generated advertising and other emerging technologies
• Extremism, misogyny, and gender-based violence enabled by AI, social media, and emerging technologies
• Immersive storytelling, embodiment, and consumer well-being in hybrid digital–physical advertising experiences
• Sustainability issues related to the use of AI in advertising industry
• AI, energy consumption, and the carbon footprint of the advertising industry

Timeline

• August 31, 2026: Manuscript deadline