Influencing is Aging: Why Older Influencers Are Driving Better Brand Performance

Rewind six or seven years and picture what a typical morning doom scroll might look like.

If you’re having trouble conjuring up images, here’s a hint: as you sip your morning coffee, you’d see a handful of 20-year-olds dancing to the latest TikTok trend, presenting a makeup tutorial, or unboxing a cool product from a brand.

It makes sense why brands were chasing partnerships full of Gen Z aesthetics, humor, slang, and creators in 2020. Social media, especially platforms like TikTok and Instagram, were heavily skewed toward younger users at the time. In fact, a Wpromote study from 2020 found that 44% of Gen Z consumers had purchased a product based on an influencer recommendation, compared to 26% of the general population.

Fast forward to 2026, and a morning doom scroll looks a lot different. You may run into content from grandfluencers like fashion icon and Silent Generation member Baddie Winkie. Maybe you’ll see Flipping Granny, a Baby Boomer who built an audience around finger skateboard tricks. Or you might see creators like Lyn Slater, the 60-something fashion creator known as “Accidental Icon,” who has partnered with brands including Mango and Valentino. And you’ll definitely see a handful of content from Gen Z and Millennials.

Moving into 2026, data no longer supports the idea that social media is reserved for Gen Z.

Pew’s 2025 social media study found that YouTube and Facebook are now used by a majority of Americans across every age group, while half of all U.S. adults use Instagram.

Also, usage across different platforms for every generation is up. GWI’s 2026 social media report found Gen X and Baby Boomers now use platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and X alongside Facebook and YouTube.

What’s more, BrandNation reported that the number of social media users aged 55+ has grown by 61.7%. And noted that older creators are increasingly attracting multi-generational audiences with everything from skincare routines and fashion content to TikTok trends and day-in-the-life vlogs.

Finally, new data from Billo shows creators aged 45+ more than doubled their share of the company’s creator marketplace between 2022 and 2025, while total creator volume across older demographics grew more than 4x.

Content consumption, creation, and influence span every demographic, opening up new opportunities for brands to expand partnerships and capture new audiences.

This article will cover the rise of older creators, why audiences are responding to them, and what it means for the future of influencer marketing.

How the creator age breakdown changed over 4 years

Before getting too deep into why older creators are resonating, it’s worth looking at how creator demographics have changed over the past few years.

The team at Billo shared creator application data showing a major increase in creators over 30 between 2022 and 2025. Here’s a breakdown of the creator demographic shift from 2022 to 2025:

Creators under 30 once dominated Billo’s platform. By 2025, though, creators aged 30 to 59 represented the largest share of applicants. The growth is especially notable in the 45-59 category, which nearly tripled over the three-year period.

That matters for brands because creators in those age groups may resonate especially well with audiences that control larger portions of household spending. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer expenditure data shows Americans ages 45–54 recorded the highest average annual spending of any age group in 2024. And, as Billo CEO and co-founder Donatas Smailys put it, “Younger audiences scroll while older audiences buy.”

Meta’s 2026 “Generation Zeitgeist” report also found that short-form video is now the preferred content format across every generation, including Gen X and Boomers, reinforcing that social media participation is no longer a youth-exclusive behavior.

But does content from older influencers perform well?

We know creator demographics are changing. The next question is whether older creators are delivering stronger campaign results. According to Billo, the answer is yes.

Compared to creators under 45, Billo’s creators aged 45+ generated:

• 6% higher hook rates
• 14% higher thruplay rates
• 19% higher click-through rates
• ~20% more Meta spend allocated algorithmically
• 7% higher return on ad spend

In other words, older creators are not simply participating more than before. In many cases, they’re even outperforming younger content creators.

According to Smailys, part of the reason stems from purchasing behavior. “Brands are finally chasing purchasing power vs just the eyeballs,” he said. “The 35-55 demographic controls the majority of consumer spending. That math is catching up with casting decisions.”

Part of the difference in results may come down to how older creators communicate and how it resonates with audiences. “Older creators are more about conversation. Younger creators are trained on virality,” said Smailys. “Older creators talk to you like a person. That tone lands differently, especially for considered purchases.”

That shift is already visible across categories like wellness and beauty, where creators often build audiences around expertise, routines, lived experience, and trust rather than trend fluency alone. Wellness creator Melissa Wood-Tepperberg, for example, built a massive audience around low-impact workouts, mindfulness, and sustainable routines rather than highly performative fitness culture.

This conversational style may align with broader shifts happening across social media as well. Meta’s 2026 “Generation Zeitgeist” report found that 81% of people rank expert knowledge as an important creator trait, and fame ranked lower than expertise. The report also found education and learning content ranked as the top creator category globally.

Taken together, the data suggest audiences may increasingly value creators who are credible, knowledgeable, and recognizably real over creators optimized purely for aesthetics or virality. And Billo’s data suggests many of those creators are over 45.

The generational influencer marketing playbook is changing… big time

The rise of older creators also points to something bigger happening across influencer marketing itself: the generational playbook is changing.

For years, brands approached influencer marketing through age buckets. Gen Z creators were paired with Gen Z audiences. Campaigns prioritized youth-coded aesthetics, trend fluency, and viral potential. But social behavior is becoming less tied to generational identity and more tied to life stage and purchasing intent.

Meta’s 2026 “Generation Zeitgeist” report supports this idea. The report found that life-stage moments create larger behavioral shifts than generational identity. Major purchase intent spikes occur around events such as moving, parenting, marriage, career changes, and retirement transitions—regardless of age.

That changes how brands may evaluate creator fit. A creator discussing caregiving, wellness, fitness, parenting teens, or buying a first home may resonate less because of a shared birth year and more because of shared experience—something that comes with age.

According to Smailys, even youth-focused brands are testing partnering with older creators. “Beauty and wellness were first. Now we're seeing it in fitness, food, and tech accessories,” he said.

“The insight is consistent. The person actually buying is often older than the brand's assumed audience.” That matters because consumers in older demographics often control a larger share of household spending and make purchase decisions.

Smailys added that creator selection still needs to align with the brand’s actual ICP and customer behavior, not assumptions about what social audiences “should” look like.

Many brands are already moving in this direction. For example, in 2025, Olaplex featured Jenna Lyons (57) alongside younger stars, including Nicola Coughlan and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, in its “Designed to Defy” campaign. Rather than centering youth aesthetics, the campaign focused on confidence and healthy hair, including greying hair.

Why older creators may be thriving right now

Part of what’s fueling the rise of older creators may also be exhaustion with the current state of social feeds themselves.

“AI-generated content accelerated this,” said Smailys. “The feed is flooded with generic, synthetic faces. Real humans in their 40s and 50s stand out by contrast. That authenticity gap is working in their favor.”

As AI influencers, CGI beauty campaigns, and hyper-polished creator content become more common, creators showing visible aging, lived experience, or unfiltered routines may feel more differentiated in-feed.

Virtual influencers like Lil Miquela helped normalize increasingly synthetic social aesthetics over the past several years, potentially creating more space for creators who feel recognizably human, conversational, and less optimized for sameness.

Meta’s 2026 “Generation Zeitgeist” report points to a similar shift in audience behavior. The report found people increasingly value niche and educational creator content, with education ranking as the top creator category globally. It also found expert knowledge ranked higher than fame among the traits audiences value most in creators.

This change in audience behavior helps explain the rise of creators like Dr. Shereene Idriss, whose audience growth came less from trend culture and more from educational skincare content grounded in professional expertise.

Discovery behavior is changing, too. According to Meta, 75% of people regularly watch creators they do not follow. That means creators no longer need celebrity-level followings or traditional influencer aesthetics to reach audiences consistently.

What brands can do differently as creator demographics change

Brands responding to this demographic change may need to rethink more than who they partner with.

According to Smailys, many brands still approach creator partnerships too heavily through aesthetics instead of audience fit and performance data. “’We’re a young brand’ is not a targeting strategy,” he said. “They can select creators who match their Instagram look, not who actually sells their product.”

Instead, Smailys recommends starting with the customer. “Pull your customer data, look at the age breakdown, match creators to that reality,” he explained. “Then test it alongside your standard mix. The performance gap will tell you more than any brief.”

The creative approach may need to change as well. “When they do test older creators, they brief them like they’re 22,” said Smailys. “The brief needs to match the creator.”

That may require brands to rethink creator briefs from the ground up. Instead of optimizing exclusively for trend replication, rapid cuts, or Gen Z-style humor, brands may see stronger results by building campaigns around conversational storytelling, practical expertise, and audience trust. In many cases, the creative direction works better when it feels credible, useful, and aligned with how that creator naturally communicates, rather than overly optimized for virality.

The creator economy is aging up

Ultimately, the rise of older creators may say less about age itself and more about what audiences now expect from social content. Platforms are becoming less generationally segmented, discovery is increasingly algorithmic, and audiences appear more willing to follow creators who feel real, credible, and relevant to their actual lives.

For brands, that may require moving beyond legacy assumptions about who social media is “for.” Companies still treating influencer marketing as a Gen Z-only channel may be optimizing around an increasingly outdated version of online behavior.

A few years ago, brands may have overlooked a 57-year-old creator in favor of a 22-year-old with trend fluency. In 2026, that same creator may deliver deeper trust, better audience alignment, and improved results.