Do Southeast Asian Consumers Really Trust Influencers Over Ads?

Influencer marketing in Southeast Asia now drives up to $46 billion in annual e-commerce sales, with $21 billion directly attributable to creator campaigns, according to the Cube x impact.com Southeast Asia Influencer Marketing Report. Yet the same research finds consumer trust declining across every influencer tier, from celebrities down to nano influencers, a divergence that complicates the common assumption that Southeast Asian consumers simply trust influencers over brand advertising.

The scale of the shift is not in question. Across the six markets surveyed, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines, 83% of consumers report having already purchased through an affiliate link, according to the 2026 "eCommerce influencer and affiliate marketing in Southeast Asia" report by impact.com, developed with Cube and dentsu, based on a survey of 2,400 consumers. In Thailand specifically, nine of the top ten TikTok creators by revenue are not influencers in the traditional entertainment or lifestyle sense, but Key Opinion Sellers, creators built primarily for conversion rather than reach or brand storytelling.

Despite this volume, the same report notes that trust is fragmenting rather than consolidating around creators. Reach and follower count alone increasingly fail to predict purchase behavior, a shift the report's authors attribute to rising consumer skepticism toward sponsored content generally, even as affiliate-driven commerce keeps growing.

When the same 2026 impact.com report asked what most influences a purchase decision, recommendations from family and friends ranked highest at 2.42 out of a possible four points, ahead of online reviews at 2.36 and creator recommendations at 1.98. Separately, the report found that 49% of affiliate-driven purchases were motivated primarily by trust and validation, compared with 28% driven by convenience or utility, with consumers citing convincing recommendations and credible reviews as more influential than discount offers.

The finding complicates a simpler narrative in which influencers have replaced traditional advertising as the primary trust signal. Instead, the data suggests creators function as one layer within a broader trust hierarchy that still places closer personal relationships above public content, even when that content comes from a familiar creator.

A separate 2026 study from Vero, the "Southeast Asia Consumer Tech Trust Score," found that trust in digital and social platforms varies significantly by market and category. Social media ranked among the lowest-trust categories tracked across the region, with a trust score of 67.8, even though usage of social platforms for product discovery remains high. Indonesia and Vietnam scored as the region's highest-trust markets overall for technology broadly, while Singapore stood out as more institutionally trusting but notably more skeptical at the consumer level, particularly toward social media.

For CPG brands, the data suggests that scaling influencer spend without addressing trust erosion is a diminishing-returns strategy. High follower counts and campaign volume no longer guarantee proportional consumer trust, particularly as more Southeast Asian shoppers, one in four of whom now use generative AI tools to support shopping decisions according to the same impact.com research, gain additional ways to verify claims before purchasing. Brands that treat creators purely as a paid reach channel, rather than as one input feeding into a broader trust chain that still runs through peer recommendations and credible reviews, risk overestimating how much influence any single sponsored post actually carries.

Sources: impact.com, "Influencer marketing trends in Southeast Asia: why the consumer shift has already happened," citing the Cube x impact.com Southeast Asia Influencer Marketing Report 2025. Marketing-Interactive, "AI is changing how SEA shops, but trust still wins the checkout," citing impact.com's "eCommerce influencer and affiliate marketing in Southeast Asia 2026" report, developed with Cube and dentsu. Vero ASEAN, "The Southeast Asia Consumer Tech Trust Score 2026."