Sponsored by Douglas Davis • June 16, 2026 •
By Mark Grether, svp and general manager, PayPal Ads
There are three words in a group chat: “I’ll get it.” The person who wrote those words picked the restaurant, booked the tickets, fronted the cost and then collected payment from everyone afterward. Next weekend, when nobody else wants to make the call, they’ll do it again. Here’s what marketers have missed about that person: they didn’t just spend money. They got seven other people to spend money, too. There is already a word for someone who moves other people to act: an influencer. However, the influencers that brands spend billions of dollars chasing — the ones with followings, ring lights and rate cards — influence attention. They get consumers to notice a product or service, perhaps think differently about it and maybe eventually buy it. The person in a group chat does something rarer and far more valuable than that. They influence money — other people’s money — and they do it without posting a thing. Social influencers change what people think. But the other kind of influencer, visible only in payment data, changes what people spend. That’s the audience worth competing for.
Influence over spend beats influence over attention
