India's marketing industry may be overestimating the effectiveness of influencer-led campaigns as consumers, particularly Gen Z, grow increasingly fatigued by sponsored content and AI-generated advertising, according to Kantar's Creative Effectiveness Awards (CEA) India 2026 report.The report, which analysed more than 1500 Indian advertisements, comes at a time when marketers are pouring larger budgets into creators, short-form content and AI-powered creative production in pursuit of measurable returns.While creator content's impact has risen 77%, only 27% of such content effectively links back to the brand, revealing a widening gap between reach and actual brand-building, according to the report. It also found that campaigns combining creator content with branded advertising outperform either approach in isolation.“Marketers today have become overly focused on bottom-funnel metrics such as clicks and conversions at the expense of long-term brand equity,” said Soumya Mohanty, managing director and chief solutions officer, South Asia, Kantar, adding that this denies brands the opportunity to build lasting relationships with consumers. "You are not building residual memories, you are not building for the future, you are just building for today."The report also points to early signs of "social or creator fatigue". Overall receptivity to advertising on social media has fallen about 4% year-on-year, with the decline nearly doubling to 7% among Gen Z consumers, suggesting that younger audiences are becoming less tolerant of repetitive and overtly commercial creator content."It's already happening," said Mohanty, "The fatigue is starting to show. The sameness across content is starting to show. We must not lose that craft."Another threat today is the newly discovered role of artificial intelligence in advertising. According to Kantar, more than half of consumers believe AI-generated advertisements increase the risk of misleading or fake content, while over 40% say such ads make them uncomfortable or irritated.According to Mohanty, AI works only when it enhances storytelling rather than replaces it."If AI is giving leaps to your imagination, it works. But if AI is just used to ease budgets, we haven't seen a very good response to AI content," she said, warning that excessive reliance on artificial content risks consumers "completely switching off".