28 October 2026

Rise of Real

We all have a sixth sense. The bullshit sensor. Mine goes off every time I’m approached by a chugger on the high street or on my doorstep. The overfriendliness. The open-ended opening question. My impatient wait for a punchline that never seems to come. We can feel when someone isn’t being real with us. We were built to notice what doesn’t fit. To distrust what feels out of place.

But as the lines between fake and real converge ever closer, those same instincts that preserved us from the lurking dangers of the jungle are adapting to a world they weren’t built for. In this world, our bullshit sensor doesn’t always announce itself. It happens when human-like behaviour from something non-human causes an uncanny sense of unease. It appears quietly, unnoticeably. But not immeasurably.

The unseen impact of fake

Earlier this year Ipsos showed 3,000 Americans twenty ads. Ten made by people, ten by AI. Only a quarter of those watching an AI-made ad were somewhat confident that’s what they were looking at. 40% were unsure.

Now, before you rush to confirm next year’s AI-made content budget, the study found that human-made ads scored 14% higher on short-term effectiveness and 17% on long-term. Even though the respondents struggled to spot the difference between human-made and AI-made ads, they responded differently to them. A study from Harris Poll confirmed the same trend, noting that 63% of people say they’re less likely to buy after being exposed to an AI-made ad. In September, Harvard Business Review published independent academic research reaching the same conclusion. As Ipsos put it, credible is not the same as compelling.

Peak fakery?

But this isn’t just about a growing distrust of AI-made content. This is about a subtle shift in buyer behaviour that they themselves can’t see. People are displaying a heightened sense for what isn’t real and adjusting their behaviour away from it. For example, influencers and content creators are increasingly distrusted, and people are retrenching into spaces where they can curate the people and content they trust. In Pacsun and GlobalData’s second annual Youth Report, influencers never exceed an 11% trust share. It’s not that influencers are a thing of the past, however. But mass, obviously commercial creators are on the slide. Instead, people are looking for more valuable insight from people who have put in the time and effort or who share genuine expertise. A study by Rival Technologies in August also found that only 33% of young people trust social platforms. In tandem, we’re seeing a steady rise of Substacks and zine culture. And even Instagram’s own Adam Mosseri has said far more photos and videos are now shared into DMs than into stories.

The pull to tangibly real

But more is going on than just a retreat from ‘fake’. Buyers are seeking out verifiably human experiences. The Atlantic launched a daily trivia game, Rabbithole, written and handcrafted each weekday by a former Jeopardy champion. Hand-made, daily, by a person, when an algorithm could do it in seconds. The pull for readers is that someone actually sat down and wrote it.

Equally, the deliberately bad 49-second track ‘Bangladesh’ spawned a wave of raw, single-take clips that are outperforming produced content. And Nolan’s The Odyssey, shot entirely on IMAX film across seven countries with its Cyclops built as an animatronic rather than generated, opened to $264m worldwide against a $250m budget, with IMAX taking $52m of that. All early signals of a renewed appreciation for human craft.

Meanwhile, in the budget meeting

As buyers move one way, however, marketers are being pushed in the opposite direction. As Mark Ritson noted in The Drum, 86% of American marketers now use influencer marketing, up from 64.5% in 2020. Some CEOs have even gone as far as to proclaim social-first, creator-led brand strategies, sparking massive budget swings in this direction. In the US alone, more than $12bn is being ploughed into creators this year. But one audit by SociaVault Labs of 100,000 accounts found 37% of followers showed signs of being either fake or bought.

AI budgets are rising too. Fast, cheap content; the next addiction of the marketing community. It’s entirely understandable, but it may be pointing away from what your buyers are rewarding. This gap in buyer behaviour versus marketing focus is not only measurable, but also growing. According to IAB and Sonata Insights, 82% of ad execs believe younger audiences feel positive about AI-made ads, when only 45% of them actually do. That gap was 32 points in 2024. It’s 37 now.

This matters. Especially now. Marketing budget decisions are being made and 2027 plans are being written, defended and quietly rewritten as I write this. And the people responsible for generating demand are being pushed and pulled to make a hard swing that estranges them further from the people whose demand they’re trying to generate.

Reintroducing tangible interactions

Some brands are responding, however. Businesses who designed efficiency and ‘frictionlessness’ into their brand experience early have already started to retreat. McDonald’s is driving one of the biggest hospitality pushes in its history, retraining staff to greet people properly. CEO Kempczinski acknowledged in June that with more of the journey now automated, there are fewer opportunities for staff to connect with guests (and upsell, presumably). Starbucks too is investing $500m into more staff hours, as well as reintroducing ceramic mugs to encourage people to stay longer. Both brands putting tangibility back into their service.

Don’t be a ‘pissed-up trapeze artist’

As Mark Ritson recently put it, “marketing has a habit of swinging between total infatuation and total rejection like a pissed-up trapeze artist with a personality disorder. It’s all genius! It’s all shit!” We aren’t swinging entirely back to the future, however. When the added value of your brand is convenience, buyers will happily trade the human part away. China’s Luckin Coffee runs a 100% cashier-less model across 36,000 stores, serving over 112m customers every month. Not a single order taken by a human. When it matters, however, real human interaction and tangible craft become the added value.

But how do you know when it matters? Well, if the value your brand brings is convenience and price, strip out friction. But, make sure to measure your own gap before committing to next year’s budget. While the temptation and pressure may be to chase the efficiencies of the fast, the cheap and the short-term, 37 percentage points sit between what marketers believe and what buyers actually feel about the engines of fakery. But whatever the gap, keep tools like AI where they belong. In the back. The further it sits from the moment your content meets your buyer, the less it eventually costs you.

So, as buyers recalibrate their bullshit sensor in this new world and grapple with understanding the difference between fake and real, know where the real and the human add value for your brand. Get it wrong, and you’ll have saved some budget and churned out a lot of content but missed your targets.

Sources: