Creator marketing is evolving from a brand awareness play to a performance engine, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is accelerating that shift.
Humanz, an influencer marketing platform, is launching Humanz+, an AI-native system designed to help brands scale creator-led advertising with nano- and micro-influencers. Rather than simply matching brands with creators, the new platform deploys a set of AI agents to manage everything from brief creation and casting to media buying and conversion optimization, creating an end-to-end operating system for influencer marketing.
It is designed to help creators earn money through brand partnerships (e.g., affiliate programs, user-generated content (UGC)), according to Liran Liberman, CEO of Humanz . The platform manages the entire relationship from contract to payment, and some of the biggest lifestyle brands in beauty, fashion, jewelry, and health use it to work with influencers with massive organic reach to promote their products.
The company recently went further and built a new companion product, Humanz+, that is AI-native (built entirely by AI), specifically to help smaller creators (think nano and micro creators) make money from UGC ads.
With Humanz, brands negotiate and close deals with creators and influencers, and those creators go off and do something on their social media. But with Humanz+, the creator gives brands direct access to their profiles, enabling brands to run ads directly through their accounts. This type of brand partnership has a name: whitelisting (or creator licensing) on Meta, Spark Ads on TikTok, Partnership Ads on YouTube, and Thought Leadership Ads on LinkedIn.
Inside the seven AI agents powering Humanz+
So, how does Humanz+ help brands and creators manage these new UGC ads? It manages the entire creator relationship end-to-end, from brief creation to selecting creators to work with to media buying and optimization; it just does it using AI. Liberman calls it an AI-native operating system that spans discovery, briefing, content creation, paid amplification, and performance optimization.
Humanz+ is made up of seven AI agents that work together to design, create, and manage the ads. Here’s a quick look:
- The research and brief preparation agent conducts research on the brand, industry, competitors, and trends, and creates a brief for a select product.
- The creative agent designs creative based on the brief and the brand guidelines. Brands can let the AI design the creative concepts, upload their own, and request creators pitch concepts for them to review.
- The casting agent reviews Humanz’s 1 million creator profiles and selects a set of creators for the brand to review, including their performance metrics with similar brands. Brands can also create AI avatars and AI creators to use. Once the brand selects one or more creators and assigns concepts, the agent handles all negotiations with the creators.
- The content production agent manages the process of getting products to creators and manages the content creation process (in this case, it’s video).
- The media buying agent connects to brand and creator media accounts and handles all the media buying.
- The conversion rate optimization (CRO) agent monitors performance and manages real-time changes to ads and landing pages.
- On top of all these agents is a manager agent that manages the entire process and has access to creative intelligence that shows performance and recommends changes (e.g., new creators, content changes, etc.).
While much of the work is performed by AI agents, there is always still a human-in-the-loop, selecting concepts, creators, editing briefs, AI-generated concepts, and ads. But this approach enables brands to work with more creators at once, especially when it’s smaller creators and a specific type of partnership (UGC). Liberman described it as a flywheel where the AI is always learning and improving.
Balancing automation with creator ownership
Liberman says that Humanz+ is all about creators and protecting their IP and content. They want to help creators make money in the AI era, where AI-generated or AI-improved content is growing.
The most interesting agents in Humanz+ are the content production and media buying agents. A creator can make a video and submit it; the brand can request changes to specific sections of the video. So, there’s a continual review and approval process that ensures both brand and creator are happy with the final version.
Brands can also create variations of videos for different channels and write custom ad headlines and copy around these UGC videos. That means the brand can adapt the content in ways a creator might not like. Liberman said they help creators understand what brands are doing with their content and give them control over what is being said, and what audiences it’s published to. At any time, the creator can stop the process with a single click.
Creators also have access to performance metrics, so they know how well their content performed for a brand. Those metrics become part of their profile on Humanz and are visible to other brands.
From brand awareness to performance accountability
AI agents reduce the operational cost of working with hundreds or thousands of creators simultaneously. It enables brands to shift influencer marketing from brand awareness to a repeatable performance channel. Moving from awareness to measurable conversion is key to the success of these programs, especially as marketing budgets tighten.
However, the same questions arise as those with using AI to generate content for brands. If AI builds the content brief and creates the creative concepts, using industry trends, competitor research, and previous brand performance, the risk of the content becoming generic is high.
Creators value control and authenticity. That’s why giving them a say in how their content is used is critical. But scaling UGC content with AI will test partnerships, and brands that are transparent and share performance data will build the trust creators need to work with them.
My take
Creator and influencer advertising was expected to reach US$37 billion in 2025, and there’s no sign it's slowing down. A high percentage of these partnerships are with mid-tier creators, such as micro and nano creators. As influencer marketing grows, the tools that help manage these relationships become more important.
If influencer marketing is converging with performance marketing, then Humanz+ is primed to support brands and creators in this journey.
Humanz+ is currently in private beta and is expected to go public sometime this year. Beta customers are seeing positive results as they shift from influencer marketing for brand awareness to performance-driven growth.