274: “The Influencer Playbook: Flo, Numan & HelloFresh on the Future of Growth” BOA London 2026 panel

Today we're talking about influencer marketing - and about the point where creator content stops being a brand play and starts being a performance channel.

Creator-led ads run four times better on click-through rate than the same brand's own ads. So the question is no longer whether to use influencers. It's how to scale them without losing the ROI.

In this episode, we bring you a live panel hosted by Lucia Aguilar, CEO and Founder at TATAM Digital, featuring:

• Joanna Malecka, Partnership Director at Numan
• Esma Ebnu, Influencer Marketing at Flo Health
• Lia Darozhkina, Senior Influencer Marketing Manager at Trade Republic
• Stephanie Terziyski, Growth Influencer Marketing Manager at HelloFresh.

The panel works through four trends. YouTube as the new TV - 13% of all US viewership and more ad revenue than Paramount, Disney, Universal, and Warner combined - and why long-form still converts for products that need explaining. Creator and partnership ads, where content boosted from the creator's own handle beats anything posted from a brand account. Regulation, with only 57% of UK paid posts tagged correctly, and how teams in health, Pharma, and banking build compliance into the brief instead of bolting it on at sign-off. And AI, from sourcing and brief writing through to forecasting campaign results, plus the case for human creators in a feed filling up with avatars.

If you work in influencer marketing, user acquisition, or performance marketing, this is a practical look at where creator budgets are going in 2026 and what it takes to scale them profitably.

The panel’s topics include:

• AI in growth teams — which tasks it already replaces, and why humans still own strategy
• Performance marketing's limits — why trust-driven categories like fintech need brand channels too
• Web-to-app funnels — near-double conversion rates and skipping the 30% app store tax
• Channel strategy for 2026 — fewer channels done better vs. always testing new ones
• Data and targeting vs. creative — where each wins, and the 96% CPA reduction story