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June 15th, 2026: The date this newsletter was drafted. An AI process does that part.
June 22nd, 2026: That’s when we publish.
“Why one week delay? Other newsletters land in a day or hours.” you might ask.
The answer is trust. Over the course of a week, the team at IMG read the draft and edit it. We ask what’s real and what’s hype. We ask ourselves if we learned something from it, and we add our own thoughts and ideas.
Two weeks ago an article from an AI content farm made “This Week’s Finds”. We chose to include it with a disclaimer because it was both interesting content, and it brought you attention to a content site that is getting attention from AI responses. A conscious choice to bring you something we thought was useful.
This week’s theme is about the role of trust in marketing and sales.
I have built my entire career on leveraging automation and process improvement. I’m excited about using AI to propel that and you should be too. That said, I’ve also learned that people trust people. Brands like Experian, Ticketmaster, Amazon and DHL used my automations or process because they trusted me, and by proxy trusted what I built.
So, we spent a week there. Because AI can gather the content, but only people can build trust.
Our theme this week is focused around a new marketplace now where you can buy trust. (TimN here: this feels like a terrible idea). Not trust in the abstract, but the specific kind that makes a buyer say yes at the final stage of a decision. LinkedIn launched its Creator Marketplace this week, and the stat that stopped me cold was this: 56% of B2B buyers say creator content influences them at the final stage of a purchase. Not the awareness stage. Not the research stage. The moment right before they decide. That is not a content marketing story. That is a trust story. And it changes what you should be building.
This Week’s Finds
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Story 1
LinkedIn launches Creator Marketplace, connecting B2B brands with vetted professional creators
MediaPost ↗
LinkedIn officially launched its Creator Marketplace on June 10, 2026, giving brands a searchable directory of vetted professional creators with audience analytics, performance data, and built-in amplification through Thought Leader Ads. The platform also introduced BrandWorks, a hands-on creative strategy team for managed accounts. LinkedIn's own 2026 Global B2B Marketing Outlook found that 82% of B2B marketers say creators increase credibility with decision-makers, and 56% of B2B buyers rely on creator input during the final stage of a purchase decision. Currently invite-only in North America, the marketplace formalizes something the best B2B marketers already knew: at the close, buyers reach for people they trust, not brands they recognize.
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Story 2
2026 Edelman Trust Barometer: the creator economy grew to $313B but trust is contracting, not expanding
Yahoo Creators ↗
The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer, released this week, complicates the creator economy's growth story. The creator economy has reached $313 billion and is growing, but trust is contracting, not expanding. Seven in ten people are now hesitant or unwilling to trust people who differ from them in values, beliefs, or background. More than 50% of creators earn under $15,000 per year. The finding that matters most for small businesses: niche creators with tight, relevant audiences consistently outperform high-reach macro-influencers on trust metrics, because the barrier is not reach, it is shared experience.
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Story 3
Google Universal Cart goes live in the U.S., making product feed quality a search discovery signal
Search Engine Journal ↗
Google's Universal Cart went live in the U.S. on May 19, 2026, letting shoppers add products while browsing Search, chatting with Gemini, watching YouTube, or reading Gmail, then working in the background to find better prices and alert them to restocks. For merchants, the practical consequence is specific: product feed quality in Google Merchant Center is now a discovery signal, not just a paid ads requirement. Businesses without accurate, real-time price and inventory data may not appear in the cart experience at all. The wall between SEO, shopping feeds, and paid media is gone, and they are now one connected workflow.
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Story 4
Small business AI adoption reaches 82%, but the gap between strategic users and everyone else is widening
Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council ↗
The 2026 Small Business Tech Use Survey found that 82% of small business employers now use AI tools, with a median of five tools per business. Among businesses seeing measurable ROI, nearly 90% report improvements. The gap between those who see results and those who do not is not access to better tools. It is strategy: knowing which use cases deserve AI, which require a human, and how to measure the difference. The competitive advantage in 2026 is not having AI. It is knowing what to do with it.
56%
of B2B buyers say creator content shapes their decision at the final stage of a purchase, according to LinkedIn's 2026 Global B2B Marketing Outlook. At the close, buyers reach for someone they trust.
Here is what these four stories have in common, and why they matter this week.
The marketing playbook most of us were handed was built on information advantage. Know more, publish more, rank better. That model worked until AI made information essentially free. Now Google synthesizes answers from any source. LinkedIn surfaces any creator. Your potential client can find a dozen alternatives in a single session. The scarce resource is no longer information. It is the kind of trust that only comes from demonstrated experience.
LinkedIn's Creator Marketplace is the platform formally catching up to what buyers have always done at the final moment of a decision. They reach for someone who has been where they are going. The Edelman data shows that trust is not spreading across the creator economy. It is concentrating around people with shared values and shared experience. A growing global creator pool does not mean more trust. It means trust is harder to earn and more valuable once earned.
For the agency owner and solopreneur reading this, the AI survey finding is the most useful data point. 82% of small businesses use AI. That means AI access is no longer the edge. Everyone has it. The edge is knowing which content you should write yourself because it carries your specific experience, and which content can be accelerated with AI because it is driving traffic, not building trust.
Here is what to do this week:
Pull your last five LinkedIn posts. If any of them could have been written by someone who has never done the work you do, swap one for a specific story from your own work. A real client challenge with real numbers. A decision you made that did not go the way you planned. A method you built the hard way. This is the content LinkedIn's Creator Marketplace is now designed to surface.
If you run ecommerce for yourself or a client, open Google Merchant Center this week and check your product feed refresh schedule. Universal Cart favors real-time price and inventory accuracy. A weekly refresh is already behind. This is a quick technical win with real visibility consequences.
For the AI question, before you automate the next piece of content, decide whether that content is meant to build trust or drive traffic. Trust content should carry your voice and your experience. Traffic content can be accelerated with AI. Mixing those two up is how businesses end up producing a lot and standing for nothing.
IMG’s Take
LinkedIn building a creator marketplace is not a LinkedIn story. It is the platform economy formally deciding that credibility is now tradeable, that brands will pay to borrow trust from people who have earned it.
IMG Courses has run on a single principle that runs against what most course platforms sell: information is not the product. Transformation is. People do not pay for what they learn. They pay for what they become after they learn it. That distinction is what Google's E-E-A-T system is measuring, what LinkedIn's Creator Marketplace is formalizing, and what the Edelman Trust Barometer is confirming.
The creator economy has 207 million people producing content. More than half of them earn under $15,000 per year. Access to a platform does not guarantee trust, and trust does not come from volume. It comes from specific experience, clearly communicated to people who recognize themselves in your story.
If you are building a business or an audience in 2026, the question is not how much you can produce. It is whether the people you want to reach would trust you specifically because you have been where they are trying to go. Build that. The rest is content.
Pull up your last five LinkedIn posts and ask one question: could this have been written by anyone? If yes, replace one with a story only you could tell. A real client win. A hard call you made. A method you built through failure. This is what the Creator Marketplace rewards. And it is what builds a list that actually buys.
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— Tim Nichols & The IMG Team
Sources cited in this edition
- MediaPost, LinkedIn Launches Its First Creator Marketplace (56% of B2B buyers, BrandWorks, Thought Leader Ads): MediaPost
- Yahoo Creators, The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer Reveals a Major Shift in the Creator Economy ($313B, trust contracting, 50% earn under $15k): Yahoo Creators
- Search Engine Journal, Google Announces New Universal Cart at I/O (product feed as discovery signal, May 19 launch): Search Engine Journal
- Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, The AI Tools Small Businesses Are Using (82% adoption, strategy gap): Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council
