Friedberg’s claim is explicitly long‑term (“in the future… over the coming decades”), so only about three years of the predicted time horizon have elapsed.

Evidence so far:

• Influencer/creator marketing is growing very rapidly. Statista estimates global influencer advertising spend at about US$44B in 2025, with projections to ~US$81B by 2030, indicating strong structural growth. (statista.com)
• Social media has become the single largest global advertising channel, with ~US$247B in social ad spend in 2025, driven heavily by creator partnerships and short‑form video. (sqmagazine.co.uk)
• In the U.S., ad spending on creator/“influencer” content is projected around US$37B in 2025 and is growing roughly 4× faster than the overall media industry. However, this is still much smaller than major digital categories like search (over US$100B in the U.S. alone). (businessinsider.com)
• Some large advertisers are pivoting strongly toward influencer and social‑first strategies (e.g., Unilever committing about 50% of media budget to social and influencer channels), but they still maintain non‑social channels such as streaming and out‑of‑home, not a full replacement. (theaustralian.com.au)

Taken together, current data support the direction of his thesis (creator/content‑driven marketing gaining share and becoming strategically central), but traditional paid advertising remains very large and far from “replaced.” Given the multi‑decade horizon he specified, there is not yet enough elapsed time to judge whether traditional advertising will be largely or fully displaced in the way he predicted. Hence the outcome is best classified as inconclusive (too early to tell) rather than right or wrong at this point.