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Next in Media
Inside $37 Billion Creator Economy
01:16:58
The event is about how fast the creator economy is growing and how brands are finally treating creators like a serious media channel, not a side thing. Speakers talk about the big challenges: fragmented creators across platforms, clunky/manual workflows, weak measurement, and the struggle to make creator deals work at real “ad tech” scale. They discuss new tech/platforms trying to standardize creator ad units, automate deals, and plug creator content into performance engines like Meta and YouTube ads—without killing authenticity. AI is seen as both a flood of cheap content and a huge boost for great creators who can use it as a tool. Finally, a creator (Sydney) and her manager explain how brand deals really work in practice: long-term partnerships > one-off mentions, brands need to understand her content, and legal/FTCs plus too many “cooks in the kitchen” make everything slower than it needs to be.
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- [00:01]
A
When I decided to do this event a few months ago, I was thinking you're seeing so much attention all of a sudden around the creator economy has gotten a lot of attention for a couple of years, but really like all of a sudden brands are really realizing this is a huge space that they need to be in in a bigger way. And you start seeing like all this, all these other, other folks coming into this space realizing we've got to try and figure out how to accelerate this process. And you start seeing some of the huge brands saying we're going to spent half our budgets on creator. Creator advertising. And my thinking was, man, that's going to be challenging. Is the, is the space. You would always say things like could you actually spend $50 million in creators really quickly or not? Do we have the infrastructure? So that was kind of the thinking. And then just in the past couple of days, IAB is putting out a number that the creator sector is going to grow to 37 billion this year and Gengo just raised $40 billion. So I think we're good. We finished it. We figured the industry out. We're all dominant to.
- [01:03]
But no. Yeah. So thank you. Well done. But no. So there. It just seems like there is so much momentum in the space but so much to figure out. So that's kind of what I'm thinking here. And I'm very thankful to my partners at View Planner for helping go on this journey with me and decide let's do an event together and see how it goes. And they've been super, super up for anything. And so thank you both to John and Amy and Scott's not here. I need to thank Jamie, good friend who has been instrumental in getting a lot of you folks here and just helping put some fuel behind this event and get us started. It was free alcohol. Yeah, that's burgers alcohol. You said a fly in. Let's do it. So I hope this goes well. I've never done an event my own before. So far so good you came. That's pretty good. I'm going to start with. We're going to try and blaze through a lot of content quickly because I over schedule this. We're going to make it work. But we're going to start out with take our macro view of the space and I'm going to call up Connor McKenna, he's a partner at Luma and Zoe soon who's the VP of the IAB Experience Center.
- [02:01]
B
I'm going to stand to the side.
- [02:03]
A
You guys have a se.
- [02:08]
Oh yeah. There's the Microphone, where is the mic? You got it. Okay, you guys want them between us, back and forth. So Connor, I'm starting with you because you kind of, you kind of inspired a lot of the thinking here because when you had an event, Lum had an event back, I think it was May sort of talking about. I think, I think people have always wondered whether you can, does ad tech have a role in this space or is it, is it inherently difficult to bring technology to something that is seen as so custom and so it's all about authentic creator authenticity. Right. And you were kind of saying, hey, maybe this is the moment where the industry can make some more waves and bring, bring more dollars in smoother in a smoother way. So that's a long way of me asking what, how are we doing on that front? Where, what were you thinking then? Have things accelerated in the right direction?
- [02:56]
B
Yeah, I think so. Just for firm reference, so I met a partner at Luma. We're an investment bank. We focus on M and A in ad tech. So been in advertising technology for, you know, 11 plus years. And all the stuff that, you know, lets shoes follow you around the Internet, right. And where is there opportunities to, to build, you know, scalable, addressable advertising and the technology behind it. And we advise those companies. So we're always trying to think about sort of where, where's the next avenue of the channel, you know, start, you know, ctv, mobile apps, et cetera. And if you look at the open web, I mean frankly there's, there's big challenges there. So there's almost like an existential where's the next big media channel? And you know, if you look at time spent of consumers, amount of media, I mean, obviously there's, there's always been a ton of time spent on wall gardens, you know, Meta, Google, et cetera. The challenge has been for ad tech is that they're controlled, right? So yeah, great. Meta makes all the money there, Google makes all the money there. The, the thing that I noticed and where I think there's an opportunity is those have shifted, right? Meta used to be a social platform. It's not a social platform. 7% of time spent on Instagram is with friends or people. You know, it isn' entertainment platform. So as that becomes an entertainment platform and you've got things like shorts and reels and TikTok all blending these become competitive. And so that opens up a dynamic where tech can now come in and sort of step into, to sort of manage across it. And if you look at where technology can capture margin in an advertising framework. It is always where is their fragmented media. So it's the supply fragmented, where technology can come and make that easier for marketers to buy across. What is more fragmented than the creator ecosystem where there's, you know, what is it, the quantum of all of TV added to YouTube a day. So there's massive amount of fragmentation. The challenge is can you find a way to actually apply, you know, capabilities to that, to address it that doesn't have to go through YouTube now. I think there is still a huge opportunity for the walled gardens, but increasingly with adtech, both, I think it's existential as what's happening to where time spent is going on and what's happening with the open web as it relates to, you know, AI and navigation and all the rest. And two, there's just a massive opportunity that is where consumers are spending their time, that is what's influencing their decisions. And there's. Now that there's sort of competition, the Wall Gardens go from Wall Gardens to distribution platforms and that's where, where technology can step in. So I, you know, I think that's sort of the framework. Where do I think we are? I mean, almost nowhere like ad tech is, I'd say. There's been obviously a huge opportunity. The creator space has done very well on its own, but it's been very manual in my view. It's sort of the age earlier agency days. The technology ecosystem has to come in and they're starting to. But it's.
- [05:34]
A
It's so easy. Is it. Is it that the walled gardens are a little bit more opened up, or is it that the ad tech companies are like, I don't know about the open web. I need to shift to something else and I need to rethink about what, how I define what's.
- [05:48]
B
Yeah, I think a little bit of both. I don't know, you'd say the Wall Gardens have opened up. I mean, they understand that creators are critical for them and that their creators are balancing across different things. They don't want to be tied to just meta metrics. And so that challenge opens up like, hey, there's. There's technology that can, can start to make margin there. We are seeing that whether it's, you know, in the creator space or just optimizing meta spend. Better is getting better sort of across the board. There's more margin there than I've seen in the last decade.
- [06:15]
C
All right.
- [06:16]
A
By the way, people can ask questions and jump in while we're talking here like it's Christmas Eve. We're all together. Let's, let's just feel, feel free to, you know, be it. We're family. Zoe, from your point of view, you and I talked about this when we had our prep call. I think you were in a cab, I was at a train. It was like really the quickest prep, but. Yes, but the, there is a total recognition, right, of the importance of this creator space. I guess there's the question from advertising where to put it, how to fund it and like the disconnect you talked about the disconnect between maybe like the folks that control the big media budgets and how to execute things. Can you kind of expand on that thinking?
- [06:57]
C
Yeah.
- [06:58]
A
Hi everyone, I'm Zoe.
- [06:59]
C
I run the creator and gaming verticals at the iab. So a lot of industry work, I think where advertising is, I mean Unilever went out and said 50% of their.
- [07:10]
A
Marketing spend is going to sort of creator related things.
- [07:15]
C
As you mentioned, we're about to have a research, an annual ad spend research.
- [07:19]
D
Come out on the 20th and it's.
- [07:22]
C
Shown that creators growing 400% faster than the average of digital media. So.
- [07:29]
A
So that's great. Like we're so advertisers are like there.
- [07:32]
C
And sort of like as Connor said.
- [07:34]
A
We'Re trying to catch up.
- [07:35]
C
The issue is that, you know, brands.
- [07:37]
A
Are seeing creators as like these Hollywood.
- [07:40]
C
Storytellers, but then wanting them to perform.
- [07:42]
D
Like programmatic ad units.
- [07:43]
A
And there's a massive disconnect.
- [07:45]
C
So we don't have the infrastructure, the measurement's not there.
- [07:50]
D
It's in different teams.
- [07:51]
C
It can be in the PR team as opposed to the media buying team. But I think, you know, three things are really driving the collapse of traditional media. And just like Gen Z, just not on those platforms where you can find them.
- [08:04]
A
They're very out of odin.
- [08:07]
C
Creators have this amazing trust and relationship that they've sort of like nurtured and got with their audience. I think G today COO of WPP was saying, you know, people like me, there's like a lot of people like me relationships and then the third thing is built in distribution. Like you just can't be that scale. I think you're saying like the quantum.
- [08:27]
A
Amount of TV going into.
- [08:29]
C
So those three things are really driving advertiser interest.
- [08:33]
A
And this, this is something I saw a panel during Advertising Week which was interesting. There was, there's a little bit you mentioned how this came up with this bubble up from pr, the early influencer days. And now it seems to be the domain of either the social agency or the media Agency. But there's one brand was saying, no, I think this should be coming out of the creative department because there's. Some of the creators are so integral to what we do. I don't. Is there any kind of uniformity that we could expect? Is that, is that possible?
- [09:03]
C
I mean, that's what we're aiming for, to have one supply chain that has standard processes and, you know, teams that communicate. Yeah.
- [09:15]
A
The goal is to close that gap between. Yeah, yeah, please.
- [09:19]
B
I think the other aspect is, is the creative and the, the media buying agency are collapsing anyway or need to together as in like they're, they're merging. If you're to look at, you know, meta performance advertising anyway, like you now have to upload 50 creatives at a time and then meta chooses what works.
- [09:39]
A
Right.
- [09:40]
B
And so yes, creative needs to be part of it because you're asking creators to often make the creative that then, you know, drives the spend. But you need to, the, the goal is, okay, get a bunch of creative that works and let their algorithms decide what's actually going to drive the outcomes and business performance. That's, that's the goal is let that engine work. And on the other side, you need to be able to scale the sort of creative, you know, creation by accessing a lot of creators. The challenge before has been you've got to guarantee that spend to all of them before you know what works. Right. This is where the opportunity is heading.
- [10:13]
A
It's interesting because this is happening at a time when there is so much exuberance around AI and so much hype. But the, the ad community is wrestling with handing over so much of their control and advertising to algorithms and big tech companies, which seems kind of diametrically opposed to this whole authenticity realness of creators. Are those things going to be in conflict or can they work together? I don't know if either of you have thoughts on that.
- [10:39]
B
Yeah, look, so yesterday I interviewed Mark Darcy, who's the chief Creative officer or CVP of Creative from Microsoft. AI, really big marketer, was the chief creative officer for Facebook for over a decade and he had this great point around just, you know, humanist AI, Right. And the focus on that. I don't think we, you, you lose any of that. The, the aspect here is how do you go find niches with lots of creative that's personalized to each of those audiences? I mean, if you're, if you're, you know, Unilever, right, And you've got, you know, one of their SOAP brands, I'm going to mess up which Is PNG or Unilever right now. So I'll keep it there. You know, why should you and I see the same ad or same creator if. If we are using completely different audiences? That's the opportunity. That doesn't necessarily lose the authenticity for me or you. It's just creating scalability in a differentiated way. And so you can use, you know, maybe AI in that case. I don't think AI for all the creative is the same. He has great line like mediocrity is free now with AI and creative.
- [11:44]
A
Right.
- [11:44]
B
You can't get that with a creator. Right. So you can still have that sort of, you know, that own impression. Just how do you scale that? You need to have an engine on the back end that's not sending you and I the exact same creator just because the scalability was there if we're going to react to different creators doing the same ad.
- [12:02]
A
So we. One of the things that came up, you guys had a, at a conference call day talking about the forecast you're putting out me.
- [12:10]
It feels like I've heard people say that right now brands are jumping into creator deals almost not totally sure. It's not that they're doing it on a whim, but they don't have a very standard way of tracking success yet. Whereas so much of the rest of the industry has gotten hardcore into outcomes or everything and everything has to be super trackable. I wonder if creator integrations can ever get there. But is there do we need some kind of like GRP for this industry or something that is or some version of the click through on a search ad where there's a standardization of how we evaluate these deals or is that just never going to be possible?
- [12:50]
C
We did talk about that today.
- [12:53]
A
I think there are different metrics that.
- [12:56]
C
Go with different goals. So if your goals are top of funnel then it's obviously going to be reach versus conversion. The research study that we're about to put out says a lot of the data that brands are using to assess campaigns comes from first party.
- [13:11]
It's the tried and true answer of.
- [13:13]
A
You need the apples to apples.
- [13:14]
C
But it would be nice to have something that captured the essence of creator that goes beyond just time on screen.
- [13:20]
E
Right.
- [13:21]
C
Engagement is such a blunt metric. Just time on screen doesn't really capture the, the comments the, the brand.
- [13:31]
A
You don't want to reduce creators to just another place to get reach like that's right, that's. That offers part of it.
- [13:35]
C
So I would love to see us get to a place where we have, you know.
- [13:40]
A universal metric that sort of has the apples to apples. But I question whether we can do that based on the different brand goals. And yeah, it's a. Yeah.
- [13:48]
B
Also I think that the platforms aren't incentivized to make that possible. Right. The asymmetry of information is to their benefit. It's why they've done so well now that actually we move from, you know, to reels and shorts and stuff. It's even harder on YouTube for creators to make money because the rev share is very different and you actually rely more on creator tools. They don't, you know, TV relied on the, you know, the GRP and Nielsen and yet if you ask anyone tv, they hate it now. So you know, I don't think, you know, I don't think those, those distribution platforms are incentivized to try to make that happen at the same time that's where technology can come in and move on top of it and, and again it moves to its performance and optimization. I don't think, you know, peer reach and frequency is exactly. We're going to. And are you going to be able to tie your reach on meta to your reach on TikTok? Probably not. Like, and I think relying on that is.
- [14:41]
A
That's an issue regardless of creators or that's just difficult.
- [14:45]
B
Yeah. Where you're not going to, they're not going to share enough data back where you can, you know, match across what's working. Now can you see, hey, we, we have this list of people we want to, you know, sort of exclude on. On, you know, from target on meta and exclude From Target on TikTok. You can do tests and manage it that way, but it has to be fed into the monetization engine. It can't work if you're just doing it through organic posting.
- [15:06]
A
Right.
- [15:06]
B
And so that's sort of that merging of, of you know, the creator spend with the monetization engines that I think unlocks a lot of the scalability here, I guess.
- [15:15]
A
Last question for you both. Is it, is it a good kind of related to that, Is it a good or bad thing? You're seeing YouTube in particular getting, getting. They were, they've gone back and forth between how involved they wanted to be in brokering creator deals. Now they seem to be leaning into that. That seems like it's good for the ecosystem but I don't know if it's makes it harder for third parties to come in and kind of become. Play that role or is it, is it fine that, you know, there's a lot of different ways into this world or does that make it more complicated?
- [15:44]
E
Yeah.
- [15:44]
C
Okay.
- [15:45]
B
Selfishly speaking, I think not. Good. Because the less they're involved, the more there's room for third party technology. But I also don't think creators want it. A good example of this is less about YouTube, but actually, you know, Meta acquired a business called Customer that was meant to be like a CRM for creators. They got a lot of pushback. People did not want Meta managing all of their emails and relationships because creators are not, you know, singular channel. Even if the YouTube is their primary.
- [16:13]
A
Channel, that feels like they're giving up.
- [16:15]
B
Their newsletter or they use Instagram for their. Their sort of organic reach and they funneled them down to YouTube, I don't think people want to give that control up to any of those platforms. So if they can help facilitate that, hey, if you make those deals, we can make it scalable. That's interesting, but I don't think they want them involved in the direct negotiation.
- [16:32]
C
Right.
- [16:34]
I think I agree. Just cross platform is really interesting for creators.
- [16:39]
B
So. Yeah, sorry.
- [16:40]
D
No, wait. How many people said that they consider a creator a must buy?
- [16:44]
C
In the study, over 50% of U.S. buyers, Jamie.
- [16:47]
D
There you go.
- [16:49]
C
It was second only to search and social. So. Yes. And also Chris Brutally is my research partner. He ran the research for us.
- [16:57]
A
So if you have specific questions, feel free to.
- [17:00]
C
Peter, Mark.
- [17:00]
A
Terrific. All right, Connor, Zoe, thank you so much. You starting this off.
- [17:06]
Now it's time for Ally Parish. She's a group group director with Blue Hour Studios. And Jeremy Stewards, SVP and co founder, review planner.
- [17:15]
C
Guys.
- [17:20]
A
So Ali, we talked about this. You're. You kind of have lived the evolution of all the different ways that brands and agencies have sort of parked these budgets or handled this strategy. Maybe, maybe tell us, like, how that, you know, how that has evolved for you and your career and along the way, help us understand what Blue Hour is and why it's distinctive part of Horizon and all that. So give us your journey a little bit.
- [17:44]
D
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, hi, I'm Allie Parrish. I head up our account team at Blue Hour Studios here in New York. Blue Hour is the social content and influencer arm within Horizon Media. We started in 2018 or 2019 and, you know, since then have. Have really just seen the growth of the creator space in such an interesting way. And because we are, you know, embedded and kind of born out of Horizon Media. That media integration, you know, like you're saying, Mike, has been so interesting to see that evolution over time.
- [18:21]
A
Have you seen Clashing philosophies on that over time?
- [18:24]
D
Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean I think, you know there's going back to some of the measurement questions and is there, you know, one way that we should be measuring from the last panel up here? That's certainly something that we've seen where you know that, that understanding from back in, you know, the old days maybe. Oh, we should be looking at it like a GRP is the standardization to now there is that understanding that there is impact in breaking through in you know, really high views, things of that nature I think has been really the, the biggest shift chairman.
- [18:59]
A
Now you're, you're, you guys are not a creator ad tech company per se, but you. I'm. But you are. You play a role in helping brands navigate YouTube and find the right context, I guess. Is this, is this an ask that you get to help them sort out how to buy the right creators and the right and getting the right next messages? And could, could you see this, is this something that is scalable over time in a way that we think about it?
- [19:23]
C
Yes, yes and no. So I'm Jeremy, I'm co founder of View Planner. And so just a little bit of background there. We've been in the space for since 2018 trying to do measurement, suitability, contextual relevance on YouTube. So we didn't start out with the idea of scoring creator content. It was really just aligning relevant content with brand advertising. But recently we've been getting more into the creator space because we have been getting a lot of requests of brands wanting to engage creators in their strategies. So the solutions that we try to provide are can we align that type of content? How do we build a framework where it's repeatable, predictable for brands to understand what type of content is going to perform? Well, we've got some solutions that do predictive AI scoring on creative and we've done that repeatedly on creator content especially we have a case study with ConAgra from last year where they did 26 different influencers. And so when we start started looking at that data with respect to creator content, understanding what those predictive scores were and how they correlated with YouTube performance, then we started understanding that yes, there can be some level of standardization and ability to scale this content and try to find the right content.
- [20:39]
A
And like with that conagra example, how do they evaluate that kind of campaign? Does it get kind of lumped in with everything else they're doing on YouTube which might be compared to television or more of a reach play? Or is it, is it there's something distinctive that they do there that kind of unlocks the value of those, of those kind of deals.
- [20:57]
C
When they came to, I mean, this was something they had just done. Completely kind of separate. It wasn't. It was. Obviously it was for the brands that they normally advertise on, but they didn't really have much expectation, I don't think. And so when we saw the creatives, they were not creatives that you would normally see on CTV or Standard, and they were very raw. Somebody just talking for 15 seconds about how they use bird's eye vegetables, you know, and we looked at it and we're like, do you really want to run this on YouTube? And this, this wasn't what we were used to seeing. And so I think that they were a little bit hesitant. We did our predictive scoring, we told them these are the ones we think we're going to, you know, perform better. From a brand lift perspective, it bore out. But they actually ran them all and then I think they were pleasantly surprised that what they actually ended up with was. But it wasn't something that they were anticipating.
- [21:41]
D
Right.
- [21:43]
A
One thing, you hear this a lot and I wonder if this is your experience that. I mean, every deal is different, every integration is different. Right. But you hear about these calls that so and so creator will have where there'll be the social agency, the traditional media agency, the talent agency, some kind of intermediary, like five or six entities on the same kind of project trying to figure out the right execution. Is that. Is that something that's still happening? And is that something that. Is. Is that a problem? Is that just like the way. The way this is the nature of the industry is always going to be, or can we do anything about that?
- [22:16]
D
Yeah, I mean, I think it's so interesting over the years we've seen that, you know, influencer and creator content lives with different teams. You know, everyone kind of wants a slice of the pie. I think right now we're at a place where the integration of media influencer, creative and content overall is definitely a positive in terms of. Sure that, you know, at least for me and my team, all of those different teams are creating that brief upfront together so that the ultimate creator content and the ultimate creator identification, you know, is very integrated. It all speaks to the same thing. You know, we're often also seeing that can we think of media ideas up front when we think about, you know, a specific talent to work with. So I think the more we can be integrated there and kind of speak that same language, just the Better. And that's definitely what we've seen.
- [23:13]
A
What do you both think about, is there a way to. You're seeing efforts to standardize these kind of deals. Yeah. YouTube's got this dynamic ad insertion product. You're seeing other companies trying to almost make an integration like something that you can repeat. But I guess the danger there or the challenge there is that you lose the specialness of doing a really custom integration. But you want to talk. If you want to deal with a thousand influencers, that's really difficult to do. Can you do those things where they're still effective and they do it the right way?
- [23:41]
C
Is that. So the latest version of YouTube's Brand Connect, which is now called the creator Partnerships Hub, they've basically taken that connective marketplace and they've put it inside Google Ads for the first time. And so it's still, I think, in the alpha stage, but we've been using it for the last three, four weeks. And so you can really engage with. So there's over 3 million creators in the YouTube measurement or the YouTube Partner Program. So there's a variety. I mean there's, there's more than you can ever imagine. But what's nice about it is when you do some simple searches, you can also also see any given topic, any given brand, the authentic, you know, non branded stuff that, that influencers are actually talking and engaging brands so you can partner on with them, you can promote stuff that they've already done that really does feel authentic because you do want that off, you don't want to lose that. Um, so I think it's possible, but it is still amazed to, to try to figure out how do you get to those right. Those right influencers.
- [24:42]
A
What do you think?
- [24:44]
D
I would agree.
- [24:47]
Yeah, yeah. Nothing major to.
- [24:49]
A
But is there, is there a value like let's say that because you've seen companies come along and say we can, we can do like a standard brand mention and do it for thousands of creators at once. And that's, you know, that's pretty, that's closer to programmatic advertising than we've ever been, but it's not exactly the same thing. Are those, you know, are those worthwhile or do you find that brands are not getting this, you're just getting quick mentions and not getting the real audience connection that the whole space is supposed to be so about.
- [25:14]
D
Yeah, yeah. I mean I think going into any creator content with a very clear goal and understanding that there are multiple roles that any of that, that content can play, there definitely is the, you know, Mass volume affiliate play that is going to make sense for some, some goals for some brands. But on the other hand, you know, that authenticity that, you know, inserting a brand into, you know, maybe it's an existing storyline that an influencer or a creator has and maybe it's their own series. I think there's pros and cons to, to both. It's really about finding space for how do we not put influencer in just one role and see that it has many.
- [25:55]
A
Yeah. So both question for both of you. What is, what is missing? What's on your list? If you could, if we, if we want to, if, if we wanted to, if we want brands to really fully take advantage of this opportunity and have the, be able to spend the dollars they're talking about. Like what, what are we, what is it? What are we missing? Is it measurement? Is it infrastructure? Just more education? Like what, what's kind of for both of you, what are we missing here?
- [26:19]
C
So I, I think it's definitely the like from the last panel, the standardization of what we're trying to measure on YouTube. I think it's like 70% of creators do both short and long term video and so they do. There is an opportunity there to, to get, you know, traditional types of measurement. But then you have to understand how does that then apply to shorts or whatever else they're doing. But having the ability to, to get to some sort of a lifetime value of a creator of, you know, can we continue to go back to the same creators? Are we able to score their predictive so that it's predictably score their creative so that we know over time? Because I think that historically it's been go find a creator or a few and on a specific. And it's, it's the frameworks and the, the you know, the ability to scale that has been very difficult. So I think that that's moving in the right direction and as soon as we get that whatever that that metric is that we're all agreed upon, I think we're getting closer.
- [27:16]
A
What about you? What's in your wish list?
- [27:19]
D
I would say, I mean, I think definitely that measurement integration.
- [27:23]
Is super key. Being able to, you know, just better tie the, the longer tail impact of any creator content. You know, we can say, okay, this piece of content got so and so many organic views. It really, you know, broke through for the brand. That's great. But what does that do for it, you know, over time? I think that is the biggest question. I mean that's really the biggest question of all. Advertising. Yes.
- [27:49]
A
Before I let these folks go, anybody have any questions for Ali or Jeremy? All right, you're both off the hook. Thank you so much, guys. Hanno's coming back up and he's gonna talk to Arthur.
- [27:58]
D
Thank you.
- [27:59]
B
Well, hello again to everyone. Now I'll look at this way. Last time I was faced that way so.
- [28:06]
You know, to talk about the creator space and obviously where I'm focused is, is technology. And so I'm really happy to have Arthur here from agentio. We met, what, a year ago?
- [28:18]
C
Right.
- [28:19]
B
And I feel like I get the benefit of just getting to talk about really high level things, which is a lot of where my commentary is based on what I've seen sort of at 30,000ft. And when we met, we kind of had a mind meld of, oh, wow, this is what you're actually building. So Agentia is just a fascinating platform from my perspective in the creator space and really bringing that scalability. I talked to this ecosystem and not planned by this, but actually announced a 40 million Series B today. So a lot of congratulations to Arthur and the team there. So let's just, maybe just for people who aren't familiar, I don't know how familiar people are. I'm not going to try to describe a gentio. I'll let you do that and just introduce yourself and yeah, and yeah, tell them what agentio is all about and we'll go from there.
- [29:08]
C
Awesome. Hey everyone, my name is Arthur Leopold. I'm CEO and co founder of agentio. The friction that you were just hearing about in the last panel and like the challenges that marketers face with trying to partner with creators, trying to measure creators, this like very archaic way of trying to shape creators into your campaigns is what we're trying to solve for. And if you think about global digital ad spend, there's about $10 billion today running direct from brands to creators and $800 billion running through Meta and the trade desk and Amazon and Google. And the creator space is so constrained is because of all the complexity around deal making, negotiation, brand safety, measurement and in building ajuntio. Prior to ajuntio, I helped start Cameo and solve the friction that fans had to deal with. And then of course, brands were reaching out. In building agentio, we realized that because of large language models and because of my co founder's experience building ad tech at Spotify, we could actually automate the friction and eliminate all the challenges that marketers have to deal with today in trying to build scale creator programs. And what that would do inevitably is Shift these paid media budgets to the best storytellers in the world, those who have the strongest audiences and those who like you guys on your phone. Right now you're consuming creator content. You don't give a shit about traditional advertising anymore. And that's only going to continue to increase this connection that creators have with their audiences.
- [30:44]
We started the business two years ago or launched the platform two years ago. Benchmark led our Series A 11 months ago and we just announced a $40 million Series B today. And we've been able to scale so quickly because we have the very best consumer brands in the country now partnering with creators in a scalable way. So what does that mean? It means that brands like Uber and Olipop and Skims and Vuori and Doordash and a lot of the brands that we all are probably wearing bomba socks, they, they can scale budgets from 50k a month to over a million dollars without additional bandwidth needs on their end or our end. We have $500,000 budgets get filled in under 24 hours. A process that historically would have taken six plus months. So there's a lot of like OG ad tech people in this room think Back to like 20 years ago when people were buying ads on the Internet, right? You like call up a website and try to get like that upper right hand cor.
- [31:42]
Of the page. And of course like DoubleClick came along and the trade desk came along and they automated away all the complexity and in doing so they brought hundreds of billions of dollars into digital advertising to publishers. We're taking that exact same approach to creator advertising. Our belief is that the future of advertising is creator led. It's unfortunately been too constrained for too long. We started with YouTube as our initial sort of wedge. So these are like 90 second creator integrations. Creator talking about why they love a. And it's an insanely performant ad unit because of the storytelling nature. And we've since turned on a partnership post beta on Meta and we're going to be using this funding, of course, to expand to every platform and enable advertisers to come into Gentoo and put in a million dollars a minute, a day, a week, a month, whatever it is. And we can identify which creators on which platforms can drive the best outcomes for advertisers and shift those dollars accordingly. So that's what we're building towards.
- [32:44]
B
All right, that was a very fulsome introduction. You took like three of my questions away there. So let me, let me shift here. So one of the reasons you mentioned sort of you know, ad tech scaled with DoubleClick and others, also with the IAB and with standardization. Right. Whether that standardization was ad units, so a banner is, you know, 250 by 300 or RTB specs and things like that that allowed people to run on similar rails. You know, wall gardens historically have been, you know, wall gardens.
- [33:15]
C
Right.
- [33:15]
B
So they create their own rules. You don't get a lot of data. They control the standardization. You know, maybe we'll focus on YouTube because that's where you guys have started. But what is sort of that, that unlock to the standardization or the, or maybe it's not the standardization, maybe it's just the workflow that allows that scalability to go from 50,000 to, to a million, you know, in, in 24 hours that has been so challenging. The creator space.
- [33:40]
C
Yeah, A lot of it has to do with standardizing the ad unit and especially on YouTube. I'm sure many of you feel this, especially a view planner. YouTube's still like people don't understand it. It's misunderstood. It doesn't get the recognition that it deserves. And we realized that There was a 62nd AD unit where we could get a lot of data from creators connecting their YouTube accounts to Agentio. While we might not get like the view through data, we certainly could inf certain things. And on the paid side, we could use the best measurement attribution suites out there, Google and Meta's measurement platform. So we could standardize creator content in two ways. One, enable the buying of it to be really easy through this bidding model that we've pioneered in the creator space where brands load up campaigns, we create strategies. We have this agentic strategy creation and we launch these strategies to help a brand hit their goals. The brands approve the creators. Sometimes the machine just approves the creators on the brand's behalf. Creators receive the bids, creators upload the content. Creators are told instantaneously, like if you're away luggage and there was a competitive bag in the background, or as a creator didn't use a QR code. So all of this process that today takes a lot of people is now standardized and that enables a level of scale that's on the YouTube side and then on the Meta side. Meta is out there beating the drum. Today the most performant ad unit on Meta are partnership ads, but really hard to scale. Right? Like how do you price? If you're a paid media buyer, you're going to tell a creator, hey, we'll only pay you 500 bucks because we can't risk more than $500, because we'll know if that ad's going to perform with $500 to spend, but then the creator is going to come back and say, I need 10 grand or 20 grand because that's what I get for my organic post. That model will never work. So we've taken a different approach with our model that's enabled a level scale and standardization.
- [35:36]
B
Yeah, I think the partnership posts and TikToks have their own version of it and YouTube lean into. This is sort of a fascinating space where and I think you might have been the one told me this is where you get that like how do you take the creativity of the creators and put it into the engine of the monetization? Like Meta and Google and YouTube are so good at running that monetization piece. Let them do that. We want to bring the creative and we want to make sure the creator actually gets paid for.
- [36:02]
C
Yeah, 1,000%. Like at the end of the day, creators are the most creative people in the world. Right. Like they know 1 second, 3 second, 5 second hook rate better than just about anyone. Even the great creative, like creative agents or folks that are leading creative agencies, they're now like becoming the most popular people on social. Right. Like Owen and Schwinn. And what's amazing about creators is that they essentially are micro creative agencies. And especially with the way that Javada is rolled out and what Meta is asking of its advertisers, it's we need an essentially unlimited amount of creative variation. And that's not like old school creative variation. Like, oh, just change the type, change the cta, change the color. That's like an entirely different piece of content. Like how, how on earth is a creative agency going to create that much content in an efficient way when an advertiser can test that very quickly and know if it's, it's going to perform. That's why leveraging creators can be so powerful, because they can be a brand's content engine. If you look at the Meta ads libraries of brands like Groons, there's a bunch of them I could rattle off, but worth taking a look. And they're working with hundreds of creators at a time and they have hundreds of these partnership ads and that's why they've been able to scale so quickly as businesses.
- [37:19]
B
Yeah, makes sense.
- [37:23]
So we talked about the sort of workflow, scalability aspect of this. The other big thing that drove, you know, ad tech, broadly speaking, so there's hundreds of billions of dollars, is the, you know, addressability and the optimization of who you're targeting how you're choosing who to work with. Right. So what's that aspect of it look like? As you guys are trying to drive scale. So, yes, there's. Okay, we gotta make it work. The platform's not set up for it. We can push these out with standardization, but you are not, you're limited in the audience side links.
- [37:52]
C
Right.
- [37:52]
B
That's still controlled by the platform. How are you guys allowing the grooms to figure out who to go manage, how to manage that addressability? Are you capturing the right audience from them?
- [38:03]
C
Yeah, our job is not to be like the paid media strategist. So we're letting their team or sometimes their agency own that and the meta engine own it. Through Advantage plus, with YouTube organic, you can target based on the creator's audiences, but it's not the level of precision that you would expect with traditional paid. But targeting is always going to be a challenge and if you have the best creative though, you can reach obviously a super, I guess, targeted audience and do so really effectively. And that's the power of getting a lot more creative.
- [38:38]
B
I have to use the mic when I ask questions. All right, so you mentioned YouTube. You're in beta on Meta now. You know, creators in many ways. I, I view and I think this said before, I mean, it's very cross channel, right? It's TikTok, it's YouTube, it's podcasts, it's. It's all these things together. How do you think about, you know, over the next three to five years, whether it's agentio or just more broadly, do these come together and are they managed across platform or are they managed individually by each channel or platform?
- [39:11]
C
Yeah, I think, I think brands want to be able to manage their spend in one holistic place. Right. That's the way that they run a lot of their business, whether it's like an ERP system or rippling or an HR system. So to have to go from one platform to the next to the next, especially when the creators are across every platform, I think presents a really interesting opportunity for tech to help enable advertisers to essentially consolidate where they're spending their time and get the best insights that are tied to the performance of creative across paid, organic creator, Traditional, under. Under one roof. Yeah.
- [39:53]
B
So the last question here, the guy, Mark d' Arcy was full of like the best quotes I ever had. And we use another quote from him that the, the advent of AI is going to create sort of a Cambrian explosion of creativity.
- [40:06]
E
Right?
- [40:06]
B
It's this incredibly powerful tool used by Creative people can, can, you know, massively increase the amount of creative. Now that can be used for ads. That was the context of that conversation. It also can be used for everything else. I guess, as you at how AI comes into this space, what, what do you see the impact of that? Is it. Does it change the number of advertisers using these channels? Does it change the number of creators? How. How do you think that that impacts the space?
- [40:32]
C
You're going to have a banging YouTube channel because it'll be so easy for you and everyone in this room to create incredible content. And the cost of production goes to zero. Right? We're already seeing that with Sora 2. And like, you know, Sora 2 could be considered AI slop today, but in, in six months, 12 months from now, it's going to be better than 99% of Hollywood studios and what they can produce. So this is, I think you said it earlier, AI generation today is mediocrity at scale. And you have to be an incredible creative, you have to be an incredible strategist to win when there's this proliferation of slop. But I also think there's going to be a concentration of trust towards creators because of the engagement and the equity that they've built with their audience, audiences and people that we all follow for years or many months or sometimes decades. You care about that person. And when your entire feed is potentially AI, potentially not, you're going to still go back to that person because you've built that parasocial relationship with them and you trust them, and therefore you trust the recommendations. So because of that, there will also be a concentration of dollars to creators. But let's also remember that creators are going to be, be more empowered than ever. They're going to have the best tools in the world. They're going to be able to make the best creative in the world, both.
- [41:54]
For their own channels and then also on behalf of advertisers. So it's an insanely exciting time. AI is going to be bigger than the Internet, realistically. Its impact and the speed at which it's going to be moving and how impactful it's going to be to businesses, to creatives, to people looking to, to generate great outcomes. They now have literally not just a search box with some level of intelligence, but they now have the world's smartest, most creative, most thoughtful sparring partner.
- [42:26]
At their beck and call whenever they want a partner, or whenever they want to build product or test product. It's just a massive paradigm shift away from how things Currently work harder.
- [42:37]
B
Thank you so much for doing this.
- [42:38]
A
Thank you, guys. All right, Jason, Jamie.
- [42:42]
D
All right, my panel. Come on up. I'll introduce you guys. Okay.
- [42:47]
B
Jamie, bring me this.
- [42:48]
D
I. I love it. Let's tequila. Here we go. Ian, you need a seat? I'm gonna stand. Okay. I'll just go. Yeah, yeah, you could sit there. No. Tequila. I can do tequila. Okay, we're gonna do this really quick. We'll. Okay, we'll do this really quick. Saul is with a. Is a co. Founder of Fallen Media. Co Founder. CEO of Fallen Media, which is one of the original short form studios. We'll get into what that means in a second. And Ian Schaefer comes from a film background back in the day. Yes. And is now working with Issa Rae at Ensemble and is really pioneering this new space of entertainment studio, content agency. And used to run an agency. And I worked for Ian and we still talk to each other. So it's. It's an amazing thing. Okay, so everybody in this room without hr. No. Hr. Yes. So, you know, this is a room full of really smart people, and any one of you guys could sit up here. So I. I think what we saw is a lot of really smart conversation. But opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one. Right. So let's go the other way. Let's. Let's have a little contrary conversation. You guys are. Okay.
- [43:55]
A
Yes.
- [43:55]
D
Let's get into it a little bit.
- [43:57]
B
We're not prepped for that.
- [43:58]
D
No, I'm not going. We had a nice prep conversation, but we're not.
- [44:02]
B
No, in a good way.
- [44:03]
D
We're not. Yeah, but we're go there because I heard all this stuff and I think we have some contrary conversations. So.
- [44:09]
C
Or I'll.
- [44:09]
D
I can't get fired anymore. So it's okay. So interesting. When we think about the creator economy, a lot of it is very homogenous. You guys are all talking about it like it's advertising. It's like a 30 second, a 60 second maybe. But that is not all of the creator economy. And where some of the gold is happening is where these guys are spending time. So, Ian, you're going to just marinate for a second, because I know that brain. I can feel it. It's whirring around. Saul, you deal with brands all day long. You're making short form series. You're also launching an agency to help brands figure out how to make content. Entertainment. Entertainment. Okay, see, you had an opinion. What? I like to try to help brands not do stupid shit. What do you see that brands are Doing that, you're like, oh please God, don't do that. And then what are you seeing that they're doing? Right?
- [44:55]
B
Oh my God. That's a long list of things that brands don't do. Right, on social. No, I think the obvious, there's all the obvious ones which is, you know, over, over promoting what you're doing. And the CTA at the end of every video.
- [45:09]
You know, very specific brief.
- [45:12]
C
What people shouldn't, should and shouldn't be wearing.
- [45:14]
B
We have a lot of on the street, very on the fly type of content. We get a lot of like, well, you need to do this behind a wall because you can't see other people for legal purposes, which I still don't understand. And so that's, those are the high level things.
- [45:27]
A
And then I think, you know, a.
- [45:29]
B
Lot of brands still don't understand the way that these platforms work, that they still think that it's very, you know, they think about in a commercial sense and they're trying to sort of go back to the old days of a TV commercial and they're trying to bring that to this world and that doesn't work. And so when we think about making content, we think about entertaining entertainment first. And you'll see a lot of brands that are starting to think about what it means to entertain because that's how.
- [45:54]
A
You get views and that's how you get attention.
- [45:55]
B
That's how you break out from the noise. So. So I mean, I can give an example of what something we worked on that we thought was great. Like we worked with Marriott hotels and their Weston division and they had a new mattress. And we have a dating show, it's really popular called Street Hearts where we have two people on a blind date in, you know, on the sidewalk, around the table. We took Street Hearts, we put it in a king size bed in Central park and we did a four or five part episode series in the bed. It was called Sheathearts and it did like, you know, I think a million organic views. And then of course they put some paid behind that. But they probably, I heard that they, it was the least amount that they ever spent on paid because it just did so well. That's entertainment. So I think brands, as they start to think about, you know, how they advertise, I think they need to use the word advertising less and the word entertainment more. And as we open our creative agency next year, that's the key.
- [46:45]
D
Okay, Ian, I'm just handing you the mic. Just kidding.
- [46:49]
E
What's asking?
- [46:51]
D
Okay, Ian, what are people getting Right. And what are people getting? Right, wrong brands.
- [46:58]
E
So I agree with your take on it's not content, it's entertainment. But I would also argue that creators aren't ad agencies. They are not ad units. They're a culture. Right. And when we, what we pay attention to in popular media is, is our culture. And right now we each have our own individual pop cultures thanks to the algorithm. So what, what we get fed. And I can make a very compelling argument that pop culture is dead and has been replaced by algorithms. We have no sense of agency over what we watch or how we discover it. We're just constantly getting nudged into another piece of content. I don't know if I believe that, but I can make an argument for that. And what brands need to understand is that these individuals that they're working with are the providers of entertainment. They are the purveyors of culture to all of their audiences. And so, so to have them, you know, respond directly to a brand brief and to have them be as accountable for the content that's in there as an ad agency is, is, I think a false narrative like that cannot happen. It won't happen because they will lose their audiences because the algorithms will stop serving their content to those audiences. So I think what brands need to understand is that when you mingle with culture, you have to collaborate with it. So in the same way, like New look at New Balance.
- [48:20]
New Balance has completely changed its ethos in popular culture because of their, of their collaborations, their collaborations with brands like here in New York, ALD or, or the athletes that they've signed and they've chosen specific athletes with incredibly rich storylines and they let them live it every day, like Cameron Brink. So brands that understand how to work with culture are also, also tend to be the brands who know fashion, know design.
- [48:46]
Know how to work with.
- [48:49]
What's the word I'm looking for? Like, like multi hyphenate creators, like people who are making like music videos and films and things like that. If they think about it as entertainment and cultural collaboration, they will get it right. If they think about it as scalable advertising, they will be interrupting the great content that everyone actually wants to watch. And so that's why we always kind of push things towards the fatter part of the long tail of the creator economy, because those are the creators who can command an audience and who will follow them not only on those platform, but literally follow them everywhere they go, including like in real life activations. And some of them are even like creating conferences or theme parks for that matter. So, yeah, thank you.
- [49:27]
D
And when we were talking before, you said you can kind of rig the algorithm, rig the system to a little bit. You did. I have it on tape. I heard you. You know how to dial it up and dial it down, right? Is that artificial or is that real? Like, so you got a brand and they have to go into their boss and so say, we got a winner. What, what do you do?
- [49:47]
B
I. I think here's the secret to the algorithm. No, I think the problem is when a lot of brands are working with creators, they, you know, the way that the whole creator economy is set up now is it's like there's so many agents and managers and it's very transactional. So it's like Brand X wants, you know, is doing an influencer campaign. So they work with 100 influencers and, you know, the influencer manager calls the influencer and says, give me one idea. Okay, great. They pitch it and they do it quickly. It's. There's no care. There is, but there's no, like real focus in on the content. It's just, I want to work with that creator, that creator and a hundred more. When we work on our content, because we make this stuff in house and we're 20, we're a team of 20 people of producers and creatives and directors and editors, and this is what we think about all day. So when we making our content, we're intentionally sitting in meetings every week just on organic, not on the branded stuff. When we sit in our meetings every week, we're thinking about what the next thing, what's the next thing we're going to make, because we have a team, creators, very much individuals, and it's much harder to sort of take their things to the next level. But when Jamie talks about dialing the algorithm up or down, I don't know if it's as much dialing algorithms, but it's really. We're very intentional about the stuff we make. And when we're working with brands, we get very intentional. So we're sitting, having those conversations.
- [51:07]
A
What are your goals?
- [51:08]
B
Where do you want to be?
- [51:10]
C
What kind of content do you want to make?
- [51:11]
B
And then it's up to us to make that. Whereas I think a lot of times when you're working with a hundred creators.
- [51:15]
C
You lose that ability to dial.
- [51:19]
D
Okay, so Ian, how, how do you scale? Because you're saying you can't do it through a hundred creators. That's, that's not really working. You could go on a gentio and you could work with Arthur's company, because now he's going to be everywhere. Congratulations, by the way. I mean, what do you do to sc.
- [51:35]
C
How.
- [51:36]
D
How can you actually scale this?
- [51:38]
E
I mean, not everything has to scale, does it? I mean, I, like, I don't know. I always used to think that big was the enemy of. Of great.
- [51:48]
Everything that is great starts small and then becomes progressively shittier as it gets bigger.
- [51:54]
So I look for our version of scale is in thinking about it, much like, I mean, you mentioned I had a little bit of a film background. And I'm. I didn't make any film film, by the way. I just worked at a movie studio. But. But we take that studio model, right? Because the studio model does scale. Because what the studio model provides is infrastructure to all the people who are great at making. And so what we've decided to do is create what is in essence, a virtual lot that we can invite creators into having offices on that lot. The distributors in that case are not the theaters or the cable networks. They're brands who are actually financing and funding that content. And then we are responsible for getting that content out to audiences. Which is why I can't understand why anyone would work with a creator and expect magic to happen organically. Literally, the entire deck is stacked against you. It's like playing with a deck full of tens hoping to pull an ace. It's just not going to happen. So, you know, the superpower that brands have in all of this is the distribution. They are the ones who are effectively greenlighting content, making sure that that movie is in every theater, in which cases our theaters are our phones, you know, or increasing now our televisions as well. Right. And so we use that media spend as the superpower to make sure that all the right people see all the content coming from the creators. When we look at like follower counts or engagement rates with creators, we're looking that as a measure of cultural influence and cultural impact as opposed to, that is the, you know, potential reach. We assume the potential reach of every piece of content that is created by any creator is zero. Because at the end of the day, if we're spending our clients media dollars, we're going to be held accountable for its performance. So we might as well spend all of that of it. And we might as well, you know, again, like the way to manip. The best way to manipulate the algorithms is to buy your way through the algorithms. And that's what we do. And we create a blended rate. We produce all of the content, distribute all the content, pay all of our Talent, you know, out of that insertion order, as opposed to creating like a production agreement or production services agreement or all of that stuff, we treat it as a media buy that is going to give them creative that audiences love love. And that's very different than creative that the conference room loves or the marketing manager loves. And they have to understand that. And those that understand that don't get to work with us, the ones who do become, you know, great partners. And we do like three year deals with. Which are basically the same way that any talent in Hollywood like Issa Rae would deal with, like she has an output deal with hbo. Just like any recording artist has an output deal with a label to put out a certain number of albums, they believe in the talent, they're going to work with that talent to create increasingly better stuff every once in a while.
- [54:30]
C
Wow.
- [54:30]
E
The talent says, I have this crazy idea. Are you with me? And then, you know, we get to bring that to him. It's like Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, if you saw the film. You know, it's the same approach. And guess what? He was right. Because he knows what he. What was important to him, and he knew that his fans would follow him anywhere and he was giving them more of what they wanted. And I think creators should have that same point of view. And there's going to be the influencers at the long part of the tail that are concerned with referral rates, codes. Here's like $10 off a DoorDash membership. Fine, that works. But you know, again, at the, the fatter part of that tail is really where the culture bends. And then we just try to lean into that and give more people an opportunity to do it.
- [55:09]
D
You're very good at that. Thank you. It's a team. I like it. It's a team effort. Okay, I'm getting the hook. Let's do this. Let's just do a final wrap up. I'll go down the road and we'll start with you, Saul. What is something that you wish you could tell a brand without getting into trouble? Like you could say to a client, client, do this without getting into trouble.
- [55:32]
B
Can you elaborate on the question?
- [55:34]
D
Like, like, what is something that a brand comes in and says, I want to do this or I want to do this. And you're saying, but the way to really do it is this. And if they, if you say that, you might lose the opportunity. They might not like your opinion. What is it that you'd really like to say? Because you see it all day long to work.
- [55:55]
B
Trust us, that's really?
- [55:57]
D
Yeah.
- [55:57]
B
I mean, that's it. Like, just take your hands off the wheel and let the, let the, you know, all the stuff that we've done. And by the way, this is for any agency or marketer. Like, let. The proof is in the pudding, you know, let us do our thing and we're not going to listen to you. Let us, let us do our thing. We'd probably get in trouble for that.
- [56:18]
D
I like it. You can say whatever you want.
- [56:21]
E
I forgot what the question was. Think so. I think one, one of the important things to recognize about the way this all works is that it's transactional because of their business deals, right? And so everything has to be transactional. And there, there, there are good things that, that come of that and there are bad things that come of that. One of the bad things that come of that are the fact that when a creator does like a post for a brand, you see this all the time. I know they conflict themselves out of a category for like up to three years potentially. So we've gotten into situations where there was like a random post where a creator, like had a can of a company, you know, in a post. It wasn't even like a paid post. And we, we were told like, no, we can't work with that creator. And that's fine for us because we could just move on. I guess that's not good for the creator. So my, my plea to, to folks, including the, the brands that we work with, is when you identify a creator, give them an opportunity to work with you for a longer period of time than just the number of posts on a particular campaign. We're typically, you know, putting creators in like month rotations on brands, A, because it winds up being better for them in the long run financially, but also winds up being better for the brand in the long run because they're just getting more great stuff and the creator feels like they've got an ally and that they're producing content for someone that they respect as opposed to, again, just getting this deal done and moving on. Because if you get this deal done and move on again, you can't move on in that category for a very long time. And that's a fault in the system. But I think it's also an opportunity for brands to forge relationships in the same way that they work with ambassadors is like Jennifer Aniston and smart water, right? Like that's a relationship. When you see Jennifer Aniston, you expect her to have a smart water bottle. And I think that's the same thing. Is going to happen with creators. You're going to expect them to have long standing partnerships with brands and hopefully be on their best behavior.
- [58:13]
D
So the lesson here is it's not advertising, it's entertainment. And it's not transactional. It's a relationship. And trust your agency, trust your partner. Thank you so much.
- [58:25]
C
Thank you, everybody.
- [58:29]
A
Sunny, how you doing?
- [58:31]
D
Hi, I'm Haley. Is this thing on?
- [58:33]
A
I think so, yeah.
- [58:34]
D
Okay.
- [58:37]
I, yeah, I worked in the creator economy for eight years and I work at Made by All. I've been at Made by All for three years. We represent the top creators in the creator economy, including Sydney, who created the TikTok viral series the Group Chat, and is nominated for TikTok Rising Star of the Year year. Go vote on tik tok.com handing it over to Sydney. I'm Sydney. I created the Group Chat. I'm nominated for Rising Star of the Year. I was smart enough to sign with Made by All and have Haley as my manager. And yeah, it's. It's been about eight months since I started being a creator full time and since the group chat went viral and a lot of exciting things in the work. So I'm just happy to be here.
- [59:21]
A
So, Sidney, a few months ago you were on the Today show.
- [59:24]
D
Yeah.
- [59:24]
A
And now you're here. Look at what's happening for you.
- [59:27]
D
I know it's crazy.
- [59:30]
A
You probably get very tired of this. But give us the short version of the story because I think people wonder so much of what we're talking about as creators that have been doing this for a long time and have a plan and an ongoing ad business. Give us your origin story in a quick couple of minutes.
- [59:45]
D
Quick couple of minutes. Okay. The SparkNotes version of my life is I was a theater major in college. I was actually kicked out of my theater department, which I love to bring up because I think it's such a big part of, you know, it's so I'm already like lacking in the words.
- [60:01]
B
It's.
- [60:02]
D
It's very subliminal. And you, you know. Yeah, you never know. So for someone, you know, my department to literally look at me and be like, you're just not going to make it in this industry, was really ignorant on their part because you just really have no idea. TikTok didn't even exist when I was in college, so nobody could have known. And I started working in jewelry. I was working in estate jewelry, like 9 to 5 job in Midtown and creating on the side after work whenever I could, creating videos. And I had this script written for the group chat, which it wasn't called at that point. And it mostly was just, like, character descriptions that were really fleshed out. And I didn't post it for a long time because I was afraid that it would flop when I posted it. So I kind of, like, kept that back. And I had a few viral series before that. I was at about 250,000 followers. And then I posted the group chat one Sunday, and one week Later, I had 1.7 million million and was on the Today show and in Rolling Stone magazine and had a cameo from Charlie Puth, which was crazy. And everything just really, really did change so fast. And I did feel like I was coming into a world of creators that had been doing it since at least Covid. And everyone was very established and knew each other and had this direction, which in some ways was really fortunate because I was able to get some really great advice from those people. And in some ways was really scary because I would come into events like this and everyone sort of knew each other and had this really vast knowledge of the business, and I didn't. And I had just been working in Jewel, and they'd be like, oh, you're a writer. And I'm like, no. Oh, you're a cr. No, I don't. I really don't know. So. And I'm still figuring it out, but with the help of the right team, I feel like I've really navigated it over the last couple months.
- [61:36]
A
So what happens then in either of you can kind of. You don't. That takes off. It's maybe unexpected, or you're not sure.
- [61:45]
Do brands start calling right away? Are you even thinking, well, I already. I don't know if I could do that again, like, or do you. Do you start saying, I got to turn this into business immediately? Or what happens?
- [61:54]
D
Zach, I'll pass it to you. I'll go first. I'll pass to you. I think for me, it was immediately. I was getting a lot of calls from managers and agents and brands, and I didn't know how to navigate those situations by myself. I didn't know how to negotiate brand deals. The first, like, one of the first brand deals that I ever took, I really didn't know what I was doing. And, like, later on, when the budget was discussed, it was like, oh, God, like, why did you do that?
- [62:21]
A
Like, it was. Someone said to you, you. You caved in too fast, or is.
- [62:24]
D
They were just kind of like, oh, this is the offering you. And I was like, okay. And then that wasn't that was not the correct amount of money, I guess, for like my ratio following, which I had no idea at the time, but it all happened really fast. And my boss in jewelry, who was very, very supportive, but when I hadn't been to work in two weeks and I took a Friday off to be on the Today show, finally came to me and was like, I don't think you can work here anymore. You're never here. And I was like, you know, that's, that's fair. This really isn't working out. So then I didn't have a job and I did have this amazing opportunity on TikTok, but I didn't know how to turn it into revenue quite yet. And that was. My team came in. Hello. So, yeah, I saw the viral group chat series and was familiar with Sydney and was so excited when she took a meeting with Made by all because her type of virality is very rare.
- [63:13]
But I think, and Sydney can attest to this, like, the first thing I asked her was like, I'm so excited to meet you and hear what you want to do. Whereas every other management company and agency had, had come to her with like a full plan and like their own vision and never asked her what she wanted do in terms of the brand side. We would marry like, her vision along with like a lot of brands coming to us and asking us, you know, to be on her TikTok and to be on her Instagram. But we had to figure out a way for her to still produce the group chat in, in an organic way that her audience loves so much and to also incorporate brands in there, but not detract from engagement. So that was battle.
- [63:56]
A
Okay, so you, you've, you both heard a lot of the different points of view on how this, how this process could be better or faster. You know, again, this is very unique to your show and your, your, your following and everything. But is there, is there a right way for brands to approach you? Would. Would. Is it. I mean, obviously you're a little more established, you have an agent. Like, is there, is there, is there a better way that this could happen where going forward you'd get this right, or is it, is it always going to, to be unique to a show, to a series, to a moment in time?
- [64:26]
D
I can start with that. Yeah, I, I heard everyone go before me and I have some opinions myself. But so brands, so, you know, are not approaching the creator. You're approaching me because her email comes directly to me. So more than likely you're talking to their manager, agent first. Before you ever get to Sydney, you will chat with me for a while. So I'm assessing the brand deal in regards to, like, does the budget make sense for her?
- [64:54]
B
Her.
- [64:54]
D
Does the creative make sense for her? Is this a brand that she would even want to work with? I know her pretty well at this point, so like nine times out of ten I can probably gauge, like, is this a fit for Sydney? Or I'll call her and be like, do you like this brand? And if she's.
- [65:07]
A
It's got to be hard to say no in the beginning, right? Or it's got to be scary, I would think, like, what? No, no.
- [65:13]
D
She is quick to say no.
- [65:14]
A
See, I always say yes when someone calls.
- [65:15]
D
I was really decisive from the beginning, actually before even signed with me by all I had gotten one of the, even to this day, one of the most, most like biggest budgets for a brand deal that I had been offered. And I, it was just not a fit at all. I could tell that they had not really seen the group chat and they didn't really know.
- [65:32]
A
Like, they just saw a headline and they're jumping in, like, I want to jump on the reality.
- [65:36]
D
It was sort of like, oh, look at the camera and say this, like, very Truman show esque of advertising. And I was like, oh, that's really not kind of what my brand is. So they, they sort of knew that from the beginning, I think. Yeah, we definitely got a feel for like what she liked, what she didn't like so that we could speak with the brand and get a sense of the deal so that we're not calling her every two minutes with like, well, what about this?
- [65:59]
A
So, okay, you, you work with lots of clients at your company, right? Do you. Is there a way to do. What do you think of these ideas of trying to standardize this and trying to pump out a lot of brand recommendations for a bunch of influencers at once versus doing what you're talking about, which is like taking your time, finding the right opportunity, you know, working together. Is there, is there. Did you have to go one way or the other? Is there a right way to do things?
- [66:24]
D
I think what someone said previously about it being a relationship and not just a maybe it's a transaction, I'm not sure, but the word relationship is definitely true. That's what we look for, for example, for her group chat and she can speak to this too. We had a brand partner, Hilton, that worked with us across many seasons of the group chat. So they were already very familiar with the series before they even approached. They were a fan of the series, they knew it backwards and forwards. They knew and liked her content and that was really apparent when they approached and then they were willing to work with her in terms of scripting, still following FTC guidelines, but also letting her be the creator and be the writer. So that was a long term relationship. And that is what we look for in terms of like more transaction and choosing a hundred different creators. I guess it depends what the brand is trying to achieve. There are, are a lot of brands that are launching something and they just want so much traction and they're choosing a hundred different creators to get that traction. I think that's okay. If they want to spend the budget, like go for it. But I think, yeah, the long term and the relationship building is definitely what we look for. Yeah, I agree. I think with the Hilton specifically and with a lot of brands like that, I appreciate when a brand will come down to the influencer level. I think think a lot of problems with brands is that they sort of see themselves as like this sturdy staple in the industry and like they don't need to concern themselves sort of with social media and that's fine, but it's harder to.
- [67:55]
Organically integrate them into content when they are not so flexible with social media and they don't really understand it. So I mean, Hilton appeared in my comment section as did you know, TripAdvisor, which was another brand we worked with the first season.
- [68:09]
That we did like a travel partner. And it was because they appeared in the comments very early on and then there were so many of my followers commenting back to them like, oh, you're here in the comments. You should fund this, you know, Costa Rica trip that's sort of being talked about, which was fictional. I initially said like, there's this Bachelorette in Costa Rica. It was a plot of the group chat. We did not think we were going to go there. But because TripAdvisor appeared in the comments and they were like, oh, we could send you to Costa Rica, then there was a call for it. And I think I really appreciate when a brand will, will come down to my level and not take themselves so seriously. And it does the process of writing and working with them a lot easier. I feel like they fully understand the world that I'm living in as opposed to the traditional advertising, you know, commercials on TV and stuff. It's, it's very, very different when you have a creator who's on the front lines and if something doesn't go well, I'm the one mostly getting the backlash. Not necessarily the brand that I'm working with. So I have to be very picky and strategic about who I work with.
- [69:03]
A
So you. You still find some brands are just like, I don't want to get in the muck with social media. Or is it. Is it. Is it just a control thing? And that.
- [69:10]
C
The, the.
- [69:10]
A
The letting go that challenge, if you don't have thoughts on that, or either of you.
- [69:14]
D
I mean, there are a lot of brands that are resistant to social media. Literally, if you look at, you know, like the top 30 brands that have the highest budgets and make the most money you can Google or take or look at them on TikTok, and a lot of them don't even have TikTok accounts, which, again, is fine. But I do find. I don't know if it's a coincidence or not, but I do find that the brands that don't involve themselves with social media have a harder time understanding what it is that we're doing and if we're not on the same page. Like, for example, I had a brand. All of my characters since. Since, like, the first episode are color coded. There's seven characters that I.
- [69:46]
A
You play them all?
- [69:47]
D
I should say I do play them all. It's very Jim Carrey of me. But they're all color coded. And so I had a brand be like, well, you can't wear these four colors. And I was like, that's not a. That's not possible. And it makes me think that you've never even seen an episode. Then it's so hard. Then it's like every single step that we go through, you're not asking to.
- [70:04]
A
Drink a competitive soda. You're just asking that, like, you want to wear black.
- [70:07]
D
I just need to wear black. It really is so simp people. And it makes every step of the way a lot harder. When I'm, like, trying to explain my content, explain social media, explain the, like, everything along the way. And it's not so fluid as it is with brands who come on and they're like, we know the group chat. We get it. We understand the social media aspect of it, why it draws people in, and we're ready to just be integrated into that. I think by the time brands come to us, they've succumbed to social media because they want to work with our creators and they have a budget for it. But I think to your point, it's like the resistance comes from, um, and sometimes it's not their fault. So I am on the brand side as well as the creator side, and I'M trying to like, marry the two visions. You know, they have like a huge legal team they need to respond to. There's ftc, someone said earlier, like, no one can be in the background. That's a huge thing. Um, but I think the more that they can let the creator have their own vision and like Sydney said, like, they're familiar with their content, like they're coming into it with prior knowledge and like, you know, they know who they're working with. Like, you're paying them for a reason, so that's always helpful.
- [71:14]
A
Did you. I'm curious about what you both think of the, the platforms getting more involved or not involved, but did you hear from TikTok, like right away or do you. Hey. Come into our partnership program or not? Not at all.
- [71:27]
D
No. I wasn't part of the creator Rewards program on TikTok for many reasons, but I know I actually have not. I don't know if we've ever heard from TikTok. Well, they invited you to the award. They did invite. They nominated me for an award. I take it back. TikTok, we love you so much.
- [71:45]
The, the, the, the apps and the actual platforms are great. I. But a lot of them by design are not super communicative with the audience. I mean, like, if anybody's ever been locked out of their Instagram account, you know, there's nothing like a help hotline you can call. Right? It's. It. You have to kind of finagle your way back in. So by nature, that's not how it is. But I don't think it's a bad thing. I do think it would be beneficial if someday there was a way to directly contact TikTok more. We do have, have contacts at TikTok that we speak to, but it's such a, it's such a large platform that you speak to One department in TikTok, that's the one department. It doesn't apply to the whole thing. You could speak more to that. Yeah. We have a very close relationship with Meta and YouTube. TikTok is uniquely difficult. But also love TikTok and please, just.
- [72:32]
A
Because they're getting so maybe or I.
- [72:36]
D
Think there's a lot of different reasons just so massive. Like they're just such a huge platform. Everyone's on TikTok. I think with Facebook and Instagram it's a little more spread out and Snapchat and stuff, but just everybody's on TikTok. I mean, meta is huge. Like, there are so many people that work at Meta, but they. There's like a creator rep for most of the large creators and they really advocate for their creators and we have a close relationship with them. I can get them on the phone if you get locked out of your Instagram. Um, and same with YouTube. So TikTok is uniquely difficult.
- [73:11]
A
So I like this. What good or bad that for you, from your perspective, that they are getting. YouTube is getting maybe more involved in helping connect brands and creators.
- [73:21]
D
Yeah.
- [73:22]
A
Is that. Is that mostly a good thing? And what about ad tech companies coming in and trying to do that?
- [73:26]
D
I love YouTube. I will support them all day. And I always tell Sydney to do more on YouTube, post on YouTube shorts every day. Every day. It's in the calendar. I do. I like that they're getting more involved in creators. I love that. We do a lot of work with YouTube. They see creators as being the new Hollywood, which I completely agree with and is kind of the ethos of our company. There's a lot of work that we're doing with them to. To support that vision. So what was the other question?
- [73:56]
A
Or do you. Or is it good to have third parties coming in and trying to become the brokers or the, you know, ad techifying the space spacers that stay out of my way?
- [74:04]
D
That's fine as long as they have budget come through.
- [74:08]
A
All right, both of you can ask for this. But, Cindy, what has been really surprising to you about this weird business and what do you. What do people not understand?
- [74:16]
D
Oh, my goodness. I mean, I think they're. I think one of the things that I've come to really learn is just truly how many hoops brands and the agencies that the brands work with have to jump through. I think at first I would get really frustrated and be like, why is this so hard? But now I understand there's so much legal. There's so much. There's so many higher ups in different.
- [74:36]
A
Company is probably even harder.
- [74:38]
D
Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's just. So. There's so many departments that they have to go through in order to make decisions and get things approved. And I think that was the most surprising thing. I thought brands were going to be sort of the biggest hurdle, but having the right team is really the biggest thing who will advocate for you and understand that. Because there are, unfortunately, there are management companies and agencies who really do just want to make the most money off you that they can. And you have to find ones who really believe in you and see the longevity of it if they're going to fight for you and, you know, not just try to make the most money off of you they can.
- [75:09]
A
Ali, last word. What. What do. What do these people in this room not understand, maybe that you need to help them with?
- [75:15]
D
What do they not understand? Wow. I don't know what they understand, but the creator economy is a really. I mean, it's such an exciting space. I'm so blessed that I got into this space eight years ago when it was, like, in infancy. But we have a long way to go, which is also really exciting. So I think all the conversations around, like, creators were working better with brands. I love to be involved in those because I am the middleman for the creator.
- [75:43]
A
What would make your life a lot better? Better measurement of smoother processes.
- [75:48]
D
There are so many cooks in the kitchen when it comes to brands working with creators, not just through me, but, like, if they work with an agency or they were like, we're talking to so many people and not brand direct a lot of the time. Yeah. The email chains are out of control. I think if the brand can keep, like, deals in house, sometimes that's really helpful so that you're not speaking through an agency who also doesn't know.
- [76:16]
Yeah. And I think, I mean, it's really hard to, like, FTC has gotten even crazier. Right. So, like, the, the legal process and what they need to add to the caption and the disclosure, I think is. Is getting even crazier. But the more that we can let it be entertainment, like someone said earlier, and not just a straight advertisement, the better it'll be.
- [76:38]
A
All right, thank you so much, Ali and. And Sydney, thank you guys for coming out here and thank to everyone for spending so much time tonight. It's a terrific event. I appreciate you. You have lots of things to do, so I appreciate you taking time in your lives and have a great night.
- [76:50]
D
Thank you.
- [76:50]
A
Thank you. Oh, please take a YETI on the way out. And thank you, review planner, for all your support and help. Awesome night and happy holidays. I guess.