Why Creators Actually Need Brands (And Not The Reverse)

Summary

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Next in Media Podcast: "Why Creators Actually Need Brands (And Not The Reverse)"

Host: Mike Shields
Guest: John Morgenstern (EVP, Head of Investment at VaynerX)
Date: July 16, 2026
Recording Location: Live at Cannes, PayPal Studio

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the evolving relationship between creators and brands within the rapidly transforming media, marketing, and advertising landscape. Host Mike Shields sits down with John Morgenstern from VaynerX to explore how the industry is moving past traditional metrics, the role of creators as modern media companies, the true state of the TV and video upfronts, and why, at the end of the day, creators still fundamentally need brands (and vice versa). Special emphasis is placed on YouTube’s dominance, the challenge of attribution, and how agencies must adapt as creators gain new influence.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Symbiotic Relationship: Creators vs. Brands

• Opening Provocation: Who needs whom more—creators or brands?
  • John Morgenstern concludes that the answer is mutual dependence, though creators often need brands for funding. However, brands increasingly require creators to stay relevant in the shifting media landscape.

    "Economically speaking, creators need brands. But then brands, of course, need creators to be relevant... The answer is symbiotic." – John (00:13, 16:46)

The Evolving State of TV Upfronts and Video Ecosystem

• TV Upfronts are Shifting:
  • Focuses are changing from traditional live TV and sports to conversations around AI and creators.

    "Cannes itself has been... less like upfront tv, live sports... but more about like AI, creators, the awards... We're coming off the back of like a big push." – John (02:12)

• Rise of Sports and Streaming:
  • Live sports remain cornerstone; newer players like Netflix and Amazon are actively increasing their footprint.

YouTube’s Central Role & Measurement Challenges

• YouTube: From Siloed to Essential

  • Brands often struggle to merge YouTube into a cohesive video strategy; internal silos persist between YouTube, Connected TV (CTV), and traditional TV.
  • YouTube's dominance in time spent and audience make it "undisputed number one streaming platform."

    "To win, you have to engage audiences on YouTube. It is the undisputed number one streaming platform, and no video strategy is complete without it." – Mike (00:26)

• Measurement Complexity:

  • Views are defined differently everywhere, making cross-channel measurement a challenge.

    "One, because a view is defined differently in all these sorts of different things. Two, you can have an unbelievable cost per view completion in programmatic that does nothing for your business." – John (08:35)

Mini Media Companies: Creators as Studios

• Creator Studios’ Rise:
  • Leading creators (e.g., MrBeast) function as full-fledged media studios, building relationships independently with YouTube, Amazon, and others.

    "Mr. Beast... has 500 million YouTube subscribers... Also obviously has an Amazon deal. He has his own platform and everyone's happy." – John (05:43)

  • Creators desire more autonomy yet often lack the media buying or performance disciplines brands require.

Social Video Buckets & Digital ROI

• YouTube, TikTok, and Meta:

  • Each platform gets slotted differently by brands—YouTube may fall under video, while Shorts gets deemed "social."
  • Moving beyond CPM toward depth, engagement, and true business results.

    "We're now in the effectiveness... Let's stop looking at cost per point or cost per view." – John (08:34)

• Organic vs. Paid:

  • Organic social's power: smaller, authentic reach can outperform paid impressions.

    "Organic social is true meritocracy. So a 20,000 impression organic reel could well drive a hundred conversions for free versus spending 50 grand on 10 million impressions..." – John (09:06)

  • Reference to political examples where organic content wins despite enormous paid budgets (see 09:27).

The Attribution and Outcomes Conversation

• Still No Holy Grail:

  • Attribution remains a gray area despite plenty of ad tech "solutions."

    "There's a lot of ad tech companies here that have claims of... attribution, perfect, organic, paid, microscopic... when a creator or just UGC, some rando posts something that's about a brand that drives sales, you don't need a magnifying glass or a microscope. It is obvious." – John (17:35, 18:15)

  • VaynerX strives for practical, observable impact—actual sales or business lifts from media, not just proxy metrics.

• Challenge to Brands:

  • Encourages marketers to scrutinize spend and to consider turning off large-scale programmatic or display campaigns to observe their real impact on business KPIs.

    "Have you turned it off and seen your visit drop?... We're starting to be increasingly tenacious or confrontational..." – John (20:33)

Scaling Creator Campaigns

• Programmaticizing Influencer at Scale:

  • While platforms and tools allow for creator campaigns at scale (especially in TikTok Shop and affiliate environments), the quality and authenticity may diminish with automation.

    "...you can create 100,000 influencers a second. Can you do it? Technically, yes. Will that work with a consumer? They'll probably blow up spectacularly." – John (13:15)

• Agencies’ Role is Changing:

  • Dollars funnel more to creators/content than traditional agency or production fees; creators must demonstrate performance, but must balance brand needs with authenticity.

Memorable Quotes and Moments

• "To be real, if organic, like Organic social is true meritocracy." – John Morgenstern (09:06)
• "You can't buy your way. Winning organic win in the true gauntlet... If you get no views, you should be getting better. Gary... would be like, that’s because you suck." – John (09:44–10:17)
• "I was much more in the camp of like multi touch attribution... It's like marketers talking to marketers and you're just so lost... But when a creator... posts something that drives sales, you don't need a magnifying glass or a microscope. It is obvious." – John (17:35–18:15)
• "We now run enough and are scrutinous enough... Gary says this too. The industry’s at a 1, I come in at a 10 expecting it to land at a 4." – John (21:33–21:44)
• "No one says, 'I see banner ads and like, I drop everything,' but always, let's keep doing it." – John (23:07, paraphrased)

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Important Timestamps & Segments

• [00:00–00:23] – Opening thesis on creators needing brands and vice versa
• [02:12–03:47] – Industry shift at Cannes; changing upfronts and live sports
• [04:35–05:37] – Integrating YouTube, TV, and creators; platform silos
• [05:43–06:33] – Top creators as mini media companies
• [08:02–09:06] – Measurement: short-form vs. long-form, effectiveness over efficiency
• [09:27–10:17] – Power of organic social and content meritocracy
• [10:55–12:30] – The challenge of cross-channel measurement and connecting platforms
• [13:07–14:31] – Can influencer programs be scaled and automated?
• [14:46–16:15] – Can the creator economy absorb more ad dollars? Creator performance vs. brand accountability
• [16:13–17:15] – Economic realities: which side needs the other more?
• [17:25–18:50] – Attribution: from ad tech promises to "common sense" measurement
• [20:33–22:31] – Advocating for more scrutiny and experimentation by turning off channels to test real impact
• [23:45–23:53] – Closing remarks and appreciation

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Tone & Style

The conversation remains candid, energetic, and tactical with occasional irreverence and humor—very much in the Gary Vaynerchuk ethos. Both Mike and John move quickly between practical examples, strategic insights, and industry commentary.

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Summary Takeaways

• The relationship between creators and brands is mutually essential but economically weighted toward creators needing brands for survival—unless they become brands themselves.
• YouTube is central to any real video strategy but still battles internal brand silos.
• Measuring ROI and effectiveness is increasingly about observable business impact, not proxy metrics or impressions.
• The creator economy is maturing, with creators acting as studios, but true success balances autonomy, authenticity, and meeting brand objectives.
• Agencies need to shift from being gatekeepers to facilitators—helping brands push for outcomes and question long-standing habits.
• Attribution is complex but often "obvious" when real impact occurs; practitioners should trust signals over convoluted measurement models.

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Transcript

[John Morgenstern]

I was asked, like, do creators need brands or do brands need creators? And it's like, of course it's both. Yeah, but like, economically speaking, creators need brands. But then brands, of course, need creators to be relevant.

[Mike Shields]

Right?

[John Morgenstern]

So it is. The answer is symbiotic. But some of the, like, brands need creators more than creators need brands.

[Mike Shields]

It's like, hold on a sec.

[John Morgenstern]

Creators exist because of brands, right?

[Mike Shields]

Let's talk about your video strategy for a second.

[Podcast Host]

We all know the media landscape is incredibly fragmented right now, but one thing is absolutely certain. To win, you have to engage audiences on YouTube. It is the undisputed number one streaming platform, and no video strategy is complete without it. But here's the challenge most brands face. YouTube often sits completely separated from the traditional television and streaming ad buys. That's why you need to check out KDENT View Planner. KDUPlanner allows you to connect YouTube directly to your CTV and linear campaigns because they are an official YouTube partner. They bring advanced, contextual, creative and outcomes driven intelligence to your YouTube strategy and your total video strategy. Stop by in silos. Connect YouTube to CTD and linear with KDENT View Planner and start driving real performance across every screen. Head over to kaden.com YouTube advertising to see how they can maximize your YouTube investments today. This week on Next in Media, I spoke with John Morgenstern. He's the EVP and head of investment at VaynerX. We shot this one live in Cannes at the Thankfully AC PayPal studio. Thanks to the PayPal ads team. John and I talked about the state of the TV upfronts where YouTube fits, where some of the top creator studios are making a big play this year. We also talked about trying to plug YouTube data into traditional TV metrics and how clients think about TikTok versus CTV. Lots to get into. So let's get started.

[Mike Shields]

Hi, everybody. Welcome to nexty Media. I'm Mike Shields.

[Podcast Host]

This is.

[John Morgenstern]

We're live here at Cannes, but this

[Mike Shields]

is part of my special series with my partners at Caden View Planner. I'm here with John Morgenstern.

[Podcast Host]

He is the EBP and head of investment at VaynerX.

[Mike Shields]

Yes.

[Podcast Host]

Hey, John, thanks for being here.

[John Morgenstern]

Thanks for having me.

[Mike Shields]

All right, we're shaking the pot.

[John Morgenstern]

I like there's so much happening around here, so I'm impressed.

[Mike Shields]

We are really.

[John Morgenstern]

Yeah.

[Mike Shields]

This is, this is live. We're with this beautiful spot, the PayPal Studio.

[Podcast Host]

Thanks to them. Let's talk about. Catch us up on, like, what's going

[Mike Shields]

on where you've got through a lot of the upfront period. I think last year I talked to one of your colleagues. It was almost like there were two upfronts. There was like the sports and everything and then everything else. Is that kind of what things look like right now?

[John Morgenstern]

Honestly, in that world? Yes. I would say Cannes itself has been, at least for me, this year. Us this year, less like upfront tv, live sports. Like, of course everyone is here.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah.

[John Morgenstern]

But more about like AI creators, the awards, of course. But we've kind of. We're coming off the back of like a big push related to all those deals.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah.

[John Morgenstern]

And then Cannes is kind of like the celebration of a lot of it coming to completion. Of course, there's always opportunities.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah. Well, why don't you walk us through all the deals you've made and the

[John Morgenstern]

dollar amounts and we just go through that. I roughly. All right, so the Hugh Scalan, who we probably spoke to last time, shout out Hugh, is our head of video specifically. So as far as like the exact down to the. Is it a quarterfinal or semi pricing? All that is him. God bless him. But we. I mean, we handle the full upfronts. Yeah. And new fronts. But new fronts is less newer to us. Pun intended, for several brands. Now, obviously there's like the Fortune 100 set that's kind of its own thing, but especially for like the. Towards the Fortune 1000, like large challenger brands who haven't been on TV for like 60 years and might want to start more biddable, agile. That's where we're earlier too. So I mean, Knicks, NBA, the. Everything from At a home to of course, NBA deal programming which has already played out. That's. There's still a glow from all of that.

[Mike Shields]

Sure.

[John Morgenstern]

But live sports continues to have a ton of demand. NFL, NBA, I mean, World cup, like, it's all. I would say there's less of a new curveball for you on that. You know, Netflix is here. I've heard really good things about their setup. Everyone judges each other's setups. Of course. It's like high school down to the swag. You know, Amazon is obviously doing a ton. This is my first can, so I'm just pumped to be here.

[Mike Shields]

Oh, that's a lot. Yeah, you got to do one before you actually know.

[John Morgenstern]

Exactly, exactly, exactly. So I've heard the briefing and the planning is prodigious. But as far as versus last year, we can get you on for him. I can give you more.

[Mike Shields]

What you mentioned creators, obviously they're out in force here with you with regards to YouTube.

[Podcast Host]

And there's like, I guess piece.

[Mike Shields]

There's not different pieces of that are. Are we past the like is YouTube TV or not or you still feel fighting that fight or if. Yeah. Is that a fight you should fight?

[John Morgenstern]

I mean depending on the brand. There's certainly the norms of well, YouTube's in our video bucket or you know, YouTube shorts is in social. Yeah, every brand kind of does that differently. I would say YouTube. There's a stat recently like YouTube surpassed. I think Netflix was in the trades last week about either time span or a total audit. And that definitely YouTube folks know is like the connected full machine. They know they need to get there. It's really more like internal and agency like steering of like it's happening. You know what I mean? It used to be like there's such a sleeping giant in terms of like remnant. So folks are more woken up to that. But there's still a lot of room to run in terms of the right sizing. Yeah.

[Mike Shields]

What about as that's happening? You got the, the. A lot of these. Some of these creators are mini media companies on themselves. They're becoming real studios.

[John Morgenstern]

Yeah.

[Mike Shields]

I don't know how many there are. Can. Can they be true upfront players at this point?

[John Morgenstern]

It's so interesting because even when creators, these things can coexist. You know, Mr. Beast is obvious. He has 500 million YouTube subscribers. They have a very close relationship. Also obviously has an Amazon deal. He has his own platform and everyone's happy. So that can work. Have also seen these. You know, any attempt to directly compete with a YouTube versus like there or a meta or an Amazon at least these days versus say hey, they're this big and very important thing. But then over here, here's some.

[Mike Shields]

Something complex and nuanced, realistic.

[John Morgenstern]

That's good. But when it's like give us all of it, that's where it's. It's. That's a little bit ambitious.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah.

[John Morgenstern]

I would say.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah. And you hear some of that from the big creators and you know they're. They're. They're still new to the media world

[John Morgenstern]

but like they're figuring it out. Give.

[Mike Shields]

Give us. Let us do. Let us just do everything. Which I understand they know their audience is. But then that's. That's tough to suffer like ran. It's just a handed.

[John Morgenstern]

Yeah. I mean it's more of a creators and their agencies versus agencies, let alone.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah.

[John Morgenstern]

Versus the Metas and YouTubes. But that's where we. That's great for us because we live. We are, we're an agency whose CEO is a 15 million TikTok follower creator.

[Mike Shields]

And so you're bought in by nature.

[John Morgenstern]

Creators are like all up at shavener at all times. So we're like, we're good. And they. If they have a media company, we're very close with them. And there's, you know, mutual like, like generosity and just like, like good faith. But we have Kate, our own division for it. There's a lot of overlap, but we just always try to transparently present the options to clients. Why it might black and white for their business make sense for us or platform native or a point solution player to inclusive of rate cards and pricing. Like we, we really run in that direction because we can't, you know, compete on principal buying. Yeah. So not for now.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah, yeah. What about. You mentioned that some clients put YouTube in different buckets. How do you think in general, short form versus long form versus whatever's in the middle. Like is. Is a view on TikTok or reels the same as television? Are you having those discussions or are those really different things?

[John Morgenstern]

I mean, it certainly can come up. Like the industry, I think is. Is really trying to move beyond. A lot of people talk about this like the ROI equation, you know, the Nielsen of old effectiveness over efficiency.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah.

[John Morgenstern]

We have it in this efficiency era. CPMs. Yep. You know, take rate reductions, you know, especially in CTV like CPMs starting on the high side and just going down, down, down. That seems to be kind of normalizing out and we're now in the effectiveness. Both were. Have always been in charge, but now it's like depth.

[Mike Shields]

This is shifting. Yeah.

[John Morgenstern]

Like, let's stop looking at cost per. Like cost per point or cost per view. One, because a view is defined differently in all these sorts of different things. Two, you can have a unbelievable cost per view completion in programmatic that does nothing for your business. Whereas it was autoplay.

[Mike Shields]

Somebody figured out how to run the numbers.

[John Morgenstern]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Versus. You can have a lot of people think organic social is in scale. You know, large brands are like, well, organic social is cute, but like paid is scary.

[Mike Shields]

I gotta put. I gotta push your money.

[John Morgenstern]

And it's like to be real, if organic, like Organic social is true meritocracy. So a 20,000 impression organic reel could well drive a hundred conversions for free versus spending 50 grand on 10 million impressions that got you 100 conversions.

[Mike Shields]

Right. Because you know what I mean, the audience engagement is.

[John Morgenstern]

Yeah, it's different. I mean, this is where it goes. Matty will start like look at political. There are candidates winning you know, Mar Manzani won with 1 1000th of the budget.

[Mike Shields]

Right.

[John Morgenstern]

Ad budget. Like you can't buy your way.

[Mike Shields]

He's really good at that stuff. He's a content creator. Yeah.

[John Morgenstern]

Organ. It was not about literally like there was endless budget from the other side and it couldn't overtake. Of course he ran ads and the better your organic is, the better the P is.

[Mike Shields]

Sure.

[John Morgenstern]

But everyone. It's the same thing with answer engines and everyone just wants to do paid search. Like I just want to pay to be top of ChatGPT, please. It's like the hard thing. You know, we're in the era of a lot of disruption but also a lot of like we're going to unfortunately have to do the hard actual thing.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah. Which is. Yeah. People want to ease in speed and

[John Morgenstern]

it's not like that winning organic win in the true gauntlet.

[Mike Shields]

Right.

[John Morgenstern]

Like that you get no, it's like we got no views. There's no responses like you should be getting better. I mean Gary if he was on this would be much more aggressive. He'd be like, that's because you suck. You know, I mean like there's a piece of content he has. You're losing. Yeah. But that's. It's not like let's abandon it and just pay to play. It's like you're still running the same thing that the world, the algorithms, the consumer told you.

[Mike Shields]

Like.

[John Morgenstern]

Nah.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah. You're trying to force something that you're. You're hoping is. Is. Is organic.

[Podcast Host]

What.

[Mike Shields]

How do you. You kind of hit this. You're trying to plug a lot of things in to measure. You want. You want to have some measurement equivalency for all these pieces.

[John Morgenstern]

Yes.

[Mike Shields]

That are TV like.

[John Morgenstern]

But it seems very true business as much as humanly possible versus a proxy.

[Mike Shields]

Because you like can you put YouTube in the same bucket as television and then creator stuff and then equivalent to some kind of reach or frequency thing but then also figure out outcomes. It seems very challenging.

[John Morgenstern]

Well so yeah, I mean there's. There could be. And sometimes the aggregate budget adds up to more or less like you YouTube being, you know, ubiquitous. I was on a thing at Google and they like talk about YouTube and give one word for words in YouTube and I said ubiquitous. Then the next person said that was going to be my. I was like, sure, it's a good one these days. More and more and more. It's definitely in this direction. YouTube, CTV and YouTube TV came show up very competitively in the. That line item. And in the currency of that realm in short form. Whereas again it's a different view definition, you know, for the Metas and TikToks and YouTube looking at either the more robust definition they use, you know, view definition wise, they're very competitive. But even on like a cost per play, you know, some of the TikTok stuff.

[Mike Shields]

Good.

[John Morgenstern]

It's more a question of is there someone going into, you know, Reach Planner and Google Central tools that can show you. By the way, here's that whole TV through shorts, through creators.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah.

[John Morgenstern]

They have, they have post reports like they have the tooling they're trying to push agencies and we can always be better at this too. Like you're doing all this fragmented like thank you for all the different line items but actually if you were to connect it all and look at the holistically, the better viewers, you're still under invested.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah.

[John Morgenstern]

And the tools are free. So there's work to be done there. There's more coverage of the different placements. But the you know, orchestrated, you know, deterministic like master plan, it's still much more in like probabilistic territory. But so many channels are what speaking

[Mike Shields]

of that and you mentioned how it's complicated and there's more players here. If you want to do a lot of, if you want to do a big execution with a lot of creators at once. There's, there are. It seems like there's a lot of companies trying to help facilitate that doesn't seem easy. But you've got YouTube trying to do it. You've got even like the CAS of the world tech platforms.

[John Morgenstern]

Yeah.

[Mike Shields]

What do you think of that? Can you, can you speed up and programmaticize those things or is that never going to work?

[John Morgenstern]

That's been happening. It, it's, it's, it can it ever work? Is, is a funky one because if you are trying to do it with AI creators that say AI generated and like it, you can create 100,000 influencers a second. Can you do it? Technically, yes. Will that work with a consumer? Like they'll probably blow up Spectacularly right on TikTok shop. Can you through TikTok affiliate center natively with TikTok or through their TikTok shop app store. Like you work with Yuka as one of the partners of like you could get to a lot of TikTok shop creators, you know, tens, hundreds, thousands using TikTok's tools. The most sophisticated, you know, retail brands, Challenger Disruptors are doing hundreds of thousands. And that's where like these apps just like Shopify has its app store. They're the platform. But these plugins add a lot of value. Right? The CAs, like the, the, the reps folks, by definition, you can do like celebrities at scale, but the longer down the tail you go, the less they rep like micro, micro, certain level. And then it's more like that's not us. The knees are changing. But like we have this huge person. So they, they are symbiotic to it.

[Podcast Host]

That makes sense.

[Mike Shields]

You talked a lot about like the right sizing and the numbers kind of show that there's a lot of room to grow. Can, like, can the creator economy absorb all this? All the ad dollars that, that we're talking are being forecasted. Is that, is that, is it set up?

[John Morgenstern]

I would say one of my, like canned observations for this year at least is it's a good year to come as a creator.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah.

[John Morgenstern]

And I've heard stories, you know, because Gary's a creator. We have like cool kids shout out like Tyler Schmidt, Nick Dio, who are creators and they're creators coming by Creators, you know, took the gambit of buying a flight out here with no reason, no brand reason to be here with a lot of money for them. I'm hoping to make and are like,

[Mike Shields]

yeah, they don't have the corporate, but

[John Morgenstern]

yeah, kind of what it was for agencies maybe 10 years ago of like, whoa. And now for agencies and ad tech, it's more, it's less of that. Like frontier, but for creators. So go them first of all. Yeah, we support that. But the more budget is going towards the actual end thing. Not middleware, not production fees, not agency fees, not FTEs for all of this esoteric. I come from this world. Media buyer talent like May's making it easier. There's more dollars that are trying to be funneled to the content itself. Like, no, I want to pay for the video we're posting, not a copywriter. Or I want to pay for the impressions driving business value, not the DSP fee. So in that sense, creators are in a good spot, but they have to perform where. Where it gets dicey is when it's a fine line between don't tell me what to do, I know my audience and make better content. Yeah. And like, we'll do whatever I want. And like, I don't know what this KPI means.

[Mike Shields]

Squaring that with outcomes driven.

[John Morgenstern]

Exactly. Like on the one hand, they're like, I don't just want to be a affiliate race to the bottom like qbc, which I get totally. I wouldn't do it either. On the other hand, it's like the days of oh, we'll give you a six figure deal just to post. Like no accountability. Like you don't even feel any pressure

[Mike Shields]

to Is like the brief, I'm going to do it my way.

[John Morgenstern]

And they're just like, you're lucky to have my comp. And I was just like, I was asked like, do creators need brands or do brands need creators? And it's like of course it's both.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah.

[John Morgenstern]

But like hot take at the economic. I was in the economics major. Economically speaking, creators need brands. It's like unless creators that become brands that are. It's like, it's like so it needs to be funded. But then brands of course need creators to be relevant.

[Mike Shields]

Right.

[John Morgenstern]

So it is. The answer is symbiotic. But some of the like brands need creators more than creators need brands.

[Mike Shields]

It's like, hold on a sec.

[John Morgenstern]

Creators exist because of brands.

[Mike Shields]

Right. Lastly is it. And I don't know if, I don't know if you're gonna have an answer to this right now, but. Okay, there's. We're in this outcomes attribution and like mania.

[Podcast Host]

It's.

[Mike Shields]

I don't. Has anybody figured out how to figure out how to evaluate if creator X does something awesome? You get a lot of virality but I don't know what it did for me thing.

[John Morgenstern]

There are a lot of. There's a lot of ad tech companies here that have claims of, you know, attribution, perfect, organic, paid, you know, microscopic. This is where it took me when I joined Vayner Innovator. Eleven years I was much more in the camp of like multi touch attribution. Mmm. Like, like class marketing science where it's just like you just start marketers talking to marketers and you're just so lost. Right. You know there's, there's so many signs here that like we have the attention. It's like marketers tension. No consumer on earth has heard of like, you know what I mean?

[Mike Shields]

Yeah.

[John Morgenstern]

Hypothetical name.

[Mike Shields]

Right.

[John Morgenstern]

Right. So like what do you mean the tensioner. But Gary, uh, he always has like if I were to name the agency today, it would be X and it's always like a different thing. But at one point recently it was like, would be like common sense. We're your common sense. AOR and iman. When a creator. I'm trying to give you an example of one where it's like when a creator or just UGC some rando posts something that's about a brand that drives sales, you don't need a magnifying glass or a microscope. It is obvious. It is very obvious.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah.

[John Morgenstern]

Simple. I. We live this for Gary with his family business online library. Gary's whole model is like, he lives the thing. He is a creator. He dog, foods, everything.

[Mike Shields]

Yep.

[John Morgenstern]

In his own world. Smoking Gun proves it's a thing. Despite people think he has a lot of bravado. He's actually really conservative. Everything he talks about we have, like, really validated on business. I say that because it. We just see this. It's the. It's. It's just laughably obvious. Wine. Wine text is.

[Podcast Host]

Is.

[John Morgenstern]

They, you know, are the subscription service. They might get a couple dozen organic signups per day. I run these ads personally because we're all about practitionership. His dad is the hardest media client I've ever had in my life. Because you say, mmm. He's like, you're trying to trick me.

[Mike Shields]

He knows too much.

[John Morgenstern]

Like, it has to be super simple. That's day to day. And then you're like, okay, we're at 120. Just this morning, Gary must have posted.

[Mike Shields]

Right.

[John Morgenstern]

And that's what happened.

[Mike Shields]

It's like attribution model and tell you

[John Morgenstern]

that like, you and like. And yet the luxury of it is it's simple when you're huge.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah.

[John Morgenstern]

You know, and so much media activities going on. We live this. We have an organic. It got 2 million views. Signal through the noise. Still tough. But what we're trying to really push a lot of our Fortune 100 scale marketer is like, you should be questioning more. It's like, that's so much of the kind of just always on inertia. Programmatic or a lot of your media, like, you've been convinced that it's like, well, we don't feel it at all in the business, but, like, it definitely matters a lot. It's like, have you turned it off and seen your visit drop?

[Mike Shields]

Yeah.

[John Morgenstern]

Like, that's where we're starting to be increasingly tenacious or confrontational. For a long time, through the Gary ethos of, like, being really safe, we weren't in deep and programmatic or ctv. And so when we would hear, like, well, CTV just works, we were like, all right. We don't want to, you know, like, make a hot take and then just get shown, like, Smoking Gun.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah.

[John Morgenstern]

And we're like, oof, fast forward five years. I'm like, still waiting for the smoking Gun.

[Mike Shields]

Right.

[John Morgenstern]

Like, still waiting for show me one brand. That's like, we are enormous. We got acquired and we built ourselves Entirely off the back of programmatic.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

See, we did.

[John Morgenstern]

It's like, it's social 100. 100.

[Mike Shields]

Right, right.

[John Morgenstern]

Sometimes we're killers at date search data, but it's like search and email. It is never like random long tail. It can become. Now we use CTV at some scale and it's like where it's cooking incrementally.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah.

[John Morgenstern]

So. And we now run enough and are scrutinous enough. Where it's now, like Gary says this too. The industry, industry's at a 1, I come in at a 10 expecting it to land at a 4.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah.

[John Morgenstern]

So, man, I'm channeling a little bit of that. When we say like, turn it off. And we're very specific, like specifically programmatic, OLV and, and display broadly. We're not saying turn off like your super bowl ad or like your everyday deal. Turn off like, well, that's. That's $40 million. And it's like there. It's like, turn it off. It's like, yeah, then it should have a really big impact when you turn it off.

[Mike Shields]

You should feel it.

[John Morgenstern]

Yeah. And then like, but turn it off. And then like, no. And understandably. But they're like, we'll cut 10 and like, cool. That just funded. And then they cut 10. Nothing bad happens whatsoever.

[Mike Shields]

And you do more.

[John Morgenstern]

And then they fund this entire like a $10 million scope because you like, whoa. Layer and layer. It's like funded.

[Mike Shields]

Right.

[John Morgenstern]

And of course, the bigger and more complex and global brand is, the more that exists. Yeah. And the, the brands are on this already. But they come to agencies to be like, they're like, I think it's this. But like, they want us to push them and want that confirmation. So they often need that kind of push. And that's where a lot of the, you know, that's where Vayner's just, I really do think, unique. Where Gary, he truly wants to know, like, I'll ask, I'll say to him, I mean, what if the bit like, what if it drops? He's like, it'll be fascinating.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah.

[John Morgenstern]

And he'll be like, oh, that'll be a great.

[Mike Shields]

It'll be smarter for it.

[John Morgenstern]

And he's like, that's so much more valuable than just living in this gray of like, Right. When you ask anyone if they've seen it or if this medium matters at all to them, no one says, I see banner ads and like, I drop everything.

[Mike Shields]

Right.

[John Morgenstern]

But because always. Let's keep doing it. But I have so much empathy for, for brand side marketers. That, like, there's a lot of, like, the risk versus reward incentives just aren't often they're getting better now because of disruption. And, you know, necessity is the mother of all invention. But I would do the same if I were them. Like, I don't want to do that. I just got here.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah.

[John Morgenstern]

So respect.

[Mike Shields]

All right. We got to leave it there. John, awesome conversation. Love this stuff. And let's do this again.

[John Morgenstern]

Awesome. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

[Podcast Host]

Thanks again to my guest this week, VaynerX's Jon Morgenstern. And my partner's a Katie View planner.

[Mike Shields]

If you like this episode, please take

[Podcast Host]

a moment to rate and leave a review.

[Mike Shields]

We have lots more to bring you,

[Podcast Host]

so please hit that subscribe button. See you next time for more with Snxty Media. Thanks for listening.