
Next in Creator Media spoke with Reza Izad, co-founder and partner, Underscore Talent about whether Hollywood or Madison Avenue were further ahead when it comes to adapting to a more creator-centric media verse. Izad talked about why some categories, like beauty and fashion, are far ahead more mass categories such as packaged goods, and why Pinterest is a creator dark horse in 2025.
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B
Hi Mike. How you doing? Been a long time.
A
I'm all right. Yeah. We know each other for a long time. Back in your Collective Digital Studio days.
B
I think you were at the Wall Street Journal was the first time I met you.
A
I think that's, I think that's probably right. Good. 10, 10 years ago. Probably. Let's just talk about a little bit about you. You were, you know, you were an early MCN influencer, marketing connector guy. So let's just talk about your journey to your background and how you got to Underscore Talent. Maybe let people know what it is. I don't. Maybe you know people in the, in the. No, no. But probably not everybody in the listening.
B
Underscore is a relatively new company. I was a talent agent for a while. I left and joined a management company called the Collective. It was pretty forward leaning so. But we were traditional managers. But when I say we were forward leaning, we were pretty early on to the digital marketing scene and the idea of using these platforms and at the time it was like MySpace Facebook was a big marketing platform. I think YouTube was barely around when we, when we started and we were marketing musicians and comedians work to the public, mostly tickets and touring and some comedy specials. But we were very digitally forward in how we thought about the representation of our clients. And our representation was 360 and very traditional. So we'd make our money touring Linkin park and Cat Williams and people like that. But we use these platforms to connect with people.
A
But these, these were not creators at that time or what we think of today.
B
These were not creators at all. They were traditional artists. And we found the digital and this is like 2007 and 8 and maybe even earlier than that was a really viable way of communicating and marketing your content to people. And the business would happen elsewhere, wouldn't happen online, it would happen at the stadium. It would happen when you went Walmart and bought a Cat Williams dvd, frankly. So it was that like old school. But this was a way to get the word out and let people know what the content was about and to market. And one of my colleagues signed the first major digital creator. His name was Lucas Cruikshank. He created the character of Fred. And we, you know, started messing around with that IP in an interesting way. We did a Christmas album because he spoke in a high pitched voice and I think somebody in the office was like the Chipmunk sold a lot of this was not a lot of thinking. Here was someone said the Chipmunks sold a lot lot. This kid had a huge audience. We didn't really know what we were doing, but we put him in the studio with some well known producers and they came out with four songs and we sold a hundred thousand copies of this Christmas thing, which was kind of interesting. And then we kind of got into the IP which was way more developed than it looked because it was just a vlog style, kind of raw. He was talking to camera, but he was telling this really elaborate story about a young kid who was on medications. His mom was like an alcoholic, his dad was nowhere to be found. He was in love with the girl next door, but the other kid next door was bullying him. And he built this whole world speaking, you know, directly to camera. And so we thought it was like ripe for a movie. We partnered with Brian Robbins and we created the Fred franchise.
A
Brian who eventually he was a co CEO of Paramount, but he was Nickelodeon.
B
At one point started Awesomeness. He's been, he's a very. And probably prior to all that he was a very well regarded filmmaker in the kids business. Right. He really Knew how to make content that resonated with young adults. And so we partnered with him. We made this. It was about a million dollar movie. We ultimately licensed that to nickelodeon. We did three movies, we did 25 half hours of the Fred content. And honestly, had Lucas not wanted to play the character anymore, had he just sort of burnt out on it, he could have played that character for five, ten more years. It was a huge hit in the Paramount ecosystem. And that was the beginning of us getting a lot of early inquiries from the early days of YouTube.
A
Right. So there's like a different kind of talent, a different kind of person out there that is, you're figuring out they're finding a space and a voice and you're saying this, they're going to need some of these traditional vehicles to get them in business.
B
Totally. And what was interesting was it turned out that part was interesting. But what was way more interesting was this intersection of advertising and attention and all the stuff and the possibilities that could happen on the YouTube ecosystem. So while we were wedded and had a lot of capabilities in the traditional sense, we actually ended up getting out of the management business, starting an MCM, which today is called Studio71, and built an entire ecosystem which was mostly marrying creators with advertisers. Obviously there was some IP that comes along with it and a lot of other things, but our business sort of really evolved into that first generation MCN as you discussed. And from there my partners and I, we ran that business for. From 2009 to 2020, so for 10 years.
A
In that, in that world that's like, you know, 40 years.
B
Yeah, it was a long time. I think we started Studio71 officially, like at the time it was called collective Digital studio, like in 2011. So, so an eight or nine year run and you know, all the ups and downs, all the, the, the good and the bad of that era, we were super fortunate. We built some technology around brand safety that worked really well. And so when all that brand safety stuff happened on YouTube, that is ancient history.
A
Yeah, we're talking 17ish probably.
B
And we're a huge beneficiary. So our business was profitable and actually growing quite significantly. Unlike some of our.
A
All the, all those tough tales about MCN not being never having a model.
B
That and our, our attention to ip, those were the two reasons we were.
A
You were not just an ad network.
B
We're not just an ad network. And we had tools to support an ad network. Maybe the right way to describe it. So part of our business that was an ad Network had pretty sophisticated tools and had them at a time where nobody else could deliver those results. And on the flip side, we were very content and distribution focused. So we were first on Facebook. We did a lot of content distribution on Tubi and Roku and all the sort of the connected devices that you saw before.
A
People were talking about CTV and Fast and all that stuff.
B
Yeah. And then we were pretty strong on the podcast side. So today It's, I think Studio71 is the top 10 podcast network in the U.S. so that combination made the business, you know, was. Was really productive for the business. But my partners and I, Dan and I, who sort of founded the company, and Michael Green, One thing we kind of lamented was that we'd been pretty disintermediated from the talent we were working with. We were definitely a service provider, but we weren't in it quite in the same way we were when we were representatives and managers. And when we looked at the ecosystem, the world had gotten super complicated versus 2010, where the world was pretty simple. Lots of platforms, there's lots of different ways to make money in this ecosystem. A lot of, you know, sort of complexities. And frankly, we didn't think there was a management firm that had built the capabilities to service the digital creator. And so that's sort of what we set out to do. So that was in November of 2020 or December of 2020, we sort of got started. So we're four years into this journey today, and we have about 90 employees, a little over 500 clients, and we're pretty diversified. So we have a very strong, like, gaming business. We represent, you know, top Call of Duty players like Scump and a number of other sort of top pros. We have a. We have a really interesting burgeoning sports business. We're working with, like, combat athletes, like the Undertaker and a number of others, and are doing some interesting stuff. They're very strong in culinary, really strong in beauty, lifestyle. So it's a very diverse talent roster.
A
Is the. Is the business you build, like what you offer the same as what a traditional agency would offer? Or is it part representation, part business partner, part ad partner? That's. Is it. How do we. How should we think about it?
B
Well, look, it's traditional in the sense that in. In theory, your representative is supposed to help you with your business development, your execution, your strategy. Like, how do you go from point A to point B to point C, and then how do you execute that? And so from that perspective, it's very traditional. The businesses are very different like the businesses of esports and gaming and live streaming. While there's a lot of similarities, the deal types, the nature of the deals, the relationships with partners, and by the way, what they're measuring and looking for, radically different than ud, lifestyle or culinary. There. There's a. There's a very different sort of type of talent you're looking for, a type of talent the brands and partners are looking for and kind of a different kind of trajectory that a client can go on. And so even inside our business, while it's the same business, we're operating under very, very different business styles and business conditions.
A
Interesting. So, you know, you've been, like, you mentioned, you've been at this for a while. This is super established. It feels like sometimes Hollywood and Madison Avenue are still catching on to this creator universe, I guess. How would you assess the state of the industry's relationship with this part of the world? Who's further along Madison Avenue or Hollywood? Where. Where do things need to go?
B
On the Hollywood tip, you're starting to see pretty interesting green shoots, I guess. So Mr. Beast deal with Amazon's pretty big deal. That's a pretty big show with very legit budget. And so hopefully that's performing really well. You've seen it with Netflix and a lot of the kids programming they've been licensing kids programming literally. Taking YouTube, slightly repackaged and edited, and it's performing really well. Cocomelon is a great example of that. We have a client, Vlad and Nikki. We've licensed that content to HBO Max. It's a top performer in their kids category as well. So there you're seeing a lot of repackaging stuff. You're seeing stuff like originals with people like Mr. Beast. A client of ours, Noah Beck, just had a really good success with Tubi. So it's green shoot. It's not quite. The business brands, on the other hand, are way more sophisticated and are leveraging this talent base and have been doing it longer and frankly on a much more sophisticated basis for some time now, one would say. Like, it's kind of interesting, though it's not all equal. Like, the major consumer brands are dabblers in the space. Not all of them, but interesting still. Still outside of beauty and outside of like some culinary stuff, like very direct, where it's like literal stuff. There's. There's less engagement than you would think, especially given the competition they face. Like, I'm surprised Old Spice and Axe haven't come hard for what, you know, Jake Paul is doing. I'm surprised that Hershey's and you know, the Mars guys haven't gone totally nuts on what Mr. Beast is doing. They've sort of just let it.
A
Letting that happen is kind of dabbles.
B
They're not like in put their feet in the water in the same manner that that Logan and Prime. So it's kind of a. Just interesting to see it that way. On the flip side, L'Oreal, Estee Lauder, almost every beauty brand, this is kind of the main pathway to exposure to new audiences, to new consumers, to a lot of the things that they're doing. So it's kind of a tale of two different worlds. I think Beauty has this one weird feature where there's a measurement company, it's called Tribal, that has been doing it for a long time where they've kind of bought into their metrics in a very, very significant way. And it actually now is affecting. It's been. It's not now. It's been affecting for years. Planning at Sephora, planning at Ulta, planning inside the sort of the, the major retail partners. And so because of that, the, that, that that segment is all in. Plus a lot of people buy it digitally.
A
Yes. And so I was going to say why do you think this disparity is? And maybe you hinted at it. Is it, is it, you know, are the package of goods guys, they have to know that the creator media world is growing and the audiences are there. Is it a conservatism in, you know, they're used to TV and they do it their own way or is it a lack of confidence in the measurement? Like what is it? It's a structural. Like what do you think is holding things back?
B
I mean, look, they're on the branded content piece. Measurement is still not where it is on tv. Obviously you're talking about or frankly on digital ads too. Right. Measurement on digital ads is, you know, super sophisticated. Measurement on. On Nielsen is as sophisticated as you want to describe it. I don't know how sophisticated that is, but it is what it is. Outside of Tribal, there may be other companies trying it, but I don't know that there's like a whole industry that's bought in, in the way that the beauty industry is bought into Tribal as interesting. I don't know that it's the complete North Star, but it's a significant part of all a lot of marketing discussions that happen.
A
Okay, so what do you think, you know, besides like another Tribal coming along that answers the needs of a Hershey or something like that? What moves things along where we get that hockey stick growth. Like do you think, what did you think of the influential acquisition, for example? Do things like that accelerate the growth in this category? You want to see more?
B
I would, I would assume they do. I mean I, I assume Publicist bought it because of the lo l'oreal relationship that, that they generated. And I think l'oreal is a huge part of Publicis business and so it makes. Those companies are constantly acquiring things for, for growth. And so it makes a ton of sense. And I think having influential in a system like Publicist will expose more and more traditional brands into the mix. And let me be clear, it's not like they're not doing anything. They're just not doing it in quite as robust a way as other market segments.
A
Or you might think it would be like absolutely core to every media plan. It's not there yet.
B
It's, it's, it's getting there, but it's not totally there yet is is how I would describe it. And it's like I said, there are places where it's fully there like in beauty, lifestyle and then others where it's a little, a little, a little different. What's, what's interesting, you know, the other way to go given that there's a lot of, you know, if you, if you go into retailers there's a lot of demand for new products in almost every category. Right. Who's going to disrupt the cereal aisle, who's going to disrupt the frozen food aisle? Who's going to do this? Who's going to bring me the next new thing that I can get people excited about in my retail location? And you're seeing a lot more of that go into both celebrity and digital creator branded businesses. And it's pretty surprising the breadth of what the Walmarts and Targets are looking at and are considering putting into their, to their stores. And the one thing that's kind of interesting is this partnership with Alex Cooper and Nestle as maybe a really interesting bridge going forward. So they are providing obviously manufacturing and distribution muscle and she's providing audience marketing, brand sort of, I'm sure a lot of influence on the product and that's a really interesting combination and hopefully we'll see more of that. I think if that kind of stuff is successful, maybe you'll see a much a copycat industry.
A
You think a lot of these guys will.
B
Yeah. And you'll also see just a more aggressive spend because, because you don't need to give 50% away. Maybe you just put aside a budget and start buying in some way. And so you know the fingers crossed that kind of thing is really successful. Actually Nestle of the consumer products does a lot of interesting stuff in the, in the influencer space.
A
Let's drill down a little bit like you talked about. You work with pretty much every big platform. What do you think YouTube has had this moment this past year especially with their penetration in CTV and just the final recognition of how big and powerful it is. What do you think brands and buyers don't maybe understand about YouTube? And and then how is the TV thing change the game for you and your creators?
B
So it's kind of a couple of different questions. The TV thing has been happening for a little while and what that means is longer content. So podcasts is a very good example are being surfaced more and shown more and therefore you're seeing greater performance from like historically longer formats. Hour long, half hour long, sometimes multi hour long edits and compilations of videos.
A
Interesting.
B
And so there's a whole new form factor that is suddenly gets really viable. Here's the other thing that's interesting. You know and this is just more about the economics of it. When you have a longer piece of content you can run more ads in the middle. And so it's not TV dollars. I don't want to get carried away but suddenly you can start earning really healthy revenue per view because they're in an hour long format. There can be a ton of ad breaks. You can have two where if you.
A
Were talking about making two minute videos all the time, you had one shot pretty much one.
B
You had one one 15 at maybe they, maybe you could do something more aggressive but really you had 115 at the top and now you can have four or five ads, three ads running. So it's three times your money, four times your money and, and so that's the other side. So with fewer views there's a real healthy revenue story there too. That's kind of interesting. And so we're going to see a lot more I think interesting formats. I think scripted, like very low cost scripted is going to be interesting. I haven't, I think Dhar Mann is doing a really interesting job with scripted at scale.
A
That's interesting because there's been fits and starts with of you know whether that's actually going to work in this platform for a while that, that you see you're seeing an opportunity there.
B
I mean and I don't mean this in a derogatory way but you got to have a Tyler Perry. It's a bit of a factory because you got to put out a lot of content in scripted. It's just, it's, it's a challenge to execute. But if you can get it right, there's definitely an interesting thing to just. That could happen. Obviously formats like talk, documentaries, it opens up a whole suite. Formats that may not have been as relevant before. So that's on the talent side.
A
Interesting.
B
A lot of interesting things are happening there and opportunities there on the business side. What are people missing? Here's the flip side. It's the opposite, I think, you know, Google and YouTube have done such a good job of like attacking TV dollars, right?
A
TV TV TV y. Yep. It's been an obsession forever.
B
Yeah, it's the biggest everything. What they've missed though is Facebook has created their own market, it's called social and they own it basically outright. There's TikTok and there's Snap and Pinterest maybe, but really they own a defined market and it comes with some other features. Right. It's shoppable, it's got all these things that make it.
A
It's easy to buy and get a campaign going. Right.
B
Kind of targeting in a very. And, and so the shorts product, like almost think of it as two different businesses. There's this social product is very powerful on the cell phone that exists on YouTube. Then there's this TV longer form, frankly even short form on your phone, but five, ten minute videos, but, you know, more where you're more engaged than a minute or three minutes or whatever the length is now.
A
It's not an easy story to tell. Right.
B
It's kind of a different story because they've been touting TV for so long. And it's interesting because, you know, they've kind of won the war, maybe not with every brand, but with most brands. And so the next story needs to be social shopping, all these things that they have, but they just need to figure out how it all works together and sold together. And I mean, look, there's been a lot of growth in shorts monetization. But what's missing is all the buying that happens on that platform that you don't see that you see on Facebook. There's a lot of organ like they'll buy organic content, it might turn into an ad, it might not. That that ecosystem does not really exist in the same way on YouTube as it does on Interesting Gram on TikTok on other platforms.
A
Okay, so that leads me to the obvious question. I mean, I can't say I know what's going to happen with Tick Tock. You know, it seems like it's in real jeopardy, but all of a sudden, new president, new Supreme Court, it's very unpredictable. So I guess another two parter is are you seeing a lot of caution among clients? Like we gotta hold, hold off on making the decision and then what's the opportunity? Does, does YouTube step in and really take that audience? Is it Instagram? Is it unknown?
B
Who knows what's gonna happen. I was trying to find, I'm blanking on the name of the. The betting app on my phone, but there's like the guys who can actually.
A
Bet on, on whether TikTok goes.
B
Most of the smart money or the betters anyway are saying it's not going to go. It's like 30%. Yes, 70% saying it's not going to go. Look, it's a law which is more complicated but I don't really know. I can't figure it out. Who will win after that is anyone's guess. And the question is win what? Right. There's shopping on TikTok is really powerful, really strong affiliate product. Everyone says they have it. Ironically, Pinterest is like the most aggressive on becoming like an affiliate place. I don't know if they have enough scale to, to Right.
A
They're not as universally used but, but.
B
But they're pretty well adopted. They're very well adopted with some, you know, segments of the market. So that's one interesting bet. I don't know if YouTube shopping is as good as they say it is and Facebook is really easy to buy off of. It's a. And so I don't know who will win the shopping war, but maybe Facebook looks like they would, but their shopping is more done through an ad. It's a different, it's a different product. It's not as affiliate driven for them. So it's a slightly different business model. So that's going to be up in the air and then where's all the content and audience going to go? I would assume that there's a lot of parity between what reels has done and what Facebook has done is a very, very good job in sort of deploying reels and deploying data against reels to advertising partners. Buyers are there. There's a lot of excitement there which by the way wasn't there year and a half ago, two years ago. They've done a really good job in the last year and a half getting parody with TikTok and in some cases like accelerating past TikTok from a buyer's perspective. So they're going to Pick up all that energy and I don't know that YouTube is set up yet anyway to pick up a lot of that, but, you know, I wouldn't count them out.
A
Of course. Yeah. A couple more for me. We, when we mentioned your, your MCN history, I've had a lot of interesting conversations lately with folks. Given the maturation of the space and the professionalization and the series thing you're talking about, do we need a. Is there a room for an MCN type comeback? I know other people think that's crazy. Do you have thoughts on that?
B
MCN in the old school way probably won't come back in the same manner necessarily though. There's. There's a number that exist already that are operating, but they all have very unique business models and they make their money in a variety of different ways. The ad network on YouTube is not the main.
A
It's not viable. You got, you got to have a lot of more different revenue streams.
B
Yeah. One trend though, that is definitely alarming. If I was talented and let's remove the top tier, right? Let's remove the 1%.
A
They're going to be fine. The beast is going to be fine.
B
They're going to be fine and they're going to have direct relationships with the platforms. Nobody else is. The idea that you're going to have a partner manager and you've got 2 million subs on YouTube, there's just too many people.
A
This is too many.
B
I think they're. Well, one thing happened. Facebook really deprecated that service offering and nothing really changed. Arguably, like I talked about, reels kind of took off really nicely. There's a lot of brand activity there. So therefore there's a lot of content activity there. So there's definitely going to be less service of talent and creators by the platforms. And so that's going to create an opportunity for somebody to step into that void and provide that service. Now that could be an agent, that could be your manager, that could, that could also be an mcn. And so there's going to be a variety of ways that gets serviced. But I think the platforms all realize it's probably easier to talk to, you know, have a team of 10 people who talk to the 20 service providers in the market or however many it is, versus talking to, you know, 2 million or a million or even 500,000. You know, these numbers are just really big at some, at some level. I think that's where it's headed over time. And look, AI and automation is going to just drive that faster. Right, right. Because ticketing and all that stuff will be simplified, I think, in many regards. And so that small little monetization challenge you have with your Facebook page or your YouTube page, that will probably be serviced by some provider, it won't be the platforms.
A
Before I let you go, like, give us any recent stuff you want to talk about with the talent you, you work with or some brand deals and with really good examples of the kind of where you think this, this space is headed this year.
B
I mean, God, we've had so many and we, we do so much volume. The one thing that was interesting just to speak to the power of the, the world we're in, and this was total serendipity. This was not a planned event. But we had this young guy, his name is Logan Moffat and everyone knows him as like the cucumber guy. He's a kid. He's been working on social media for a long time. He's really fascinated with Asian culture. He's super likable. He's like a really, you know, really charming guy. And he started doing cucumber recipes inspired by his love of Asian. Really Korean.
A
Interesting.
B
And dude, he had. There was cucumber shortages all over Europe. He did this small partnership with, I think it's oxo. This is even before we, we got in business with them. I mean, they've, they've had massive sales off of their mandolins and some basic stuff and you know, he's doing a ton of interesting business. But it's just, it just speaks to like, you know, how if you catch one of these trends, like there's a, just a huge.
A
The power that's. There is a movie powerful.
B
You know, for him, it's, it's going to be, you know, transitioning from that to a career. And, and so far it's been going, you know, really, really well. But that's, that's just an interesting moment when, when you sort of think about, about these things and where they may, you know, it was like a kind of an overnight success, but it was like three or four or five years in the making. So it was not really.
A
That's cool.
B
You know, we started working with the Undertaker and we manage his podcast and you know, in particular, and that's really done really well. It's top sort of sports podcast, obviously. Wrestling is a big thing on online and this performs incredibly well.
A
That just speaks to the breath you're talking about, right? This kid with cucumbers and Undertaker.
B
But it's, but he's done, we've done a ton of really, really interesting things with him. And look, you know, Noah Beck's career is kind of interesting because he started as the teen, like in the teen house during COVID You know, he transitioned even doing a lot of work with major fashion brands over the year. And then he has his first movie coming out. So I think there's just a lot of really interesting things that we've been working on and things that are sort of happening in our fascinating stuff.
A
I didn't expect to talk about the Undertaker and Cucumbers here, but but it's going to be fun to watch where all this goes. Great conversation. Let's talk again. But thanks so much for your time here.
B
Thank you so much. I'll see you soon.
A
A big thanks to my guests this week, Underscore Towns Resad and my partners at View Planner. If you like this week's episode, please take a moment to rate and leave a review. We have lots more to bring you, so please hit that subscribe button. We'll see you next time for more on what's Next in Creator Media. Thanks for listening.
Next in Media: Detailed Summary of "Why Some Brands Are Still Way Behind on Creators"
Episode Release Date: January 9, 2025
Host: Mike Shields
Guest: Reza Azad, Co-Founder and Partner at Underscore Talent
In the episode titled "Why Some Brands Are Still Way Behind on Creators," host Mike Shields engages in an insightful conversation with Reza Azad, a pioneering figure in YouTube creator marketing and the co-founder of Underscore Talent. The discussion delves into the evolving landscape of media, marketing, and advertising, focusing on the intersection between brands and digital creators.
Reza Azad’s Early Career and Foundation of Underscore Talent
Reza Azad recounts his extensive experience in the digital marketing arena, starting with his tenure at Collective Digital Studios, which later became Studio71. He highlights his early adoption of digital platforms like MySpace and Facebook for marketing traditional artists, such as Linkin Park and Kevin Hart. Reza’s pivotal role in introducing brands to digital talents like Fred and Rhett and Link set the stage for his transition into managing digital talent and founding Underscore Talent.
Reza Azad [02:00]: “We were very digitally forward in how we thought about the representation of our clients. Our representation was 360 and very traditional.”
From Traditional Management to Multi-Channel Networks
Reza describes the shift from traditional talent management to the creation of a Multi-Channel Network (MCN), now known as Studio71. This evolution was driven by the burgeoning potential of YouTube as a platform for marrying creators with advertisers. Reza emphasizes the importance of brand safety and sophisticated ad network tools that differentiated Studio71 from other MCNs.
Reza Azad [06:33]: “We built some technology around brand safety that worked really well. Our business was profitable and growing significantly.”
Disparity Between Industries in Leveraging Creator Media
The conversation reveals a significant disparity between industries such as beauty and consumer goods in their adoption of creator media. While beauty brands like L'Oréal and Estee Lauder have fully embraced creator partnerships, other sectors like confectionery and traditional consumer goods remain hesitant.
Reza Azad [13:08]: “Still outside of beauty and outside of like some culinary stuff, there’s less engagement than you would think.”
The Role of Measurement in Brand Hesitancy
Reza identifies measurement as a critical barrier preventing brands from fully investing in creator partnerships. Unlike the sophisticated measurement systems in digital ads and traditional TV, metrics for branded content on platforms like YouTube remain underdeveloped. The exception is the beauty industry, which has successfully integrated advanced measurement tools like Tribal into their marketing strategies.
Reza Azad [14:37]: “Measurement is still not where it is on TV. Outside of Tribal, there may be other companies trying it, but there isn’t a whole industry that’s bought in.”
YouTube’s Dual Nature: Social Product and Longer-Form Content
Reza explores YouTube's positioning, highlighting its dual nature as both a social platform and a venue for longer-form content akin to traditional TV. He contrasts YouTube's capabilities with those of platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and Pinterest, noting that while YouTube excels in certain areas, it lacks the seamless shopping integrations present on other platforms.
Reza Azad [21:19]: “They're the easiest to buy and get a campaign going. Kind of targeting in a very...”
Emerging Formats and the Potential for New MCNs
Looking ahead, Reza anticipates growth in scripted content, podcasts, and innovative advertising formats on YouTube. He suggests that while traditional MCNs may not make a comeback, the evolving needs of creators will open opportunities for new types of service providers to emerge, leveraging AI and automation to support digital talent.
Reza Azad [27:40]: “AI and automation are going to drive that faster... providers will step into that void and provide that service.”
Highlighting Unique Talent Collaborations
Reza shares examples of successful partnerships managed by Underscore Talent, including Logan Moffat (“the cucumber guy”) and iconic figures like the Undertaker. These collaborations demonstrate the breadth of opportunities within the creator economy, spanning diverse niches from culinary arts to professional wrestling.
Reza Azad [28:31]: “Logan Moffat... doing cucumber recipes inspired by his love of Asian, really Korean culture.”
Bridging the Gap Between Brands and Creators
In closing, Reza emphasizes the ongoing need for robust measurement systems and sophisticated strategies to bridge the gap between brands and creators. He remains optimistic about the future, expecting that continued innovation and strategic partnerships will drive deeper integration of creator media into mainstream advertising.
Reza Azad [30:22]: “It’s going to be fun to watch where all this goes.”
Reza Azad [02:00]: “We were very digitally forward in how we thought about the representation of our clients. Our representation was 360 and very traditional.”
Reza Azad [06:33]: “We built some technology around brand safety that worked really well. Our business was profitable and growing significantly.”
Reza Azad [13:08]: “Still outside of beauty and outside of like some culinary stuff, there’s less engagement than you would think.”
Reza Azad [14:37]: “Measurement is still not where it is on TV. Outside of Tribal, there may be other companies trying it, but there isn’t a whole industry that’s bought in.”
Reza Azad [21:19]: “They're the easiest to buy and get a campaign going. Kind of targeting in a very...”
Reza Azad [28:31]: “Logan Moffat... doing cucumber recipes inspired by his love of Asian, really Korean culture.”
Reza Azad [30:22]: “It’s going to be fun to watch where all this goes.”
This episode of Next in Media offers a comprehensive exploration of why many brands lag in leveraging creator partnerships. Through Reza Azad’s expertise, listeners gain valuable insights into the challenges of measurement, the importance of sophisticated ad networks, and the transformative potential of creator media. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, the dialogue underscores the necessity for brands to adapt and embrace innovative strategies to stay competitive.