Podcast Summary: The GaryVee Audio Experience

Episode: "How to Measure Creative Success in 2026"

Date: January 12, 2026
Host: Gary Vaynerchuk

Overview

In this forward-thinking episode, Gary Vaynerchuk (GaryVee) breaks down how the landscape of social media and marketing has irreversibly shifted from “social” to “interest” media. He challenges the room of practitioners, marketers, and agency professionals to embrace a new era where creative output, not just math and ad dollars, drives success. The discussion covers the evolution in how creative is measured, tactics for performance and brand building, the essential platforms for growth, and the increasing importance of feeding AI language models (LLMs) with original creative content.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Shift from Social Media to "Interest Media"

• Declining value of follower count:
  "Every hour that's going by how many followers you have is declining in importance...The creative is finding the audience." [00:00]
• Platforms like TikTok now serve content to people interested in the subject, not just followers, representing a "profound shift."
• This elevates organic social creative to the core of the marketing mix.

2. Measuring Creative Success

• Organic creative’s new primacy:
  It’s now possible to truly measure creative performance by posting content natively across platforms and evaluating its organic reach before ever paying to promote it.
• "You can actually measure creative and that's because you can post all of your content on the seven social networks. And the reach that that creative will get organically is something you can measure." [02:44]
• Stop using paid media to prop up poorly-performing creative.

3. Tension Between Math (Performance) and Art (Creative)

• Many marketers are addicted to quantitative measurement, fearful of investing in anything not instantly measurable, shifting them closer to being "salespeople" than marketers.
• Balance is key:
  "The math crew is...delusional cause they don't understand the value of the art... It's not red or blue, it's firmly purple. And you have to ask yourself where you're at." [10:49]
• The best results come from an “and” approach: strong creative validated by strong numbers.

4. Platform Prioritization for 2026

• Google Shorts: "In the last week I've decided for myself that Google Shorts has become the most important social platform for me." [05:14]
• TikTok holds the most advanced algorithm, but its landscape is changing rapidly.
• Don’t sleep on “Facebook Blue,” Snapchat Spotlight (for ages 15-25), and LinkedIn (especially for B2B/SaaS).
• Always be scanning platforms (even Pinterest) for new opportunities. "It's an everyday thing for me." [16:44]

5. The Emergence of LLMs & AI Search

• Feeding LLMs with your creative now directly impacts discoverability in future AI-driven search.
• "You have to start feeding these LLMs, these chatbots...every face I'm looking at right now should be posting three pieces of creative organically a day on Google Shorts just for the LLM in three years." [12:22]
• Prepare now for shifts comparable to what Google did to the Yellow Pages.

6. Creative Production and Agency Best Practices

• Invest disproportionately in creative output versus media spend.
  "If you have $2 million in marketing and only 80,000 go into the creative and the other one nine goes into media...if you're good at the creative...that will crush your 2 million at 100,000 1.9." [18:40]
• Use live social shopping as both a sales and creative-production tool.

7. Team Structures and Organizational Change

• Most have performance teams and brand teams, but the lines should be blurred; creative and media must operate holistically.
• "Everyone's got the performance team. And then if they are big enough, they have the brand team. Everybody has media and creative separate. It's all just one thing." [12:56]

8. Tactical Q&A and Actionable Guidance

Segmenting and Creating for Niche Audiences

• Target ever-narrower market segments for higher creative resonance. "The more narrow you go, the more when you think of the creative you're gonna make for it, the more that creative is gonna have teeth." [08:01]
• Repeated: Follower count doesn’t matter; it's about the creative being algorithmically matched with interests.

Scaling, Measuring, and Iterating

• Test everything organically before investing paid dollars.
  Moderator: "How do you scale paid social? You need to test everything organically first?...Launch new ads, launch new offers every day."
  GaryVee: "Yes, that's right. That's what you have to do." [29:10]
• Double down and scale what works; iterate for performance after organic validation.

Creative and AI

• Embrace all types: AI-generated images/videos, human content—do both and learn from the results.
  "The answer to that question is AI images. AI video. Human images. Human video. It's just always and." [32:13]

Budgeting For Marketing (Practical Example)

• For companies relying heavily on organic, invest more in creative, try live social shopping, and scale up spend on what shows organic results first.
  "Marketing to me is the offense of a business..." [30:10]

Agency Advice

• Agencies must own both creative and media for accountability.
• Performance marketers: creative is now measurable for the first time; use organic results to guide spend.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "You're a salesperson, not a marketer. You must. By the way, I love selling...But sales is what you do and rely on when you're not good at branding." — Gary Vee [09:08]
• "It is fucking asinine to spend $1 of media to amplify a piece of creative that has not been validated by an AI algorithm in a social network." — Gary Vee [12:06]
• "The fact that we're measuring creative as an added value for just posting organically is bananas." — Gary Vee [24:43]
• “If your ad and creative isn't good, you're leaving the platform... I actually predict that these platforms won't even take our ad money if the creative's not good enough...That's how much they want to keep people on.” — Gary Vee [25:59]
• "Do not be in the convincing business. Be in the conviction business." — Gary Vee [38:33]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00 — Decline of follower importance; shift to interest media; measuring creative organically
• 03:44 — Moderator: Business needs ROI; GaryVee: Measuring creative, Google Ads getting expensive
• 07:40 — Moderator: Authentic content, iteration vs. big swings; GaryVee: Niche segmentation, interest media repeat
• 10:49 — Math vs. art; finding the "purple" middle; creative validation
• 12:56 — Agency/brand team setup; need for structural change
• 15:14 — Ranking platforms: Google Shorts, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, LinkedIn
• 17:55 — Agency advice: own both media and creative; budget allocation logic
• 21:03 — Audience Q&A: Ad structure, performance vs. marketing, and blending teams
• 27:35 — How to get better at the art side as a non-creative; learning or hiring
• 29:10 — Rapid fire: scale paid by organic testing; the value of competition
• 30:05 — Budgeting for small brands; live social shopping for services
• 32:13 — AI vs. human content: It's always "and"
• 35:18 — Expanding agency offerings; adaptation in the age of AI
• 35:26 — Reddit strategy; feeding LLMs; importance of Google Shorts
• 38:15 — Organic social’s ROI, conviction vs. convincing, actionable budget/creative allocation

Takeaways

• Creative is now measurable at scale, and that measurability is changing the equation for marketers and agencies alike.
• Organic content’s role has exploded and should lead the strategy—use organic results to guide media spend, not the other way around.
• Interest media has replaced social media; content finds its own audience, not the follower count.
• Generative AI & LLMs require a feeding strategy: Content that performs today builds your brand’s future discoverability in AI-driven search.
• Invest in creative, test widely, iterate relentlessly, and stay agile—platform best practices change constantly.
• Hybridize teams, blur lines between creative and performance, and be ready to pivot. Embrace the “and.”

Gary’s signature mix of bluntness, actionable strategy, and forward vision makes this episode a must-listen for marketers, founders, and agencies looking to thrive in a landscape where creative and data are more entwined than ever.