The creator economy is still growing rapidly but that growth isn’t always a benefit to creators.

It’s already difficult to maintain a living as a full-time creator — even more so in recent years as new creators continue to flood the market. An estimated 3% of the U.S. population in 2022 was considered an influencer, up from about 2% in 2020, per influencer marketing platform Influencity — with places like New York (6.45% of its population considered an influencer) and California (5.42% of its population considered an influencer) leading in influencer density in the state.

Meanwhile, influencer agency Neoreach found that only around 15% of 2,000 creators surveyed in 2023 made more than $100,000 per year, and about 69% made less than $50,000 annually. Some 48% made less than $15,000 per year, per the company’s data. Given the competitive landscape as well as an uncertain economic market and the stability of platforms like TikTok, some creators are considering re-joining the traditional workforce for more stability.

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The number of retailers launching their own media, commerce, financial, travel (you get the point) networks continues to grow. At this point, more than 250 retail media networks exist globally, according to retail media intelligence platform Mimbi, and they’re all fighting for the same ad dollars.

To better compete, retail marketing networks have spent the past few months rebranding their names and logos, hosting events and retooling their offerings. At the same time, RMNs are moving beyond on-site search and display ad opportunities and opening up ad formats with creators and streaming services. All signs point to retail media networks wanting to be seen as all out media networks, according to the five RMN agency experts Digiday spoke with for this piece.

Related Insights

Retail Revolution

In the pitch for brand dollars, retail media networks turn to creators Read More

Last March, The Home Depot rebranded its retail media network Retail Media+ to Orange Apron Media at its inaugural infronts presentation (its response to upfront negotiations). Home Depot plans to host the second installment of its infronts presentation this year. Lowe’s made a similar move in August, rebranding from Lowe’s One Roof Media Network to Lowe’s Media Network and debuting a new logo with beefed up channels, like email and in-store audio.

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Independent agencies have discovered their latest edge over the big guys: better tech. 

They’re hiring CTOs, spinning up their own tech platforms, even reselling third-party tech they don’t own. Forget scale and leverage — the indie pitch now is agility, innovation and a tech playbook nimble enough to charm advertisers who don’t need (or want) the big agency industrial complex.

“If I were starting an agency tomorrow then one of the first roles I’d hire would be a chief technology officer,” said Robin Skidmore, founder and CEO of performance marketing agency Journey Further.

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The cost of ad space on streaming platforms has been dragged down in the last year, as early movers Netflix and Disney+ raced to keep up with Amazon’s aggressive pricing.

Now, the cost-per-thousand viewers (CPM) across those three streamers hovers between $38 to $40 (down from Netflix’s 2022 price of $60), low enough that small to medium business (SMB) advertisers can begin to consider them a viable alternative to local cable or regional linear TV.

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The Programmatic Marketer

Streaming TV ad rates are falling and Amazon’s the anchor Read More

Consider the example of Naturepedic, a premium mattress and sleepwear brand based in Cleveland, Ohio.

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This week’s Media Briefing looks at the different standalone newsletter subscriptions publishers are using to convert more readers to pay up for content.

• Publishers’ standalone paid newsletter offerings are helping to attract new subscribers.

• Amazon is testing a program to pay publishers for traffic, YouTube hits 1 billion monthly podcast listeners and more.

Standalone newsletter subscriptions help convert more readers

Publishers are using different kinds of standalone newsletter subscriptions to grow revenue and, in some cases, offer lower priced tiers to see if they can convert readers around popular products without the financial commitment to the more expensive full digital subscription.

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This Tactics + Insights guide, sponsored by Vistar Media, explores the opportunities that arise from integrating branding and performance marketing channels. As part of this report, Digiday and Vistar Media surveyed 113 marketing professionals to learn more about how they balance and prioritize budgets and objectives across both approaches.

Marketers face constant pressure to build brand recognition while driving bottom-line results. However, branding and performance goals are typically executed through separate campaigns and distinct strategies, escalating costs and leading to missed opportunities for optimization and cross-channel synergy.

This challenge is evident in a survey of 113 marketing professionals conducted by Digiday and Vistar Media. When asked about the biggest obstacles to achieving their marketing goals, the top responses were cost restrictions and siloed data operations.

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This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at the rise in sports-related content across streaming services as ESPN surrenders some sports rights.

• Streaming’s moneyball era
• YouTube’s subscription-lite plan, Disney’s and Warner Bros. Discovery’s bundle boost and more

Streaming’s moneyball era

Bleh. It’s definitely trite to describe the state of streaming businesses as being in the “moneyball” era. But it’s true (and I couldn’t think of a more original framing device).

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Commerce media is having a moment — and with a market expected to exceed $112 billion in 2025, according to the Winterberry Group, it’s easy to see why. But people keep mixing up retail media and connected commerce, casually swapping one buzzword for the other. They share some DNA, but conflating them is like mistaking the cashier for the entire store.

Here’s why commerce media is its own beast, and how marketers are finally waking up to it. 

What is connected commerce?

Connected commerce is the holy grail of seamless shopping, blending online and offline experiences so shoppers can browse and buy wherever they are. Think of it as a fully integrated ecosystem: tying together everything happening on the retailer’s site or app with the behind-the-scenes data and tech driving transactions, then layering that into the in-store experience right down to the cooler screens and promotional offers.

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Away from headlines discussing the fissures between government and Big Tech, particularly those with a trans-Atlantic bent, representatives of the digital ad industry are attempting to woo policymakers by underlining their economic impact on the region.

Google is poised to face fresh charges, this time for breaching the EU’s Digital Markets Act. The news comes hot on the heels of antitrust authorities in Germany investigating Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework. Both investigations’ primary concern is whether Apple and Google’s policies favor their own technologies over those of third parties. 

In Germany, authorities have asked if Apple’s ATT treats third-party data differently from its own, granting itself advantages in the ad market while enforcing stricter restrictions on competitors. Meanwhile, the pan-European investigation will reportedly probe if it favors its vertical search engines, such as Google Shopping, Google Flights, and Google Hotels, over rivals.

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Podcast subscription businesses are maturing. As podcasters continue to develop this revenue stream, they face a challenge that publishers have grappled with for years: churn.

It was a topic that came up at last week’s On Air Fest podcast business summit. More podcast subscription offerings are hitting annual milestones, meaning more data is coming in, and podcasters can start tracking how many subscribers they’re able to retain year over year.

Churn is “certainly becoming an increasing priority, particularly for some of our longer-lived subscriptions,” said David Stern, founder and CEO at Supporting Cast, Slate Group’s podcast subscription hosting business.

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Liner, a South Korean AI search engine, has been testing ads in the U.S. and Europe using a traditional cost-per-click model. But unlike Perplexity, which is working to attract advertisers with a cost-per-mille (CPM) model, Liner thinks CPC is more measurable.

The company is testing three formats: ads that show up above and below an AI-generated answer and another ad format called “generative ads” that shows up within an answer. Tests for ads began last year in the U.S., with generated ad tests since earlier this year.

“We had this kind of hypothesis,” Liner founder and CEO Luke Kim told Digiday. “In digital ads, there are search ads and display ads. Search ads are a good business because the conversion rate is high. Display ads are a good business because it has a lot of impressions and a lot of views because you can put banners anywhere. Maybe we can create some kind of third category, which is AI search ads.”

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There’s been no shortage of headlines in the last year detailing how X (formerly Twitter), under current owner Elon Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino, has had a fraught relationship with the advertising industry — sometimes resulting in legal swings taken at some of its players. 

Market research firm Forrester on Tuesday issued guidance to its clients on how advertisers ought to handle the pressures exerted by X, in a blog post authored by analysts Jay Pattisall and Kelsey Chickering. Titled “X-tortion: How Advertisers Are Losing Control Of Media Choice,” the analysts recommend three steps advertisers should take to maintain as much control in any such situation: 

• Lean into non-binding advertising commitments with X
• Explore principal media solutions for X upfront deals
• Require X to meet media performance thresholds

Pattisall said the post is meant to help with efforts advertisers have already put to work. “My understanding is that many advertisers and agencies have been quietly working in this direction,” he told Digiday. “So anything that we’re recommending is not to contradict that, but rather to support that.”

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Tina Iannacchino, vp of publisher partnerships, North America, Seedtag

As consumers shift from traditional cable to on-demand streaming services, advertisers can reach and engage targeted audiences more effectively than previously possible. However, the challenges of disparate log-level data and inconsistent data-sharing practices have stymied the potential of CTV. To fully unlock the power of CTV, stakeholders must embrace a more unified approach to data sharing and integration.

CTV advertising provides vast optimization, but only when data is shared effectively

The growth of CTV presents significant opportunities for advertisers, particularly in terms of economies of scale and attention. Advertisers can optimize their reach and efficiency by locating audiences across multiple types of inventory within the CTV ecosystem. However, this is only possible if data is shared effectively across platforms — the industry should create a standard to ensure this becomes the case. 

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In the midst of the retail media network boom over the past two years, retailers including Walmart, Amazon and Target, have increasingly started trying to monetize their creator networks and affiliate programs, according to six agency retail media executives Digiday spoke with for this piece. RMN execs see those monetization efforts as a play to take in more ad revenue, especially the brand marketing dollars retailers have spent the last year vying for.

These tactics are formalizing their respective influencer programs as the demand for influencer marketing grows — even as RMNs still face challenges in incremental measurement. Notably, influencer marketing has become a vital part of the media mix with marketing spend in the U.S. influencer marketing ecosystem expected to reach $9.29 billion this year, per eMarketer.

“The impact creators and influencers are having on marketing strategies can’t be ignored, and retail media networks are well aware of the potential,” David MacDonald, evp and head of retail and commerce experience at marketing agency Razorfish, said in an emailed statement to Digiday.

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Interested in sharing your perspectives on the media and marketing industries? Join the Digiday research panel.

Despite all the fragmentation in the space, despite the political uncertainty, despite the inconsistent and ever-changing algorithms, social media remains an irreplaceable piece of brands’ and retailers’ marketing strategies. And within those strategies, Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms remain the examples of social marketing success.

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Two years after YouTube launched the YouTube Shorts revenue share program in February 2023, creators are finding that their payouts for short-form content are still dwarfed by the ad revenue they can glean from long-form videos.

Six creators who have traditionally focused on long-form content told Digiday that their RPMs (revenue earned per 1,000 views) for YouTube Shorts were consistently beneath $0.20, compared to average RPMs of between $3 and $6 for their long-form content. It’s worth noting that long-form YouTube videos can carry multiple ads, which would help to boost a video’s RPM, whereas YouTube Shorts revenue is shared among creators based on viewership.

“This month, I had an idea for a long-form video, worked on it all night, and after being live for one week, it had made more money than an entire months’ worth of shorts,” said the “Magic: The Gathering” video creator Maldhound, who asked to keep his real name private to protect his personal information. He told Digiday that his average RPM for 20-to-30-minute long-form videos was roughly $5.50, compared to an average RPM of $0.18 for Shorts.

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Subscribe: Apple Podcasts • Spotify

In January, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission finalized an updated version of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. And for as much attention as the update may have received, it probably merits more.

“It is a big deal. And I think because there’s been so much other activity in the news, people haven’t really paid attention to it,” Debbie Reynolds, a privacy expert and founder, CEO and chief data privacy officer at Debbie Reynolds Consulting, said on the latest Digiday Podcast episode.

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Marketers have begun to turn back toward brand-building strategies in recent months. But that doesn’t mean they’re totally abandoning the ideas underpinning performance marketing.

One sign that’s the case is the rise of alt-measurement companies like System1, iSpot and EDO, each of which offers solutions that promise to help marketers track the impact of brand creative. Their testing solutions are used to optimize — and ultimately justify — the media and creative budgets put aside by advertisers for TV tentpole events like the Super Bowl.

Despite the turn back toward “market-leading creative” by brands such as Kimberly-Clark and Nike, marketing budgets across the industry have shrunk in recent years. Gartner’s 2024 CMO survey found that on average, marketing budgets represented 7.7% of overall company revenue, down from 10.5% in 2019. In short, marketers are pursuing brand-building strategies with weaker hands than they’ve had in previous years.

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Today (Feb. 25) marks the half-way point of the 75-day extension TikTok was afforded by President Trump.

While a lot’s happened over the past month, the entertainment platform still doesn’t seem any closer to knowing its fate in the U.S.

Which is why Digiday has checked in on the platform to see exactly where it’s at right now, with just 37 days left to go until the deadline.

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The marketing playbook continues to be rewritten. In an increasingly fragmented cultural landscape, that reevaluation is coming to celebrity partnerships which has marketers rethinking who they partner with and how.

Take Nike’s new partnership with Kim Kardashian, on a new women’s activewear brand called NikeSkims. The New York Times’ likened it to that of Michael Jordan and Nike, which long has been seen as the creme de la creme of brand partnerships and celebrity endorsements as it allowed Nike to not only enter a new market (basketball) but to cement its brand within culture. Could Kardashian’s shape wear brand be the next?

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