For creators, YouTube is still the top platform for making money.
No surprise there. It’s had a head start, fine-tuning its monetization model while others scramble to keep up. And with U.S. creators expected to rake in over $15 billion from social media alone this year, according to eMarketer, the stakes have never been higher. For platforms, courting creators isn’t just a strategy, its table stakes. And more often than not, the winning move comes down to cold, hard cash.
“If you asked 10 creators what platform they prefer for monetizing outside of brand partnerships, you’d probably get at least nine (if not all) saying YouTube,” said Keith Bendes, chief strategy officer at Linqia. “Interestingly though, if you asked 10 brands which platform they prefer for creator partnerships, you’d probably get nine (or all of them) saying Instagram or TikTok.”
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It’s been a little over two weeks since The Trade Desk issued its first-ever earnings miss, during which time its stock price dropped by almost 40%. However, at its flagship NYC partner event on Thursday, executives there outlined their priorities for the year ahead.
Joined on stage by the likes of The New York Times, NBC Universal, Paramount, and Warner Bros.Discovery (among others), the narrative heralded “the rise of the premium internet,” indicating its priorities on Madison Avenue for the year ahead.
In opening remarks, its commercial chief Tim Sims outlined The Trade Desk’s outlook on a new industry paradigm, one that’s free from Google’s influence. This paradigm includes the importance of authenticated audiences and a more efficient supply chain.
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The creator economy is taking a closer look at creator affiliate programs, giving them more scrutiny than before. The move follows creator pushback against Honey, a PayPal-owned browser extension, after reports broke late last year that the company was allegedly skimming creators’ affiliate revenue.
Honey, which finds coupon codes for online shopping, was exposed by YouTuber MegaLag for allegedly hijacking affiliate links from creators and using its own (even in cases where it wasn’t a better deal). This has since resulted in class action lawsuits from several creators including YouTubers Legal Eagle and GamersNexus, against the browser extension, claiming that Honey is taking affiliate revenue that belonged to creators.
It’s not just Honey. Other companies including Microsoft and Capital One are facing similar claims regarding their browser extensions through Microsoft Shopping and Capital One Shopping. Now creator and legal experts expect to see greater scrutiny to these affiliate partnerships and changes to influencer contracts and agreements to include more protections to mitigate risk — on both the brand and creator sides. While some creator agreements already include morals clauses or similar terms for exit deals if a brand engages in disreputable conduct, there’s more interest from creators today for those terms. PayPal, Microsoft and Capital One did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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Walmart’s ad business grew 27% year over year in 2024, according to the company’s recent earnings report, netting the retail giant $4.4 billion in global ad revenue for the year. That growth has come as Walmart has continued to evolve its ad offerings. This week, for example, the company announced a new Application Programming Interface (API) for Walmart Connect that allows ad tech platforms to create and manage tools for display campaigns — a move that buyers see as Walmart setting the stage to transition from managed service to self-service.
As Walmart’s retail media network matures, buyers see it as the leader of the pack among the bevy of retail media networks — aside from Amazon of course. Walmart is checking a lot of the boxes when it comes to what buyers want from retail media networks now, including adding more capabilities and tools, more measurement tracking and off-site ad units. Whenever Walmart adds streaming and CTV capabilities — something buyers expect it will do given its acquisition of smart TV maker Vizio — that will only help the retailer continue its current growth trajectory, according to four ad buyers Digiday spoke with for this piece.
“Walmart has been the one to watch,” said Amie Owen, chief commerce officer at IPG Mediabrands.
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The squeeze on agency holding companies keeps getting tighter. WPP’s year-end revenue slump, paired with lackluster outlook for 2025, is just the latest twist in an ongoing identity crisis for legacy ad giants. In fact, things have gotten so dire that holdco CEOs have mastered a specialized dialect, one designed to downplay their troubles while keeping investors from panicking.
Here’s a guide to what they say versus what they really (might) mean.
What they say: “We are in a period of transformation.” What they mean: “We have no idea how to fix this, but we’ll throw around words like ‘AI’ and ‘efficiency’ until the next earnings call.”
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The Mets are not rushing Ronny Mauricio back to the field this spring, more interested in ensuring he is healthy and will be in position to help the major league club at some point this season.
A week-long rout in Bitcoin worsened Friday, with the digital asset hitting an over 3-month low, reversing gains that followed the election of the U.S. President Donald Trump.
The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine is having a huge impact on cervical cancer prevention among young women, a U.S. government report published Thursday suggests.
Why it matters: The CDC report showing rates of precancerous lesions among women aged 20-24 screened for cervical cancer from 2008-2022 fell by about 80% comes days after Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who once called the HPV vaccine "dangerous and defective," was confirmed as health and human services secretary.
Screenshot: CDC
During questioning from senators ahead of his confirmation, Kennedy said he was divesting his financial interest in legal challenges against Gardasil, an HPV vaccine made by Merck.
By the numbers: Human papillomavirus is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the U.S. and the virus is responsible for some 10,800 cases of cervical cancer every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The bottom line: The CDC findings add to growing global evidence that the uptake vaccine is helping to cut cases of cervical cancer.
Cancer-prevention researcher Jane Montealegre told AP the rise in uptake of the safe, effective HPV vaccine can be credited for the substantial drop in precancerous lesions.
"This should reassure parents that they're doing the right thing in getting their children vaccinated against HPV," added Montealegre, of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.
"Excited to share I'm bringing my designer brain and start-up spirit into the government," Joe Gebbia wrote in an X post on Thursday.
Samir Hussein via Getty Images
Joe Gebbia is a cofounder and former chief product officer of Airbnb.
On Thursday, Gebbia said he had joined Elon Musk's government efficiency commission, DOGE.
Gebbia also sits on Tesla's board.
Joe Gebbia, the cofounder and former chief product officer of Airbnb, said on Thursday that he would be a part of Elon Musk's government efficiency commission, DOGE.
"Excited to share I'm bringing my designer brain and start-up spirit into the government," Gebbia wrote in an X post on Thursday.
Gebbia wrote in his post that his first project at DOGE will be to improve the "slow and paper-based retirement process" for federal employees. Musk had previously complained about how retirement applications were being processed manually and using paper records.
Musk told reporters at a press conference in the Oval Office on February 11 that he was told that only a maximum of 10,000 federal employees could retire every month because of the manual process.
"Well, because all the retirement paperwork is manual, on paper. It's manually calculated then written down on a piece of paper, then it goes down a mine," Musk said.
"Yeah, there's a limestone mine where we store all the retirement paperwork," Musk added.
Musk was referring to a converted mine in Boyers, Pennsylvania. The mine was originally owned by US Steel and has been used to store government records since the 1960s.
The Office of Personnel Management's then-chief information officer, Guy Cavallo, said in an interview with Federal News Network last year that it would take "many years" to replace the paper-based system with an online platform they were testing.
"Since leaving my operating role at Airbnb in 2022, I've been looking for the next digital design challenge. And I can think of few more important ones than volunteering to improve the user experience within our government," Gebbia wrote in his X post on Thursday.
Gebbia's post came attached with a video from the OPM, which said that the agency had processed an entire retirement application digitally for the first time. Chuck Ezell, the OPM's acting director, said in the video that the application was processed within a week. The process would take 64 days on average if done manually.
"If anyone else in good standing wants to help design beautiful, user-friendly digital products, reach out," Gebbia added.
"Thanks!" Musk wrote in response to Gebbia's post.
Representatives for DOGE did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
This is the first time Gebbia has confirmed his involvement with DOGE. On February 13, The New York Times reported that Gebbia was set to join DOGE, though Gebbia declined to comment when approached by the Times.
It is unclear if Gebbia will be paid for his work at DOGE. Earlier this month, the White House said that Musk is a "special government employee" and isn't paid for his service.
Gebbia has a good relationship with Musk and has been a Tesla board member since 2022. In June, Gebbia told Reuters in an interview that Musk had discussed buying a home from his startup, Samara.
On January 19, a day before President Donald Trump's inauguration, Gebbia said in an X post that he had voted for Trump even though he had been voting for the Democrats his "whole life." The Democratic Party "aren't the same party they used to be," Gebbia wrote.
"Like your fashion sense, they've lost their way. Hopefully they'll make an effort to win people like me back," he added.
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