Bye-Bye Brand Safety

Creators aren’t the hottest thing in marketing anymore. 

Many of you may disagree, especially if you were just at Cannes Lions. But hear us out: No longer being the shiny new toy is actually not a bad thing.

That’s how Jasmine started her keynote presentation at the Association of National Advertisers’ Digital and Social Media conference in Los Angeles last week.

The annual event brought together senior marketing leaders from major companies including FOX, Disney, Snap and Kimberly-Clark, which has been expanding into influencer marketing for products like Kleenex and Viva paper towels. This year, creator Adam W., who has over 21 million YouTube subscribers, was also a speaker.

Here are three charts from Jasmine’s presentation that resonated with the audience, including why brand safety might not matter as much anymore.

Even the smallest creators now treat content creation like a real business and career path. Meanwhile, top creators are now operating like small businesses, with employees, teams, multiple product lines and revenue streams. Many have also brought on C-level executives, often from traditional media, marketing and finance backgrounds.

Those creators need these execs for more than just freeing up time to create content. As these businesses have grown, so have the demands—and the scrutiny. Just take the turmoil at Alex Cooper’s Unwell and MrBeast’s Beast Industries. Few creators know how to navigate such sensitive situations, or even more mundane business dealings, effectively.

While almost all creators say they have a good handle on things like social media management, content creation, audience growth and marketing, fewer are confident in their skills in business strategy, financial management and contract negotiation, according to November 2025 data from Visa and Morning Consult.

Hiring and employee management, along with tax and legal compliance, are the areas where creators feel least confident. That tracks with conversations we’ve had with everyone from creator Jon Youshaei, who launched a tax firm for creators last year, to Whalar Group Co-CEO Neil Waller who believes hiring the right people will be one of the biggest challenges creator businesses face as they grow.

Being a more mature industry doesn’t eliminate challenges. Instead, it can introduce new issues or heighten existing ones. Today, the No.1 roadblock brands face with influencer marketing is difficulties measuring performance, cited by 26% of US brand marketers in an October 2025 survey by CreatorIQ. But other issues, including speed, navigating AI and creator vetting weren’t far behind, all cited by roughly one-fifth of respondents.

What was most telling in this survey, however, was that 69% of brands were somewhat or strongly in favor of fully automating influencer marketing operations. To us, that feels more like a knee-jerk reaction to the myriad of challenges marketers face, rather than a real desire to cut humans entirely out of the process. It’s easy to say that you want a machine to handle it all when you’re frustrated!

That also explains the mismatch between that sentiment and how marketers felt about automating specific influencer marketing tasks, especially those that require human judgment and understanding: 39% of marketers in the survey said AI shouldn’t fully replace managing creator relationships, for example.

One long-standing issue that has become less important over the years is brand safety. Last year, just 10% of US enterprise marketers considered brand safety to be a challenge in influencer marketing, down from 32% in 2024 and 50% in 2023, according to data compiled from Linqia’s annual surveys.

That doesn’t mean that brands are playing it less safe, exactly. Many brands now simply have established partners or robust processes to vet creators. But brand safety concerns have also given way to other considerations like brand fit or suitability, meaning whether a creator is right for a specific brand and its audience. (It’s worth noting that creators are increasingly making similar judgment calls about brands, too!)

It also suggests that brands have realized that they can’t control everything and that people probably have a higher tolerance for mistakes than many originally thought. Here’s how Visa CMO Frank Cooper put it in an interview with Scalable: “Something is going to go wrong.” But, he added, “if you look at it from the fan perspective, the consumer perspective, it's not that deep to them in most cases.”

The political environment has also likely contributed to a shift in attitudes toward brand safety.

Under the second Trump administration, many social platforms have adjusted their approaches and brands have realized that politics are now hard to avoid. We dug into this with former CNN anchor turned YouTuber Don Lemon last week, who argued that President Trump “inserts himself into everything” and “takes over whatever is in the zeitgeist.”

In a recent podcast episode, we also break down the state of influencer marketing with more charts and data—and explain what it means for brands, platforms and creators. Available now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple or anywhere else you get your podcasts!

The European Union plans to propose a law that will restrict children’s access to social media. It comes amid a growing push around the world to ban social apps for teens, which kicked off with Australia last year. Read more about what’s at stake for creators and companies here. We also went deeper on this in this podcast episode.

YouTube rolled out a new feature that lets creators organize their videos into seasons and episodes. This comes as the obsession around shows on social media reaches a fever pitch and as more people are treating YouTube like TV. The feature is only available to creators in YouTube’s partner program. 

🛍️Phia, an AI shopping app co-founded by Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, is under fire after a Bloomberg investigation found that the company earned commissions and took credit for sales that it didn’t actually generate using a practice known as “cookie stuffing.” We liked TBPN’s explanation of the situation. 

The startup recently generated attention for its unusually large group of celebrity backers, which it announced with a Coachella-style lineup graphic. The list includes actors, athletes and creators such as Khloe Kardashian, Alix Earle, Eileen Gu and Sydney Sweeney. A Phia spokesperson blamed a bug and told Bloomberg the issue has since been resolved.

Wheelhouse, an entertainment and media company, is partnering with kids and teens social media platform Zigazoo on a new studio to develop content from young creators. It will include live events, consumer products and other types of content. 

• Well, that was quick! Following widespread criticism, Meta removed a feature that let users generate AI images using content from public Instagram accounts just three days after it launched. “We’ve heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it’s no longer available,” a Meta spokesperson said.

• Instagram and Facebook’s “addictive design” have put Meta in breach of EU digital laws, according to a preliminary report from the European Commission. Meta, which could face fines if the allegations are confirmed, told press it “disagrees” with the preliminary findings.

TikTok announced that brands can now publish their own microdramas and amplify them through a new ad product called TikTok Growth Max. 

Character.ai, an AI chatbot service where people talk to customized characters, launched three microdramas. The shows feature AI characters that users can chat with, ask questions or role-play new scenes with. In the future, the company wants to allow users to create their own microdramas.

Vigloo, a South Korean microdrama app, launched the beta version of Vigloo Studio, an AI tool that allows creators to make microdramas. Creators buy credits to generate images and videos from text or image prompts, with prices starting at $15.

That’s the estimated percentage of long-form LinkedIn posts that are likely generated by AI, according to new data from Pangram, an AI detection company. For short-form posts, the number drops slightly to 30%.

LinkedIn had the highest average among the platforms the firm tracked from April to June, including X, Reddit, Substack and Medium.

For its part, LinkedIn has finally started cracking down on AI slop. And thank goodness… Our feeds have suffered enough AI-generated, faux thought leadership! 

A Message from Open Influence

AI search now decides which brands get discovered, and roughly 85% of brand mentions in AI answers come from third-party creator content, not corporate websites. Open Influence, the creator marketing leader, breaks down how brands win this new visibility race in their latest trend report.

Read it here.

ABC’s Shark Tank is bringing in the big guns: It’s tapped top creators MrBeast and “Diary of a CEO” podcast host Steven Bartlett to be guest sharks this season. They’ll join Mindy Kaling and Sara and Erin Foster, the co-founders of clothing brand Favorite Daughter. 

Dude Perfect and Good Good Golf, a sports media company that started on YouTube, are partnering on products, events and other content. For example, the two companies will start selling co-branded kids and adult hats. Under the terms of the deal, Good Good will license Dude Perfect’s brand in exchange for royalty payments. Last year, Good Good raised $45 million in funding. 

Fidji Simo is leaving OpenAI due to health reasons, but will remain a part-time advisor. Simo was the company's CEO of AGI Development. Before that, she was CEO of Instacart and head of the Facebook app. 

Jacob Moncrief was promoted to president at Mythical, the entertainment company started by YouTubers Rhett & Link. Previously, he was COO. Brian Flanagan, Mythical’s most recent president, left the company last month to launch a new creator economy business.  

Rema Vasan is now the global president of social and creator for WPP Open X, an agentic marketing platform. Most recently, she was head of North America business marketing at TikTok. 

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