Supported by
Creator businesses are often thought of as risky: Income can be unpredictable, talent can get canceled and most rely on algorithms they don’t control to reach audiences.
Figuring out how risky these businesses are is a challenge. But it’s not impossible, according to Frank Cooper, the CMO of Visa.
“We’ve seen it enough times now, particularly for creators who cross a certain level of scale. There’s enough consistency in outcomes where I think [risk] can be evaluated,” he told us on the latest episode of Scalable.
Cooper pointed to various factors to consider, including follower count, engagement and the consistency of revenue streams over time.
Evaluating risk is critical for banks, payment networks and lenders, but also for brands who work with creators. Visa sits at an interesting intersection between the two: The company provides financial products for creators, but also invests heavily in influencer marketing.
“We don’t look at creators purely as a marketing channel, but as small businesses,” Cooper said.
Unlike many brands who still have siloed approaches to influencer marketing, Visa allocates a certain portion of its media budget to the creator economy as a whole. Some of that budget goes toward individual creators, another portion goes to platforms that support creators and some goes to products for creators to scale their own businesses. That includes everything from educational resources to Visa’s new debit card for TikTok Live creators in the UK.
Visa has doubled the company’s investments in creators over the past year, Cooper said at the first Scalable Summit last week. “I hope to double it again,” he said.
But unlocking more investments can be challenging, especially for a legacy brand in a highly-regulated industry like financial services. For one, Visa has to be particularly careful in who it chooses to partner with.
Cooper has two pieces of advice: Screen celebrities and creators as thoroughly as possible, but also have a thick skin. “Something is going to go wrong,” he said. But “if you look at it from the fan perspective, the consumer perspective, it's not that deep to them in most cases.”
He also said that working with a larger number of creators can mitigate some of the risk. “If one creator goes left, it’s easier for us [and the public] to digest that.”
Like all brands, Visa also needs to prove to the CFO that its investments in creators will move the needle. “The outcomes that really matter in our world are payment volume and share of wallet,” Cooper said. “If influencer marketing is not moving that, I won’t do it.”
Cooper, who previously was CMO of PepsiCo, BlackRock and BuzzFeed, also discussed how marketing has—and hasn’t changed—and teased Visa’s plans for the FIFA World Cup.
Tune into the full episode below, on Spotify or anywhere you get your podcasts.
YouTube Originals Are Back (Sort Of)
YouTube wants advertisers to buy creator content like they do TV.
On Wednesday, YouTube unveiled a slate of exclusive shows from creators such as Jesser, Alex Cooper, Kareem Rahma, Dude Perfect and Julian Shapiro-Barnum during Brandcast, its annual Upfront presentation.
As we’ve previously argued, YouTube needs to revisit original or exclusive content in order to capture linear TV ad dollars.
This is a different approach from YouTube Originals, which the company shuttered in 2022. Instead of funding shows, YouTube is now promoting content that creators are already producing themselves, such as the second season of Cooper’s “Unwell Winter Games” and Rahma’s “Keep the Meter Running.”
But the end result is the same: By positioning these creator shows as exclusives, YouTube now has a series of pre-planned, premium creator-led content it can pitch to big advertisers the way traditional TV networks do. And that’s exactly what YouTube is now doing.
Still, these shows represent just a tiny fraction of content on YouTube. That means there’s only so much ad and sponsorship inventory available, so it will be difficult for YouTube to replicate this strategy at scale.
For example, a recent Spotter report found that “creator TV” accounts for less than 0.02% of all social video in the US. Spotter defined “creator TV” as episodic videos that are at least 22 minutes long, have a predictable release schedule, average at least 100,000 views per episode and are primarily viewed on TV screens.
The good news is that as more digital—and traditional—media studios are now developing YouTube channels and content, there’s plenty of room for YouTube to expand this program and bring in more ad revenue.
Today in TikTok
TikTok announced new advertising products at its annual TikTok World event. Here are some of the most interesting ones:
TopReach Creative Sequencing allows advertisers to take over the first two ad placements on the feed. This builds on TikTok’s previous efforts to provide advertisers with more premium, TV-like placements as it continues to go after TV ad budgets.
Branded Buzz allows advertisers to put out calls for creators to create content around their briefs. TikTok is pitching it as a quick way to generate attention on the app. It sounds suspiciously like YouTube’s Open Call, which was criticized for soliciting work from creators without guaranteeing payment.
TikTok Growth Max allows advertisers to target audiences watching microdramas and playing minigames and drive them to their experiences. TikTok has been pushing hard into microdramas lately and it even recently released a standalone app called PineDrama.
The Round Up
LinkedIn launched a new feature called Advice Sessions, which allows creators to offer paid one-on-one consultations that can be scheduled and managed directly on their profiles. The feature seems to be taking on startups such as Intro, which offer similar services.
Instagram launched a new feature and app called Instants, where users can send disappearing photos to close friends or other people who follow them back. The feature, which is basically a copycat of Snapchat, can be accessed in the right corner of the Instagram inbox.
Twitch expanded access to monetization and community tools to all streamers globally, though they still need to qualify for Twitch Affiliate or Partner status to receive payouts. Affiliate requirements include having at least 25 followers and streaming on four different days.
Read our recent interview with Twitch CEO Dan Clancy here, covering everything from livestreaming’s recent resurgence to the rise of paid clipping.
Deals, Deals, Deals
BuzzFeed, once valued as high as $1.7 billion, sold for $120 million to media entrepreneur and TV producer Byron Allen, who will also take over as CEO. Allen’s show “Comics Unleashed” will replace “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on CBS later this month. Jonah Peretti, BuzzFeed’s founder who was the most recent CEO, will stay on as president of BuzzFeed AI.
Nectar Social, a startup offering AI agents for brands to manage their social media, raised $30 million in Series A funding led by Menlo Ventures and its Anthology Fund, which was created in partnership with Anthropic. The startup was founded in 2023 by sisters Misbah and Farah Uraizee, who both used to work at Meta.
Hard Carry Media, Stephen Curry’s digital media company, and Erick Peyton’s Unanimous Media have formed a joint venture to launch a new sports content platform. The company will develop, produce and distribute creator-led content on YouTube and other social platforms. Content will focus on NIL athletes, sports culture and other topics, with Curry making special appearances in some projects.
Pocket.watch, a kids and family-focused creator media company, partnered with YouTube gaming channel Maizen to expand its popular “JJ & Mikey” animated characters to publishing, consumer products and original series.
Soundbite
“I told our teams, ‘Assume there’s no search.’ You have to have your businesses planned as if search is zero.”—Roger Lynch, CEO of Condé Nast
Condé Nast brands, including Vogue and The New Yorker, are preparing for a future where search is expected to be a “single-digit percentage of our traffic,” Lynch said in an interview with tech podcast TBPN.
He said publishers need to have an authoritative brand, strong niche or direct relationships with their audience, otherwise they’ll be fighting this new AI era “all the way down.”
A Message from Cannes Lions
Join us at LIONS Creators this summer—the home of the creator economy at Cannes
Lions—to hear from your favourite creators on how to scale your business and unlock
commercial opportunities. Find out who’s on the 2026 programme.
LIONS Creators | 22-26 June 2026 | Cannes, France
By the Numbers
A single Spotify stream generates on average 1.5x more consumption time than a YouTube view of the same episode, according to new data from Podstock, which analyzed thousands of video podcast episodes released simultaneously on Spotify and YouTube. The trend was consistent in 95% of the episodes it analyzed.
These findings bode well for Spotify, as they suggest that shows on the platform are effectively reaching their core audiences. More time spent also means more value for advertisers.
But there’s one catch. The data also showed that as podcasts are pushed out to new audiences, average time spent per stream decreases, including on Spotify. That makes sense: New listeners will likely sample a show before committing to it.
For podcasters and advertisers focused on audience growth, that means time spent may be an incomplete measure of success. Given that YouTube reportedly has more podcast viewers than Spotify has total users, advertisers and podcasters looking to build reach and awareness still need to be there.
Talent Tracker
Ainsley Rossitto is the first head of podcasts at newsletter publisher Beehiiv. Most recently, she was vice president of digital strategy and operations at Paramount. Beehiiv, which hosts this newsletter, has been expanding its podcasting tools.
Leah Chaney was named director of influencer at CYLNDR Studios, a design and production studio that works with brands and agencies. Most recently, Chaney was director of creator partnerships at The Team, formerly known as Wasserman.
Zhanna Kutsenkova joined Anthropic to launch a performance influencer program. The hiring comes as Anthropic, which is gaining momentum with its Claude chatbot, has been expanding its internal influencer marketing team.
James Zimmerman is now a strategic partnerships lead at OpenArt, an AI art generator. Previously, he was a senior manager of B2B partnerships at TikTok.
