Future of TV Briefing: What publishers have to offer creators

Well, for two reasons: money and reach.

While creators are effectively their own media companies, small- and mid-sized creators may not have the resources to land big-budget deals with top brands, and creators, like media companies, are often looking to expand their audiences. Publishers can help on both fronts, based on on-stage interviews with executives from Caliber, Future and The Washington Post during last week’s Digiday Publishing Summit in Vail, Colorado.

“How can we help consumers find the trusted creators? And what problem can we address for advertisers?,” said Sara Kehaulani Goo, president of The Washington Post’s creator network.

“I think it’s mutually beneficial. We can get new audiences, but they can get in front of our audience,” said Rachel Zeilic, vp of creator and community at Future Creative, the British publisher’s creator arm.

The creators can also get in front of the publisher’s brand clients. They could get in front of brands without a publisher’s involvement. But a publisher can help to sweeten the deal. For example, Future adds ad inventory on its own properties as part of creator deal packages for brands, Zeilic said.

Ad dollars aren’t the only revenue opportunity on offer. Caliber, for example, is rolling out a video platform called SaySo for news creators to distribute videos outside of existing platforms like TikTok and YouTube, which are becoming more populated with AI-generated video. Caliber’s platform will charge people for access to videos, with creators receiving roughly 90% of the revenue, according to Caliber CEO and co-founder Ramin Beheshti.

“One of the things you learn when you work on the social media apps, it’s very difficult to make money. It’s incredibly difficult when you’re an individual creator on Instagram or TikTok,” Beheshti said.

There are other considerations, though. 

Future, for example, charges a fee when it lands a brand deal for creators in addition to the revenue it receives from its own ad inventory included in the deal. That’s a standard practice that effectively amounts to the finder’s fee an influencer agency or management firm would charge, but it’s a consideration for creators who may have their own managers or agents that could take an additional cut.

“We typically have a margin, and that could be blended between media and any hard cost. As I mentioned, it’s often not only the creator hard costs. It’s a paid amplification; so we will use our first-party data to boost from the influencers channel, from the brand’s channel, from our channels,” Zeilic said.

Another consideration would be IP ownership. This was a primary point of contention in the previous era of creator-publisher relationships. Seemingly in recognition of the earlier rift, The Washington Post has opted to allow creators in its creator network to retain ownership of their IP.

“Keeping that independence and owning their content was obviously important, but at the same time, we are co-publishing that content on our channels as well. And so we have that agreement to co-publish, co-produce. They keep the IP, but that content also is published to Washington Post owned-and-operated platforms as well. So it’s a real win-win,” said Kehaulani Goo.

What we’ve heard

“From a raw media market perspective, even in the medium term, (a three- or four-year time horizon), I don’t really see there being much of a much of an impact.”

— Agency executive on the potential advertising impact from Meta’s and YouTube’s court losses last week

Numbers to know

$1 million: How much money OpenAI was reportedly losing each day by operating Sora.

$8.99: New monthly subscription price for Netflix’s ad-supported tier.

$150 billion: How much total money people worldwide spent on streaming subscriptions in 2025.

What we’ve covered

CreatorIQ and Sprinklr bet they can solve creator measurement’s fragmentation problem:

• Influencer marketing platform CreatorIQ and AI-native customer experience management platform Sprinklr are pitching a one-stop shop for brands’ influencer marketing and social media management.
• Early testers include a leading global streaming platform, a multinational e-commerce conglomerate and a consumer software company.

Read more about creator measurement here.

AI influencer discovery tools are changing how agencies cast creators:

• Dentsu has been using an AI agent system dubbed “Creator & Trends Studio” (CATS), which aids influencer selection decisions.
• Independent influencer agency Later uses an AI system that matches campaign briefs with candidate influencers and models potential performance of content on social media based on historic engagement data.

Read more about AI creator discovery here.

Genius Sports opens up real-time live sports targeting to brands:

• Advertisers will be able to use Genius Sports’ live sports data to target ads on CTV and web display.
• The system pulls live sports data such as player-specific stats or scorelines from sports leagues like the NFL or NASCAR, and matches it with addressable live sports inventory.

Read more about real-time sports targeting here.

The Washington Post turns to creator-led video deals after layoffs:

• The Washington Post’s creator network has debuted its first creator-led video series, opening up a new revenue stream as it looks to keep content costs down following recent devastating cuts to its newsroom.
• The publisher is letting creators retain ownership of their IP, but the creators are responsible for using their own resources and equipment to produce videos.

Read more about publisher creator networks here.

What will Meta’s and YouTube’s legal losses mean for the marketplace?:

• Last week Meta and YouTube lost court cases that found the platforms liable for harming young users by using addictive tactics.
• One major agency holding company exec expects the losses to have little to no impact on Meta’s and YouTube’s advertising businesses.

Read more about platform legal liability here.

Inside The Daily Mail’s creator-led content playbook:

• Daily Mail publisher DMG Media has hired more than two dozen creators onto its payroll since it launched its creator-led social channels ****in October 2025.
• Between them, these creators produce 10 to 20 original long and short-form videos daily.

Read more about publisher creator strategies here.

What we’re reading

Netflix’s NFL slate:

The streamer is looking to double its NFL package from two to four games by adding a Thanksgiving Eve game and an international game, according to The Wall Street Journal.

AI slop the show:

An AI-generated TikTok series parodying “Love Island” — “Fruit Love Island” — averaged more than 10 million views across 21 episodes, suggesting that audiences aren’t so averse to AI-generated entertainment, according to The Wall Street Journal.

YouTube’s AI-generated title swaps:

YouTube is testing replacing video titles with AI-generated summaries, which would remove one of the primary controls for creators to people to click on their videos, according to Search Engine Land.

Netflix’s latest price hike:

The streamer’s price increases have outpaced inflation while the company’s total budget hasn’t changed all that much, according to Bloomberg.