Advertising Week Briefing: Why the creator economy will touch on most trends throughout the week

By Kristina Monllos • October 7, 2024 •

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The growth and maturity of the creator economy is impossible to ignore. It will surely dominate this year’s Advertising Week kicking off today in New York, according to marketers and media executives, who say that the fragmented media landscape continues to elevate the importance of the creator economy, which has become a reality for nearly every platform, even surprising platforms like LinkedIn, for marketers.

The conference hits a milestone year with the 2024 edition — it’s the 20th anniversary — and more than 17,000 advertisers, tech execs, marketers, creators and media execs are expected to attend (last year nabbed 15,000 attendees, according to the conference) which will again take place near Penn Station in Manhattan.

“It’s going to be all about the creator economy,” said Michael Vito Valentino, editor-in-chief of NowThis, who will take the stage on Monday to detail how marketers should be thinking about ads for the GenZ audience. “There’s this myth that Gen Z hates ads, that everyone hates ads. I don’t think that’s quite the case. They don’t hate ads, they hate crappy ads.”

Working with creators to build on viral moments they spur — rather than ignore them and simply commenting on those moments — is one way that marketers are trying to address younger generations with ads that will appeal to them rather than repel them. Whether or not that strategy works or can be employed by most brands, which still take time to get approvals for work and can’t manage the extreme trend cycle, is another question.

Rather than simply tapping creators for work they create and post for a brand, some say there’s been a resurgence of experiential marketing that’s directly tied to creators and that they expect to see more of that this year. Talent manager, co-founder and CCO of Panel, Josh “Caru” Glodoveza explained that the focus on creators isn’t just about brands getting “influencer marketing spin but that the spin is directed toward travel, doing stuff in-person, really being there and doing appearances and experimental events.”

With the growth and maturity of the creator economy, there continues to be more “rigor and scrutiny,” around the budgets dedicated to it, noted Evan Giordano, strategist, Mother New York, but it’s “become table stakes to have your brand’s presence in the marketplace to show up in a bunch of different touchpoints and creators are a critical component for that.”

The expectation isn’t just that Advertising Week chatter will be about creators but that creators will be part of the conversation in many of the other trends that dominate the week.

“The confluence of creators, brands and AI is a theme we’ll continue to see evolve,” wrote Brian Berner, Spotify’s head of global advertising sales and partnerships, in an email. “[It’s a theme] that speaks to larger industry shifts as brands and creators look to unlock efficiencies in order to reach more niche subcultures and communities.”

Here are a few other trends we’ll be watching:

Brand versus performance

Throughout this year, there’s been a debate of sorts between brand and performance. Marketers, continually tasked with doing more with less, have been pushed to focus on performance marketing. It makes sense: When you’re trying to prove that what you’re doing is working you’re going to lean on the tactics that give you quick data to show your CFO and hopefully get more ad dollars out of it. The problem, though, that’s started to arise is that you can’t just do performance and still maintain the brand. There has to be a mix of both. The debate around the pressures of managing both brand and performance — and how to balance both — will surely be a hot topic throughout the week, explained Daryl Giannantonio, head of strategy at VML.

Generative AI

While the “hype cycle has cooled,” according to VaynerX’s chief marketing officer Avery Akkineni, chatter about the actual applications of generative AI tools in marketing will continue to be commonplace. Rather than theoretical pitches about what generative AI can do or will do, the talk this year will focus much more on the rational applications as well as the guidance around what’s working and what isn’t when it comes to use of the tools. Of course, there will still be the roll outs of the latest offering primed to generate hype and focus (last week’s Facebook announcement of Movie Gen is one example) will still happen but the expectation is that the conversation will be much more grounded.

Commerce media

The rapid growth of retail media has continued to be a focal point for many marketers – so much so, that everything has seemingly become an ad network. That will continue to be the case at Advertising Week. It’s not just that retail media is growing quickly and scoring ad dollars but that clients are focused on creative approaches to so-called commerce media. Traditionally brand focused clients are looking to chat more about retail media this year, noted VML’s Giannantonio, as the growth of the channel has them looking at retail media through a new lens. Rather than seeing it just as another lower funnel ad buy they’re rethinking the dynamic to be more creative. Finding that creativity within commerce media will likely move the retail media hype forward.

Sports dominance
Throughout Cannes Lions, Sport Beach was the hot ticket of the event. That likely had to do with the outsized presence of athletes at the festival as marketers, agency execs and media professionals alike flocked at the chance to spot the Kelce brothers (among others) in person. While there may not be the same level of athlete attendance at Advertising Week, the continued importance of live sports in a more fragmented media environment will once again get marketers talking. It helps that athletes are becoming more creators themselves and that sports organizations are helping them do so. That’s creating more space for advertisers and, of course, that’s what advertisers want. Whether or not consumers do, well, that’s another story.

Elsewhere from Advertising Week:

Omnicom Media Group is trying to help establish clarity and perhaps even standards in the ad auction process of investing in media, which the network estimates at around $600 billion in global spend.