Dhar Mann is going to Tribeca X to prove CTV can do TV’s job — and that creators belong in the conversation

Those views have helped turn Mann into a regular fixture on the marketing conference circuit. This year, he has spoken at Adweek’s Social Media Week and Brand Innovators’ Creator Economy Summit. Next week, he will take the stage at Tribeca X before heading to Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, which kicks off on June 22.

“That very long cycle of traditional content just doesn’t work at the speed at which culture moves in today,” Mann told Digiday. “Historically, media companies have created content for gatekeepers and for distribution partners, and hope that audiences catch on, but in today’s world, creators are able to make content with the audience first, get instant results on how their content is performing.”

We’ve seen this across the creator economy: Spotter’s TV upfronts-style showcase pitched creators as the future of TV and mega creators like MrBeast’s original content has gotten him Amazon Prime partnerships and helped Beast Industries earn enough money that the company can turn down eight-figure brand deals.

Earlier this year, Mann was tapped by the NFL to be its “chief kindness officer” to create custom Super Bowl content. He also recently cut a deal with Samsung, which is hosting his videos on a Dhar Mann TV channel that he told Digiday is streaming across 100 million devices around the world. Soon, he’ll launch an original series exclusive to the platform.

These deals and marketing appearances are all part of Mann’s push to show just how valuable creator-led content is for brands, particularly in CTV, how their flexibility and durability are unparalleled, and how their distribution capabilities rival (and often best) any major studio.

“We build with the audience from the start, and we own our distribution and our data, so that allows us to move a lot faster,” Mann said. “We can test ideas in real time, and then we can scale on what works. We can go from script to screen in 21 days in our longest form division.”

Those TV-length episodes take about three weeks from conception to publication, and Mann says they can shorten that timeline if needed to as little as seven days because Dhar Mann Studios is composed of different divisions dedicated to creating different lengths and styles of content. 

This setup allows Mann’s studio to create content that better reflects cultural trends, because they can move so quickly, he noted. That speed is a major reason why he’s the first creator to sign a partnership with Samsung and also has a feature-length partnership with Fox, where DMS has co-produced five films with the studio to be distributed on the My Drama app. 

Mann says the speed at which these partnerships have taken place points to the creator economy’s evolution over the last few years. “Three years ago, platforms would come to talent or to creators and say ‘we want you to be in our videos’,” Mann said. “Then two years ago, we started seeing platforms wanting to license libraries from creators, or if there were original deals, platforms wanted full ownership, they wanted full control, which is a scary thing for most creators.” 

While that model is common for traditional media, creators own their IP and their distribution from the start, so it didn’t translate well to the creator economy. 

“Now I’ve seen more than ever, platforms saying ‘we’re more flexible on ownership terms, we actually want you to lead creative, you tell us what will work’,” Mann said.

And the deals that Dhar Mann Studios have signed are only giving him more freedom when it comes to creating content.

“We’ve been profitable since day one, we’ve never actually relied on brand partnerships to greenlight our content because our audience is so large — we get about 300 million long-form views every single week,” Mann said. Instead, those deals give the studio the ability to “take on bigger ambitions when it comes to content.”

For Mann and the brands he works with, the focus isn’t immediate ROI but long-term brand investment. He points to his NFL partnership as an example. 

“It’s not like that came with some big comp package, it was part of the NFL’s partnership with YouTube’s creator of the week — mostly it was just covering the cost of the actual campaign,” Mann explained. “There’s things that we do that help with the ROI, because we are obviously running a business at the end of the day, but there are lots of things that we do that we probably lose money on — it’s to build the mission and build the brand, and that’s more of a long-term play.”

According to Mann, the campaign got more than 100 million impressions and had a 94% positive sentiment. “Historically the NFL gets about a 65% positive sentiment,” he said.

Long-form creator content also offers brands a more seamless way to integrate ads into content, especially when creators have creative control. He turned to his Adobe partnership, where he brought in fellow creators to discuss their Adobe journeys while also helping smaller creators produce their own content to KPIs Mann said were “through the roof.”

Brands are certainly investing big in CTV (eMarketer reported in March that 70% of US advertisers plan to boost CTV spend by an average 17% this year) but is there a ceiling? It’s unclear how long marketers will continue to funnel money into this kind of content; whether audiences will keep watching — or if creators can ever really replace the 30-second spot. Meanwhile, CTV may offer TV-scale reach and premium environments, but advertisers still struggle to measure performance with the precision they expect from digital channels, leaving the ROI for advertisers unclear.

And yet, Mann’s outlook is, perhaps unsurprisingly, positive. He doesn’t see a ceiling for brand deals, thinks the lines between creator studio and traditional media producer have “disappeared,” and argues that a decentralized content ecosystem allows for platform diversity, even if he expects more platform mergers down the line. The one thing he does worry about is creators’ creativity.

“The biggest challenge will be a creator’s ability to stay relevant. The challenge with any creative person is that you want to stay in your lane because that’s where your audience is, but if you stay in the lane for too long, your audience starts to lose interest. And if you go to a new lane, your existing audience loses that connection,” Mann said. “The goal needs to be: how do you continue driving in your lane while expanding that lane at the same time?”