Yahoo takes cues from platforms as it offers more editorial control to creators

The OG internet giant is looking to secure its piece of the creator economy, and it’s brought on big-name creators such as Nick DiGiovanni to help accomplish the task. Yahoo now has 135 lifestyle-focused creators in its program. 

In June 2025, Yahoo Creators generated its highest revenue and engagement since launch, according to a Yahoo representative, though they declined to share specific numbers.

Through its creator program, Yahoo is evolving from its roots as a content aggregator and editorial publisher to more of a distribution platform for individual creators. The program allows creators to publish original content directly on Yahoo’s site and access tools like ad monetization — with a 50/50 revenue split — affiliate commerce opportunities and audience analytics, similar to platforms like Substack or YouTube. Each creator has a dedicated moderator from Yahoo’s creator support team that gives feedback and vets content in real-time after it’s published. Yahoo’s desktop and mobile sites had roughly 233 million unique visitors in May 2025, according to numbers shared by Comscore.

While it may sound like Yahoo is positioning itself more as a social platform for creator content distribution, Kat Downs Mulder, gm and svp at Yahoo News, pushed back on that idea. She emphasized that content from publisher syndication partners remains crucial to Yahoo News, alongside the growing creator-driven content found on the site. Yahoo sees the creator program as a way to expand its role as an aggregation platform. Currently, there’s a waitlist of creators who want to get into the program.

“We think of [our network] as giving [audiences] a need-to-know, the top news — which we have a lot of from publishers. And then we have this want-to-know — things that are just interesting and intriguing — about different topics that matter in your life. We have some of that content from publishers, but we also increasingly have that content from creators,” Downs Mulder said.

The program is primarily geared toward written content, but allows creators to embed audio and video into their posts and includes creators such as DiGiovanni — the Masterchef finalist-turned top food creator — who are primarily known as video personalities.

Creator Anika Gandhi, who built her audience sharing woodworking videos on Instagram and TikTok, has been working with Yahoo for about a year, writing articles about do-it-yourself projects and home improvement. “During this time, I have seen growth in my audience as my work has reached new readers,” she said. “The credibility of having my projects featured on Yahoo has helped establish me as an authority in the DIY and woodworking space.” Yahoo declined to share individual page view counts for specific creator articles, but creators have said that high-performing articles can draw over 300,000 views, according to reporting by Bloomberg in February. 

Publishers are facing mounting pressure, due to traffic challenges from AI and algorithm changes in search, as well as younger generations shifting their media consumption habits to social and video platforms. In response, many are turning to creators to reach the growing creator economy pie — and the advertiser revenue that comes with it. 

Publishers like The Independent, Fast Company, Inc and Morning Brew are among those that have recently launched creator programs and creator-led initiatives, as they try to capitalize on audiences’ appetite for creator and personality-led content, along with the advertiser revenue it brings. More ad spend will go to creator content than professional media by next year, according to a forecast by marketing research center WARC. Globally, 51% of advertising will go to traditional media content this year, down from 72% in 2019.

“Publishers are realizing that creator ‘inventory’ is a strategic asset,” said Evan Wray, co-founder of influencer monetization platform Mavely and president of influencer marketing company Later.

Yahoo’s creators program gives the publisher more socially native content that it can sell ads against and attract users, Wray said. It can also tap into the built-in social distribution from creators, who are likely to cross-promote their content on other large social platforms.

Yahoo’s 50/50 ad revenue split with creators mirrors other platforms, like YouTube and Facebook, which pay 55 percent of video ad revenue to creators, or TikTok, whose TikTok Pulse ad revenue program gives creators a 50 percent cut. 

So far, creators participating in Yahoo’s program — who have access to a dashboard displaying metrics such as viewership and engagement — say they are pleased with the results. Travel writer Alesandra Dubin told Digiday that the revenue share had increased her income “significantly,” although she did not share specific numbers, and praised the lack of editorial control exerted by Yahoo over her content. 

“There’s very little red tape, and I’ve had the freedom to publish what I want, how I want,” she said.

Downs Mulder declined to share how Yahoo is packaging and selling creator content to advertisers. Yahoo doesn’t impose content production requirements for creators in the program — nor does the content have to be exclusive to Yahoo’s platform, according to Downs Mulder. For now, none of the creator content is exclusively made for Yahoo’s program. Creators are able to publish content directly to the platform without intermediation by a moderator, although moderators review the content after it goes live to ensure that it abides by Yahoo’s standards, with the publisher’s initial vetting process intended to head off any potential brand safety concerns. (So far, there have been no issues, according to a company representative.)

Some creators, particularly freelance writers accustomed to the flat upfront fees paid by traditional media outlets like Yahoo, may need time to adjust to the platform’s creator-led approach, which relies more on performance-based commissions rather than guaranteed payments. Last month, Yahoo creator Cassandra Brooklyn commented on LinkedIn that some articles might generate only $50, while others could bring in thousands, but the inconsistency can make it difficult to depend on as a primary source of income. 

However, she added that it does provide a valuable opportunity to publish content that might be hard to place elsewhere, such as niche topics like cycling-focused travel pieces.

An ad agency exec — who asked to remain anonymous — said they see Yahoo’s creator program as an additional distribution channel for brands to align with creators. Even though there are numerous creator platforms where marketing budgets could go — and some duplication is likely — a brand’s message still resonates and performs well when it’s told through the “authentic voice” of a creator, they said.

“If the audiences I’m trying to reach are on Yahoo or are engaging with a creator on Yahoo, that’s great, because it’s just another way for me to find them and reach them,” the agency exec said.

For creators with larger followings on other platforms, however, the presence of traditional publisher content alongside their own on platforms like Yahoo creates natural competition, even when the publisher offers itself as a distribution network for creators. Political creator Kaivan Shroff, for example, maintains a similar relationship with the publisher MeidasTouch, occasionally posting original content on the publisher’s website. However, the creator has prioritized his personal social media pages in recent months, perceiving that MeidasTouch favors its own content over that of creators. (A MeidasTouch representative did not respond to a request for comment.)

“They tend to mostly push out their own branded content — which is all good,” Shroff said. “I’ve been posting on Instagram.”

Jeremy Whitt, executive media director at full-service agency Hanson Dodge, was unsurprised to hear that June 2025 was Yahoo Creators’ most lucrative month yet. He said that publisher–creator programs such as Yahoo’s are an attractive prospect for his clients because they represent an opportunity to show up alongside creators — a growing area of interest for advertisers across industries — while tapping into the naturally large scale of Yahoo’s platform.

“You have an opportunity here to get into a type of content that consumers are gravitating towards — which is creator content — but to not have to rely on either a million relationships to get the scale you need, or hoping that maybe something will pick up virally,” Whitt said. “You’ve got this built-in scale from a publisher, and I think that’s why it’s appealing to an advertiser.”