• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, April 1, 2026

I spent time reading through the NewFronts coverage, and to be honest, I’m a little bit worried. Pitch after pitch from big companies like YouTube, Meta, TikTok, and others all pointed to one overwhelming thought: We’re about to do to creators exactly what we did to every other channel we've ever touched. We’re going to systematize, package, and ultimately commoditize them. I'm not sure that's going to work the way everyone thinks it will.

The creator economy is genuinely massive. The Interactive Advertising Bureau recently projected it as a $44 billion advertising-driven business in the U.S., just a smidge below television, which has been around for a very, very long time.

Every major platform showed up at NewFronts with creator-first ad products. YouTube is rebranding BrandConnect into Creator Partnerships and embedding Gemini AI directly into the workflow. By the end of 2026, Google apparently plans to let advertisers drop in a campaign brief and have AI recommend the entire creator roster needed to hit their KPIs. Meta unveiled Reels Trending Ads, with ads slotted algorithmically alongside creator-made topical content for Fashion Week, the NFL, and everything in between.

On paper, this is all very exciting and provides scale and relevance for advertisers. In practice, I think we're making the mistake we always make.

The industry has spent 25 years trying to make digital advertising feel more human. It invented native advertising, branded content and influencer marketing, all in service of making the ad feel less like an ad. Now, the single most human thing in modern media -- individual creators with a genuine relationship with their audience -- is being run through an AI brief generator so we can scale it like a banner buy.

Here's the thing about a great creator relationship: It isn't transactional. The reason creators work is the same reason a great agency relationship works. It's built on trust, shared vision, a willingness to let the other party do what they do well, and it scales. When you hand a creator a brief and ask them to execute it like a vendor, you get vendor-quality output. The audience can feel it.

The best creator executions I've ever seen, the ones that move the needle, come from brands that treat the creator like a partner, not a placement. They said, "Here's what we're trying to communicate. What's your take?” They let the creator bring their authentic voice to the product story, even if that meant some loss of control on the brand side. That's uncomfortable for most marketers, but it works. You can augment that core model with other solutions to build frequency and drive more time-on-screen, but you still need to let creators be creators, and not just a channel for reach.

The AI-powered discovery tools  platforms are rolling out are valuable and have massive potential. Finding the right creator for a campaign has always been a painful, time-consuming process. Using AI to surface names, match audience demographics, and flag past performance metrics is genuinely helpful. That being said, selection is only the beginning of the relationship, not its end.

The creator economy grew because audiences were tired of traditional, polished, brand-controlled media. They wanted something that felt real, unscripted, and trustworthy. If we build ad products that plug creators into the same automated, impression-based machinery that already governs display and programmatic, we are going to slowly drain exactly what makes the channel valuable in the first place.

You need to treat the creator brief as the beginning of a conversation, not a spec sheet. Give them room to interpret your brand honestly. Measure outcomes over time, not just click-through rates on a single post.  Creators are not a one-and-done channel. 

The platforms will keep building infrastructure to make creator advertising faster, cheaper, and more scalable. That's their job. Our job, as marketers and media buyers, is to remember that speed and scale are not the same thing as effectiveness. The creator is the new broadcaster, yes. But the best broadcast relationships were built on craft and continuity, not just CPMs.

We have a real opportunity here, and I;m truly curious to see what the industry does with it.