When it comes to affiliate sales, Sephora is going straight to the source.

Last month, the beauty retailer launched My Sephora Storefront, an affiliate program where creators can display their favorite products on the Sephora website, generate shareable, shoppable links for social media, and earn sales commissions.

It’s the latest sign of growth for the creator commerce and affiliate space, which is set to be worth $16 billion by 2028 and is currently dominated by third-party affiliate platforms like LTK, ShopMy, and TikTok Shop, as well as retailers like Amazon with Amazon Storefront. Last month, Condé Nast announced it was developing a creator storefront of its own called Vette, which is set to be released next year.

As creators’ influence continues to grow, Brent Mitchell, VP of social media and influencer marketing at Sephora, told us he sees the retailer’s opportunities to offer monetization options to creators is also expanding. Already, he said, Sephora has 1,000 live creator storefronts, exceeding the company’s initial projections for the remainder of the year.

“We really see ourselves as being additive to this ecosystem,” he said.

Continue reading here.—KH

MLB had a record postseason, and not just because Game 3 of the World Series went on for 18 innings.

Game 1 between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers averaged 32.6 million viewers in the US, Canada, and Japan, the largest combined audience from those countries since the 2016 World Series, according to MLB. Games 1 and 2 combined for an average of 19.8 million viewers in the US and Canada, up 27% from last year.

Saturday night’s 11-inning Game 7, in which the Dodgers eked out a 5–4 victory against the Jays, averaged nearly 26 million viewers, the most viewership for any World Series game since 2017’s Game 7.

“Baseball is having a moment,” MLB CMO Uzma Rawn Dowler told Marketing Brew. “We are on fire right now, and it’s not just around the postseason, which has been incredibly electric.”

The energy around baseball—which was evident on social media, and probably in several of your group chats—comes in the wake of a push from the league to connect with younger and more diverse audiences through player and fan passions outside of the game itself, Rawn Dowler said.

Around the world: With Dodgers phenom pitcher and designated hitter Shohei Ohtani taking MLB by storm since joining in 2018, the league has been upping its presence in Japan, where baseball is incredibly popular.

The 2025 World Series also included 13 internationally born players—including Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Roki Sasaki—which has contributed to viewership increases and helped to make the sport more “elevated on the global stage,” Rawn Dowler said.

Read more here.—AM

When Comscore first began looking into streaming in 2017, the subject was still new enough that the measurement company opted to name its first report on the topic the State of OTT. How the world has changed just eight years later.

This year, consumer adoption of CTV streaming continued to grow by leaps and bounds as consumers increasingly subscribe to ad tiers, watch more FAST channels, engage heavily with YouTube, and co-view content, according to Comscore’s annual report, now called State of Streaming.

“Streaming is not just a medium, but a mirror of culture,” the report’s authors wrote.

Ad-supported expansion: Many of the major streaming players grew their share of total households watching content on their ad tiers, according to the report. Netflix, for one, saw 45% of viewing happen on its ad tier in August of this year, up from 34% in August 2024. Viewing on Disney+’s ad tier was up 16 percentage points, while Prime Video and HBO Max both saw ad tier viewership increase by 10 percentage points YoY. YouTube, long considered the leader in ad-supported viewing, saw a drop of two percentage points.

What devices are consumers regularly streaming on? Among respondents who own a streaming device, box, or stick, 50% said they stream on a Roku device, according to the report, and Roku households tend to subscribe to more paid services: 4.7 paid services on average, compared to 4.2 for other streamer households. It was followed by Amazon Fire TV at 38%, Apple TV at 19%, and Chromecast/TV streamer at 13%.

Continue reading here.—JS

Executive moves across the industry.

• SeatGeek tapped Wayfair alum Matt Herman to serve as CMO.
• Chanel hired Rare Beauty CMO Katie Welch to be its US head of brand and communications starting Jan. 5.
• Kenvue, the maker of drugs including Tylenol, plans to tap Mondelez International exec Jon Halvorson to serve as CMO, per WSJ.
• Etsy elevated Kruti Patel Goyal, who is currently its president and chief growth officer, to the role of CEO. She starts as CEO on Jan. 1.