Is creator TV the next era of television?

TV has transformed before our eyes: A medium that was first dominated by networks and then cable companies has fast become streaming-centric. Could it now be time for the age of creator TV?

According to the creator platform Spotter, that new age is already here. At its second annual Showcase event in New York, the company invited brands to listen to an upfronts-style presentation aiming to position longform YouTube creators as the next era of television. Creators like Dude Perfect, Jordan Matter, and Michelle Khare, which combined have more than 100 million followers, highlighted their content offerings and showed off previous successful collaborations.

YouTube is already attracting plenty of brand investment: The platform raked in $40.4 billion in ad revenue last year, according to MoffettNathanson, more than traditional media giants Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount Skydance, and Warner Bros. Discovery. Onstage, Scott Winkler, head of commercial partnerships for Dude Perfect, emphasized that longform creators represent the future of reliable, fan-beloved, episodic programming—the kind that brands have long clamored to spend their ad budgets on.

“When brands partner with us the right way, they’re not interrupting the story—they’re stepping into it,” Winkler said onstage. “And when that alignment is right, business outcomes follow.”

Aaron DeBevoise, Spotter CEO, told us ahead of the event that the goal was to shine a spotlight on its creators’ tentpole offerings and alert brands about more creator opportunities they can tap into on a perpetual basis.

“What this year will really address is to say, ‘Hey, your calendar matters, advertiser.’ So does the creator’s calendar, and the cultural calendar matters,” DeBevoise said. “When you combine those three things, given that creators’ [programming is] always on, a lot better planning can go on.”

Turn the TV on

After last year’s debut Showcase event, 11 of 13 Spotter creators landed brand deals directly related to their presentations, according to the company. This year, DeBevoise said the stage was an opportunity to show off those results as proof that these kinds of partnerships are worth it.

During the event, Jordan Matter, father to Gen Alpha star Salish Matter, touted the 87,000 people who showed up to a launch event for Sincerely Yours, Salish’s skincare brand made in partnership with Sephora. Winkler highlighted Dude Perfect’s many deals with big brands like Chili’s, Pepsi, and Allstate. Kinigra Deon, an Alabama-based creator who’s built her own production studio, revealed a longform content series called “The Hair Shop,” an upcoming collaboration with e.l.f.

“The products and the brand’s purpose is what drove the narrative,” Deon said onstage, “and it’s about uplifting young women and authentic stories and bringing e.l.f. into our deeply engaged communities in a way that feels real.”

The success stories are designed to solidify brands’ trust in creator TV as a category that’s worth their time and distinct from more typical influencer relationships, DeBevoise said.

Brands are “no longer questioning that this is a different category,” he said. “The convincing is…really understanding that, ‘Hey, I should really think about my buying across the categories that matter to me, in the type of programming and connection with audience that is provided by that offering.’”

Part of that convincing also lies in reminding potential brand partners of creators’ consistent schedules. Onstage, several creators emphasized their steady publishing cadences and episode counts; Deon, for example, emphasized 150 scripted episodes per year that are released thrice-weekly.

“In creator TV, there is a relationship that’s been built over years, which we all know is what creates trust, and that comes with consistency of upload, consistency of types of programming, [and] the ability to build a relationship with the characters,” DeBevoise said. “Because of that, they have influence, not as [typical] influencers, but influence over the audience.”

Elevate and experiment

For creators, the current moment is primed to get brands to take their content seriously as a distinct category.

Zach Kornfeld, a member of the Try Guys and part of Spotter’s cohort, told Marketing Brew that “there’s still a disconnect between the scope and scale of the creator economy and the broader branded world.”

This year, the Try Guys announced a long-term partnership with Adobe, and instead of appearing onstage, they worked the afterparty room, talking to anyone who might want to strike up a conversation with the long-established creator brand.

“I want to just create those connections to be able to make longer-term relationships,” Keith Habersberger, another Try Guys member, told us. “There’s a lot of one-off things, but I’d much rather have series sponsors so that it just really gives us a budget to blow that show up and make it even better for our fans.”

Speaking of longer-term sponsors, Adobe plans to work with a number of Spotter creators across always-on media, custom creator ads, brand integrations, social amplification, and scale distribution, Adobe’s global head of social, Jared Carneson, said onstage.

For Adobe, creator TV is an area that the brand can experiment with to potentially establish new relationships with fresh audiences, Carneson told us. Part of that means ceding creative control to the creators who know their audiences best.

"It’s an experiment,” Carneson said. “If we’re not actively destroying the brand or putting it in a negative light, it’s worth experimenting and seeing where this goes with a cohort of people who aren’t even thinking about [the brand].”