17621: On Creator Presence At Advertising Week New York.

 

Digiday published a lengthy report on Advertising Week New York, spotlighting the increased presence of creators at the exclusive event.

No word if the creator reverence and respect extended to creators of color.

‘We’re all going to live with uncertainty forever’: Advertising Week New York opens amid industry rebuild

By Kimeko McCoy and Seb Joseph

 

Nobody at Advertising Week New York this week will be stuck for conversation, though to be fair you could have said that about any of the last ten. Organizers claim more interest every year, and the trade press, Digiday included, has a habit of calling each one pivotal. What’s different in 2026 is how much of the business is being rebuilt around the people who work in it, with plenty of them turning up unsure where they’ll fit once it’s done.

Ask the execs heading over to Midtown’s The Penn District and the work that keeps coming up is implementation.

“We’ve moved quickly from experimentation to implementation,” said Alistair Hill, CEO & co-founder of brand uplift firm On Device. Roblox’s vp of global partnerships and advertising Stephanie Latham, said last year’s conversations were about how comfortable marketers felt using AI, and that they’ve since struck enterprise agreements with AI partners. Kochava CEO Charles Manning wants to see how far agentic AI has moved from talk to operations. He said CFOs are taking a more active role in discussions about costs, and security teams are paying closer attention to how first-party data could leak into AI models. Hill’s worry is trust, because faster optimization means little if nobody can trust the data and measurement behind it.

Implementation, in other words, comes with a long list of questions nobody has settled yet, and plenty of the execs heading over say they’re going mainly to listen. Channel Factory CRO Nico Greco and Summit House co-founder Steven Cundari both described the week as a chance to team up. “I want to understand where our clients and partners are in their technology journeys,” said Greco of what he wants to get from the meetings he’ll be having throughout the week.

Much of that listening will happen away from the stages. The Trade Desk opens the week this afternoon with drinks at The Perch, the rooftop on top of PENN 2 — a few minutes’ walk from the main venue. Amex Ads has the Riff Raff club in the evening. Ad tech’s card players will be at the Sigma Software invite-only poker night, which is into its fifth year. For anyone who’d rather sit down over lunch, The Landing at PENN 1 has private dining rooms right on the doorstep, and Bar Primi on West 33rd Street takes groups. Speakers and top-tier pass holders get the Chase Media Solutions lounge on the second level. By Tuesday night, some of the crowd will have drifted down to Little Rebel in the East Village for Proeller’s fringe party.

Creators have their own circuit this year. Meta is running a Creator’s Lounge on the second level for creator pass holders and Dhar Mann, Advertising Week’s first chief creator officer, hosts a karaoke night tomorrow and an omakase dinner with Rick Ross on Wednesday. There’ll be plenty of creators to fill them. Ruth Mortimer, global president of Advertising Week, expects around 2,500 creators this year, up from 1,000 creator tickets last time. She and Mann have set a target of $100 million in creator deals coming out of the week over the next 12 months.

It’s a long way from how creators used to land a meeting with a CMO here. “I used to joke, the only CMO meetings we were getting were if they had a 12-year-old daughter who watched our creators,” said Adam Wescott, CEO and co-founder of independent content and media studio Home Game Studios. The welcome is, indeed, warmer than it used to be. Trevant GM Kristina Coughlin said creators have become “a core part, often a leading part” of advertisers’ marketing mix, whereas in previous years they were an extra. Wescott wants to see what comes of it once the week is over. “Creators don’t just want the invite to help promote ticket sales,” he said in an email. “They want real deals to come from it.”

AI and creators come with the territory at an event like Advertising Week. Measurement tends to get less air time, though the arguments over it have been building all year. AI-driven shopping is pulling budget out of search, while creators and social platforms want credit for sales that close somewhere else. Newer sellers like ChatGPT are asking advertisers to spend before they can show what the money did. Kochava’s Manning will be watching how those conversations play out over the next few days: “Our sideline conversations are deliberately focused on deep, structural partnerships rather than transactional pitch meetings. Specifically, our calendar is booked with meetings in three categories: Enterprise Marketers seeking truth and leverage, ecosystem and platform partners that want strategically minded growth and organizations that want true AI-driven transformation in their processes.”

None of this gets settled by Thursday, and Mortimer isn’t pretending otherwise. “We’re all going to live with uncertainty forever,” she said. “So let’s try and find the opportunities together.”

AWNY wants creators in the room. Creators want to know what’s in it for them

At this year’s Advertising Week New York (AWNY), creators aren’t just part of the programming. They’re seemingly part of the draw for the event itself.

AWNY is trying something new this year. The conference brought on creator and entrepreneur Dhar Mann on as its inaugural chief creator officer. With Mann’s appointment comes the $100 Million Creator Challenge, a set of “interactive 30-minute experiences pairing leading talent with major CMOs to create ideas, content, connections and real business outcomes,” per the AWNY site.

There will also be an exclusive happy hour for creators, execs and cultural leaders, a curated dinner and a night out. The pitch to creators is clear: come to Advertising Week and maybe you’ll leave with a CMO-signed contract.

“It’s exciting more advertiser-first events are inviting creators, but what will be most telling is the results post-event,” said Adam Wescott, CEO and fo-counder of Home Game Studios, and Mind Chatter Media. 

It’s true the ad industry is taking creators more seriously. Just look at industry tentpole events, like the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this past summer. Creators all but stormed the French Riviera, looking to strike deals with business leaders. Dinners, key notes and other events that were usually reserved for CMOs were also hosting creators. 

While event organizers roll out the red carpet for creators, the question is whether or not the benefit is mutual. That’s what Wescott has top of mind heading into this year’s AWNY, he said. 

More ad industry events are starting to bring creators in not just as panelists and talent, but potentially to boost reach and promotion for these events themselves, he said. The question is: what’s in it for creators outside of a trip and photo op?

“Creators don’t just want the invite to help promote ticket sales. They want real deals to come from it,” Wescott added. 

What we’ve heard

“For us it was important [Dhar Mann’s involvement] had a business outcome. We’ve hand-picked a group of brands and we’ve asked them to identify what budget they’re spending creators. Then we’re getting them in the room with the creators here. We’re tracking it because we asked the brands up front to confirm what they were planning to spend.”

— Advertising Week global president Ruth Mortimer

Advertising Week New York by the numbers

• About 2,500 creators are expected this year, up from 1,000 creator tickets last year. 

• A $100 million target for creator deals coming out of the week will be tracked over the next 12 months against creator budgets brands confirmed up front.

• Nine stages and 36 day tracks. 

• Advertising Week’s own realtor network, built with the creator platform Breakr, gives it access to around 350,00 creators. 

• Brand marketers are now the largest audience segment, where agencies would have been a decade ago.

On stage

The creator advantage in AI search, 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. (leadership breakfast)
Jenny Penich, CRO at Influencer and Eleanor Hooker, head of community and customer marketing at Profound discuss answer engine optimization, how LLMs rely on human recommendations and why creators could link AI discovery to consumer trust.

Dhar Mann’s opening keynote, 9.30 a.m., Great Minds Stage
This is the headline Monday session. Mann will launch the $100 million creator challenge from the stage, and the event says he’ll reveal a big initiative for 2027 for the first time.

After hours

Amex Ads happy hour, 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at The Riff Raff Club (invite only)
Sigma Software AdTech Poker Night at 7pm. This is the fifth anniversary edition and its invite only.

Future is Female Awards at 7 p.m.
The anchor event of Advertising Week’s Future is Female programme, recognises women and allies in the industry. Invite only.

17133: On Creators’ Crumbling Cashbooks.

Digiday published common knowledge on a common occurrence in these anti-DEIBA+ times: cutting crumbs from creators of color.

 

Marginalized creators feel the financial sting of brands’ DEI pullback

 

By Alexander Lee

 

Brands’ pullback from diversity and equity marketing has hit marginalized creators directly in the pocketbook, four creators told Digiday.

 

It’s no secret that the advertising world has moved away from DEI messaging in the wake of the 2024 presidential election. As brands from Target to Harley-Davidson scale back or remove their DEI programs in 2025, they are signing fewer influencer or creator marketing deals that focus on the marginalized identities of creators.

 

Six months into the year, creators who previously leveraged diversity and equity to build their sponsorship businesses have seen this revenue stream drop off or disappear entirely. Last year, Twitch streamer Alex Norimaki signed 14 brand deals around Black History Month and Women’s History Month; so far this year, she has had one DEI-focused partnership, a Black History Month sponsorship by Twitch.

 

“There’s usually so many brands that reach out specifically to Black creators — and, in recent years, they were doing a heavy push for Black women creators as well. I’ve been at this for five years now, and it’s like clockwork,” she said. “This year, they just did not come.” The creator added that she had experienced a “very noticeable” drop in sponsorship income, but declined to share a specific revenue drop figure.

 

Four creators across different marginalized identities told Digiday anecdotally that their revenue has been hit by brands’ pullback from DEI messaging.

 

“The pullback has been for not just LGBTQ+ creators, but for anything that’s cultural or orientation-based,” said mixed-race creator Erin Ashley Simon, who said that she hasn’t signed a single DEI-focused brand partnership in 2025 after leaving XSET, a diversity and inclusion-focused esports organization, at the beginning of the year.

 

Veronica “Nikatine” Ripley, a transgender and Latina creator, said that her diversity-focused partnership business dropped off considerably between 2024 and 2025, although she did not provide specific numbers.

 

“My personal business has definitely been affected. I’ve been passed over or dropped by longtime brand partners,” said Ripley, who declined to name specific partners that had dropped her to avoid damaging professional relationships. “Big brands are just silent now; opportunities are almost completely limited to fundraisers for other queer organizations.”

 

Across the board, creators blamed the current sociopolitical climate in the United States for brands’ pullback from diversity or equity messaging, with prospective sponsors increasingly cagey about political scrutiny or boycotts sparked by their involvement with creators perceived as pushing DEI. 

 

In particular, government organizations’ sunsetting of so-called “identity months” such as Black History Month, Women’s History Month and Pride Month have put a chill on brands’ spending around them. In the past, these months were boom periods that allowed marginalized creators to pack away brand partnership revenue for the rest of the year; now, for creators, they’re just like any other month.

 

“In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need to lean on national months and holidays for this inclusion — but it was the month when we could at least expect companies to halfway pretend to have us be a part of the conversation,” AlexNorimaki said. “So, now, we’re just not very hopeful for the rest of the year.”

 

The wider pullback from DEI marketing is bad news for marginalized creators, but it also creates opportunities for some advertisers to build stronger bonds with these creators and their fans, creators told Digiday. Both creators and audiences from marginalized communities increasingly feel overlooked by the advertising industry, making it all the more valuable when brands and marketers choose to stand by them.

 

“This is a window of advantage for brands,” said Sheryl Daija, CEO of Bridge, a marketing industry trade organization focused on promoting diversity and equity. “While some might go quiet, others that are staying consistent are gaining ground, building reputational trust and relevance. Despite the politicization of DEI, the high potential growth markets haven’t gone anywhere.”

 

One particularly effective way for brands to build connections with marginalized communities is to work with micro- or mid-tier influencers whose audiences index highly within those communities, according to Raul Rios, head of strategy for the creative agency Saylor, who cited data from e-commerce ad tech tool Cropink showing that 73 percent of Gen Z consumers trust micro-influencer recommendations over celebrity endorsements.

 

“Brands that invest here don’t just maintain visibility,” Rios said. “They build sustained cultural credibility.”

16395: Recommending—And Commending—The Black Experience In Design.

The Black Experience In Design reportedly started as a concept for a special issue journal. Yet it quickly grew into a global chorus of creators expressing provocative perspectives, personalities, practices, and politics.

 

Even attempting to review the book is a daunting task, given the extraordinary breadth and depth of its creative content. Indeed, calling it a book feels… insufficient. It’s an indescribable, incredible, and thoroughly original work.

 

Experience The Black Experience In Design.

16264: For Black Creators, Brands Are Suddenly Quiet As A Mouse—Or White Rat.

 

Digiday published a report that supplemented earlier Advertising Age content, showing how Black creators have experienced a steep decline in brand partnership and sponsorship opportunities—mirroring the disinterest and indifference for DEI in Adland. Even the faux enthusiasm for Black History Month and Juneteenth has virtually vanished. There’s nary a creator crumb in sight.

 

Why Black creators say brands are ‘quiet as a mouse’ on Black History Month and Juneteenth this year

 

By Kimeko McCoy

 

In 2021 in the shadows of the Black Lives Matter Movement, part-time content creator Amanda Wicks got a flood of brand partnership and sponsorship opportunities in her inbox. This past Black History Month, she found crickets in her email. She expects more of the same next month for Juneteenth.

 

Now, Wicks is questioning not only her role as a content creator, but the relationship between Black content creators and the brands that were once eager to work with her now that the movement has lost the ad industry’s attention.

 

“I wouldn’t even call it an ebb and flow [of diversity, equity and inclusion in the industry]. It was just a start, drop,” she said. “That’s really a true testament to the lack of actual commitment which is not a surprise to most of us.”

 

Wicks is a part-time content creator who has been posting about art, fashion and lifestyle content to her more than 44,200 followers across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube for the last eight years. After the murder of George Floyd, there was a push for businesses to do more to support Black employees, minority-owned agencies, as well as creators. Because of the ripple effects, Wicks’ business picked up. Ultimately, 2021 was Wicks’ highest-grossing year and she was able to pay off a new car. That year, she’d landed deals with Whataburger, Foot Locker and Athena Club, and retained her Tommy Hilfiger partnership — which dated back to 2020. (Wicks did not provide specific figures for 2021 income nor the Tommy Hilfiger partnership.)

 

But as talk of diversity, equity and inclusion started to lose momentum, so did the brand opportunities for her as a Black creator, she said.

 

“I wasn’t contacted by anybody for anything until November of 2022,” Wicks said. (Last November, she was accepted into Walmart and Hoorae Media’s Black and Unlimited digital development program.) “And mind you, this is coming off the heels of my most successful content creation year. 2022 came around dead silent.”

 

Wicks is one of several Black content creators who say brand partnership and sponsorship opportunities have all but dried up after George Floyd’s murder and the Black Lives Matter Movement in the summer of 2020. That year, YouTube personality and owner of Big Gold Belt Media Nagier Chambers said he had 25 Black holiday brand sponsorship opportunities. By 2021, that number shrunk to 12, and fell again to just seven last year. Meanwhile, Jahnesta Watson, or @thechefshaiheem on social media, said the four or five partnerships established back in 2021 have also dwindled. (Watson was also a participant in the Black and Unlimited program from Walmart.)

 

For creators of color, this all points to a faltering relationship between them and the brands that made diversity, equity and inclusion promises three years ago.

 

“A few years ago, when unfortunately a lot of our Black brothers and sisters were in the news for being murdered, it seems like brands were seeking Black creatives out more and more,” said Nicholas Bailey, a part-time content creator who goes by @nicksaysgo across social media. For Black History Month over the last two to three years, Bailey said he was “flooded by brands for campaigns.” In 2021 and 2022, Bailey said he averaged about four to five Black History Month and Juneteenth campaigns. But this year, the brands were, as he puts it, “quiet as a mouse.”

 

“It’s not as ‘cool’ to focus on it anymore from a brand side, or even in the eyes of society in general,” he said in an email. “We’re no longer the hot topic and the flavor of the month.”

 

And it’s not just Black holidays, he said. Brand outreach in general has slowed for Bailey, who added he used to maintain a steady cadence of brand sponsorship and partnership opportunities from skincare and footwear brands looking to work with creators from historically marginalized communities.

 

Creator growth — for some

 

The creator economy has been bursting at the seams as of late, seeing exponential growth thanks to the pandemic. In fact, according to Digiday+ research, in the first quarter of 2022, 69% of agency professionals told Digiday that their clients spent at least a very small portion of their marketing budgets on influencers. That figure increased to 79% by Q3 of 2022.

 

But from all directions, it has been an uphill battle for Black content creators and those from other marginalized communities to claim a space in the $15.2 billion U.S. economy. For years, the lack of diversity in brands’ influencer campaigns has been under scrutiny. Recently, creators of color critiqued the Black creator programs rolled out by social media platforms following Floyd’s murder, citing lingering issues from two years ago.

 

For opportunities that do come about, creators of color say they’re not offered as much as their counterparts, financially. And the numbers prove it. Last year, public relations agency MSL U.S., in partnership with The Influencer League, reported that the racial pay gap between white and BIPOC influencers was 29%. When looking specifically at the gap between white and Black influencers, that figure widens to 35%.

 

Just earlier this month, Tarte Cosmetics announced that it was in the process of “reviewing” its creator programs to make changes to diversity and inclusion after the beauty brand faced backlash from TikTok creators regarding an influencer trip.

 

“The thing that separates a lot of the opportunity that Black content creators have and a lot of the opportunity that non-color content creators have is not the talent. It’s the resources,” said Watson. “We have the talent, but we don’t get the resources put behind us.”

 

From an agency perspective, there’s no doubt that DE&I commitments have somewhat flatlined, said Whitney Headen, CEO of 19th & Park, a creative agency that offers influencer services. However, the question is how much of that flatlining is due to fizzled-out DE&I commitments versus massive layoffs and economic uncertainty or the industry’s unpreparedness to handle what true diversity, equity and inclusion looks like.

 

“It’s so much more than just finding a Black face in a crowd,” Headen said. “Because there was such an immediate influx of this coming in, people just scrambled to stay and do whatever. So now we go to 2023 and there’s no real tracker of how have you delivered on this.”

 

Despite promises made three years ago, media companies are mostly still hiring white people. Meanwhile, media agencies are still developing initiatives to quantify progress in diversity.

 

Today, Wicks said she’s feeling disenfranchised with the experience of being a content creator, doing what she calls mental gymnastics to either stand firm on her rates to be paid as much as her counterparts or take whatever opportunities come her way, ensuring work beyond Black History Month and Juneteenth.

 

“It just is deeper than just ticking off some diversity and inclusion boxes,” Wicks said. “Literally, people are starving [and financially suffering] because you’re not as committed as you should be. And the lesson has not been learned.”

 

Julian Cannon contributed to this report.