#310: Brad Hoos — What 50,000 influencer campaigns tell us about what brands really care about

0:00It is very hard for me to imagine a consumer-facing brand where influencer marketing isn't going to be a critical part of your marketing mix.

0:25Hello, my friend. Welcome back to another episode of Creator Science. My guest today is Brad Hughes, CEO of The Outloud Group, one of the leading influencer marketing agencies in the United States. They've run campaigns for global brands like AG1, Chomps, KitchenAid, and Whirlpool, and they've done it across tens of thousands of creator partnerships. Now, I actually came across Brad when I was doing research for my book proposal on the topic of trust. I was trying to find the agency that represented AG1 because it had become so ubiquitous in podcast marketing, and I wanted to talk about that. Brad sits at one of the most interesting vantage points in the entire creator economy, right in the middle between the brands who need credibility and the creators who have built it.

1:10So in this conversation, we get into what brands actually want when they come to an agency like his, how they think about brand voice versus brand advocacy, what it takes to be a creator that brands keep coming back to, and why the creators who say no the most often are actually the most valuable. We'll get to my full conversation with Brad right after this.

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3:15when brands come to work with you and you work with big brands ag1 chomps kitchenaid whirlpool when they come to out loud what do you think they really want from that campaign is it purely transactional are they coming with a lot of big campaign ideas like what what is the starting point often ideally they're coming with really clear objectives that we can help them meet whether that's awareness, whether that's brand sentiment, whether that's conversion, or whether that's consideration, right? And we can dial in the very specific metrics for all of those. But I think a lot of times they want something that a little bit softer, and we have to translate that into metrics.

4:01And what they often want is relevancy. And And the world has changed in so many different ways. I recently heard the CEO of Netflix talk about video podcasts being the replacement of talk shows. And I hadn't actually thought of it in that context. I thought that was great. And as the world changes away from traditional linear TV towards trying to avoid being sold to all these different things, right? Becomes younger. One generation is different than the next. You need to stay relevant. And I think in 2026, influencer marketing is the epicenter of relevancy for brands. So when brands come to us, ultimately what they want is relevancy.

4:49And then there tends to be either an objective that's clear or an objective we need to unearth together with our brand partners. What are the words, the actual words, the language they're using when they come to you and you're coding this as, okay, they want relevancy? Well, a lot of times, I mean, it's pretty simple. They'll say, hey, we want to run a YouTube campaign or we want to beef up our influencer. We've been doing a few things. It's kind of worked well enough that we want to invest and we know we don't know what we're doing. So we want to level up our game. And honestly, Jay, one of the ones that I think most humorous is folks saying, hey, we want to be on TikTok.

5:29Say, okay, well, why do you want to be on TikTok? because their board said we need to be on TikTok. Oh no, okay. And so then it's like, okay, well, why does your board want to be on TikTok? Like we could just do a TikTok campaign and check that box, but let's try to make sure we're really clear on what we're trying to accomplish. And a lot of times TikTok is the right platform for what the board is saying, but it's not always. And that's where the conversations get a little bit more interesting. Yeah, this is interesting because I've been in the startup space before I was doing the creator thing.

5:58And so I'm familiar with like the companies CEO board relationships. But I often felt like at the time, the board was kind of a step removed from what a lot of people in the company thought was the best for the company. And so it's actually interesting for me to hear the perspective that the board is coming in and presenting pretty modern marketing ideas in a way. I don't know where that's, how much understanding is rooted in that versus it just being like a box to check. But it would be interesting to me if the board was ahead of the curve on, hey, I think there's actually something really powerful here to unlock on TikTok on YouTube before the company had thought of it.

6:43Yeah, I think it's interesting. And a lot of times there's also like the power dynamic, right? That's at play. So there might have been a lot of conversations internally about TikTok, typically from younger, more junior team members. And it's met with skepticism from someone who's more senior. And then it just sort of stalls, right? It's not necessarily a clear no, but it just doesn't get the traction that we want. And when a board says something and is alignment, even when they don't really know what it means, right? Because TikTok could mean so many things, which we could get into, like TikTok isn't TikTok isn't TikTok, but it galvanizes the idea of like, hey, we need to do something that's different and younger and modern.

7:27And TikTok in those cases, usually a proxy for that. And frankly, like a pretty damn good proxy, but a proxy nevertheless, and like a good starting point to try to get things rolling. I like this thread when a brand comes to you and they, they're telling you kind of their goals in sometimes imprecise language. What do you feel is the most common re-education you're having to do with brands before you have a campaign that you feel ready to bring to the influencers and creators that are in your network? I'm gonna share two with you. Great. Jay, so first it's, what are the objectives? Like, how are we gonna measure success?

8:08And you're asking that because you need to know how you're gonna be measured on success, I'm guessing. Yeah, that's right, but it's not just about us. It's about like doing what's right for the brand. Because even on, you know, Instagram, for instance, right? There's very different objectives for when you'd use stories versus reels versus static posts, let alone like, do you layer paid or keep the content organic, right? I think all those would be chasing different objectives, nuanced difference, but difference nevertheless. So we want to make sure we're lining up the right influencer approach with what the brand's really trying to accomplish.

8:46Okay. So you said you're going to give me two. So that's number one. What are your goals? That's number one. And the second is to truly understand the difference between brand voice and brand advocacy. So brands spend a lot of time, energy, and effort creating a brand voice. Like, here's how we talk. Here's what we do say. Here's what we don't say. These are the words we use. These are the colors we use. Here's our sound. Here's the pentameter with which we speak, whatever it may be. But at the end of the day, that does not work if you're going to try to work with influencers because they're advocating for your brand, right?

9:23Like when I'm telling, you know, my buddy that I love Spindrift, right? I don't tell him all the marketing slogans that are listed on the can and the product and the website. Like that would be really weird and cause some serious yellow, if not bright red flags. But yeah, somehow brands try to do that with creators, you know? Have you seen the Truman show? Do you know that scene where like all of sudden the wife turns to the camera and she's like, look at my new Mo Coco drink. And Truman is like, who are you talking to? What are you talking about? That's the brand voice inside of a creator that happens all the time where it feels like, uh, these are weird early 2000s references, but like men in black, when the bug is wearing the Edgar suit, sometimes when a brand is like, this is exactly what we want you to say.

10:06It feels like I'm, I'm wearing the Edgar suit. Yep, for sure. To be honest with you, my favorite analogy with this is actually just your nuclear family growing up compared to your spouse's or significant other's nuclear family. If you behave the exact same way that you do with your brother, sister, mom, and dad with your significant other's family, it would just seem off. It's not like you're radically different, but there's different norms and different expectations for how to behave, and that's picked up on. And so for brands to really be successful with creators, they have to be smart about how they're communicating with creators and their expectations.

10:46And they ultimately want the brand to be presented in a good light, of course. But the easiest way to do that is to let the creator figure out how to do that as opposed to the brand. But that gets tricky, right? Because complicated brands have specific budgets dedicated for specific products or specific product features or new launches on things. So it's not easy. I think creators need to understand that too. Like you're working with a big fortune 500 brand and you're most excited about a small appliance, but the budget is for a major appliance. you know like why can't i just do this like well it's a totally different budget so i do think creators need a lot of education too to understand like hey brands are trying and they have practical constraints just like a creator has practical constraints too yeah when a brand comes in and you're telling them hey you've got to let the creator the talent use their voice to advocate for you that requires some trust on the part of the brand because they have a brand to protect They have a board.

11:49They might even have public stakeholders. So how open are these big brands to that and what type of guardrails need to be put in place? There's definitely a spectrum in terms of how open, bigger, more sophisticated brands are. And what I've found is the longer the relationship that we have with the brand, the more open they are to letting go more and more, which comes back to the word du jour, right? Which is trust. So brands are new to influencer too. And it feels really hard. Just like that first time you're on camera as a creator, it feels really hard. When you're a brand and you're just like letting, I don't wanna say random, but when you're just letting a creator run with telling your story, that does not feel comfortable with a brand.

12:38I think it's helpful for creators to be able to think about that and understand that. This is the baby of these brand marketers. You mentioned earlier that one of the goals that a brand may have is sentiment. How is sentiment measured so you can tell whether a campaign has been successful or not? There's two big ways that you can do it. So the first is something that we run with our campaigns for most any brand across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram. It's most complicated on YouTube, so I'm happy to explain that one. We'll try to still keep it simple. So there's comments on YouTube videos. So let's talk about 90 second integration, the most common form of influencer advertising on YouTube.

13:21We're making up numbers here. 80 % of the video is about the creator's day and 20 % of the video is actually about the brand. So what we do is we do look at the sentiment of the comments across the entire video. But I think what's more important is that we isolate the comments that are actually about the brand. So this is one of the ways where we use AI to be able to help us to be able to sort through all of the comments. And then we identify how positive or negative are the comments relating to the brand as part of that. And then we tie that to benchmarks from our data and are able to report out how that is.

14:02So that's sort of like the simple way. Obviously, it's simple because you have the real data. You can quantify it. It's objective data. The second piece is more getting into like brand sentiment studies. And you can do that, I like to say, in the lab or in the wild or in the lab is, hey, this panel of, again, making up a number, thousand people watch this video, or we're going to see how you feel about the brand before and after. And in the wild is we have a panel of hundreds of thousands of viewers and we can identify who actually watched this video sort of on their own and ask them how they feel about the brand and there's ways you can get baselines from people who didn't watch content as well but that allows you to check in on what is the sentiment of the brand from people who have consumed the content and is the goal for the brand as simple as we want to have more positive sentiment or is it like we are currently viewed in this light and we want to be viewed in this way or understood in this way?

15:09What does a sentiment goal typically look like? The broader sentiment goal typically is something a little bit more sophisticated, but on an individual video basis, yeah, we want more positive comments, right? That's pretty straightforward. But in terms of what the broader sentiment is, I think you get into awareness and preference relative to other brands, perception, willingness to recommend to a friend to answer your question directly in terms of what are brands typically looking for. I think most brands, if it's a new product or a product that's in a new market, for instance, we're working with a very large clothing reseller that's launched in the US.

15:53Well, they're really focused on like, hey, do people know about us? And do they have like a favorable opinion on us? And frankly, at this stage, they're even more focused on, hey, are people aware of us versus a very mature brand that starts to get more into like nuances and preferences compared to other products. And there, a lot of times we're trying to win in certain segments, like the gaming community, for instance, like gaming isn't gaming isn't gaming. So if we're more looking for like middle-aged folks, so we might be looking at like, hey, League of Legends consumers, how are they perceiving a specific brand?

16:35So we'll have different proxies for different customer groups that we're trying to go after. So we're rarely trying to go after everyone for the entire brand. Typically, we're going to cut that one way or another to try to get into their sentiment and preference. I want to shift a little bit because I think a lot of folks listening to this, well, I would bet a large percentage of folks listening to this, they're listening to a podcast, which means they've almost certainly heard an ad on a podcast about AG1. I'm super curious to hear from this mega campaign, or I'm guessing a series of very large campaigns.

17:10What have you learned about brand partnerships, working with creators? what works, what is effective. I mean, just the number of campaigns that have been run suggest that they've been successful. And so I'm curious what we could learn about a campaign at that scale that was successful. Yeah, I think it's a relentless pursuit of new wrinkles. Say more. So AG1 up until recently was a one product company. So now the wrinkles, I think, are more straightforward, right? And that there's new products, new flavors. But before, AG1 is a lot of things. It is an opportunity to get healthier that folks in the health and wellness community pursue.

17:57It is a simple health hack. So people who are very busy or who know they aren't healthy but want a better version of themselves would pursue. It is a ritual, right? We love our morning rituals. That's something like, you know, a lot of people can nerd out about. And so how do you embrace the ritual? It is part of like a trend that's happening now. We talk about like TikTok, you know, there's water talk. That's like a big deal, which is basically like people preparing their water to drink all day. And all of those different areas have like four or five nuances that you can try to unearth. Right.

18:39And so, for instance, on the ritual piece, rather than talking about the functions and features, how do you talk about that exact moment every day when you're consuming the product? How do you talk about and identify the level in the bottle that you are filling your drink to? Like these small things matter when you're talking about like health and wellness versus like, Hey, just like a, a hack type of thought of like, here's an easy way to get a little bit better. Like those are very different audiences and you need to continue to think about the product, not just in terms of how you're branding it, but who's actually using it.

19:21Like think about the North face, like who does the North face show in their advertising? They show people doing extreme climbing in the Arctic who uses the product. A lot of times it's chubby folks in the suburbs, you know? So I think it's understanding that you can advertise to the people who are actually using your product and doing it in a way that resonates with them. And it's not a one size fits all approach. So it's like constant pursuit of wrinkles. So if I'm reading between the lines here, and I haven't read between the lines, but if I could repeat this back in the way I'm hearing it, when you talk about wrinkles, you're basically saying, number one, maybe you had to discover that you need to talk about it differently, depending on audience.

19:59But number two, this is also kind of a plus because what you've identified are a bunch of different handholds depending on which segment you're targeting, but added up together, this product was a very broadly appealing product, which gave you a lot of different areas to grab onto. Am I hearing that right? Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think it's thinking about things differently and you got to think about how you're collecting like data and information on what people care about also and not just looking at it through the lens of like, hey, we're a wellness product. We should be talking to like healthy people who are really into wellness, but going much deeper than that.

20:41If I'm a direct-to-consumer brand that is a consumable and I see the success of AG1 on podcasts, there's a period of time where like Squarespace was the brand that was everywhere on podcasts. I think a lot of brands kind of turn their head like, should we be on podcasts? And I'm sure the same has been kind of true for AG1. Why wouldn't other consumable brands just go all in on this channel? Is there something that makes it not effective or is the market still just embracing this channel? By this channel, you're referring to podcasts specifically or like, you know, influencer? I was, but that's probably not accurate.

21:18I probably should broaden this out to influencers generally. Look, I run an influencer marketing agency. So take this with a grain of salt. But sincerely, it is very hard for me to imagine a DTC consumer facing brand where influencer marketing isn't going to be a critical part of your marketing mix. Unilever CEO this year came out with that they're going to be spending over 50 percent of their marketing on on influencers and they're massively ramping up their creators. This isn't now like a novel approach. This is a must have. And it's just a matter of exactly how you're going to market and incorporating it.

21:56And what do we need to know to set ourselves up to be the beneficiary of some of that advertising spend? There was a belief for a long time that there was this mythical threshold of 10 ,000 followers on Instagram. That's the key if you want to get brand deals. But I don't know if that's necessarily true. So as it sits today, how can creators set themselves up to be positioned to work with brands? Oh, sure. Non-satisfying answer. And then hopefully we can get to something more satisfying. The non-satisfying answer for creators is to have a track record of success with brands, right? If you have a track record of success with brands, they're going to notice that one way or another.

22:35And we could talk about some of the things we do, but that's at the top of the list. So I think about it this way. don't look to maximize your revenue on one deal. That's what I call short-term greedy. Look to maximize your deals over a span of three years. Like be long-term greedy. And the way to do that is to charge a price where brands have to keep coming back to you because you're really, really delivering for them. And now you've got whatever the number is, two, three, four brands who have been working with you for a period of months, people are going to see that. And when you have then more deals than you really want to have for your channel, and that's very much an art form for creators, then you can start to raise your price.

23:27But don't try to maximize what you're getting early on. Just start getting used to it. It's like, again, I'll go back to the same analogy. First time you turn your camera on and start recording as a creator, if you look back at it three years from now, you're going to laugh. But a brand, they're just looking at the results and Creator X didn't do well. They're unlikely to renew you. So know that it's going to take some time for you to develop the ability to be a proper advocate for a brand and be willing to play the long game so that over time, you're going to be able to be successful and command really strong rates.

24:04A lot of folks listening to this won't be in your network or umbrella yet. They may be self-representing. So if I want to be a creator that the brand has a good time working with, what can they do to build that reputation of showing results? I mean, an obvious thing based on what you're saying is to measure results of the campaign, but walk me through how you would counsel somebody to show that brand like, hey, this was successful. Yep, for sure. This might be counterintuitive. Worry more about entertaining your audience than trying to be the perfect advocate for a brand. The best creators that we work with, there's a guy, Cletus McFarlane, Batmassive, Auto Channel, and he does just such a great job.

24:51He just has a whole bunch of fun with it in terms of what he's doing. He did a Brunt Workwear ad recently and he's just making fun of himself. He's like, you might think I'm just into cars, but I'm, you know, I'm a blue collar guy too. And he goes out and, you know, using a table saw to cut a two by four. And as part of that, there was like a measuring tape, which he cut right away. So it was obviously like, looks like a total hack, which is part of the bit, but it was just like fun. And nowhere would you think like Brent Workwear, this serious workwear company, would they want someone who is showing that they don't know what they're doing?

25:26You know, so if you're, if you're a first timer, you wouldn't think about that. You think like, oh, how can I have this be stage perfect and make sure I'm looking authentic and really have these boots worn in or whatever, right? Just have fun with it. Allow it to be distinct and different and view it not as a brand partnership, but as a new opportunity and a new challenge to create content. And I think when creators have that mentality, they do a much better job than when they're treating it almost like a job interview. So have fun with it, lean into it, and make sure you're being easy to work with.

26:06I think that's another massive thing. This is such a straightforward thing, but do what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it. Because you don't know what's happening on the other side of that email or that platform, whatever you're using. but if you say that you're going to do something by June 15th, like it's not a small thing. If you get it June 16th, that's a big deal. Like you have not fulfilled your obligations. It may mean that that content's like totally irrelevant to a brand based on things that you're, you're not aware of. So be creative, have fun, but I do what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it.

26:41And it sounds like based on our earlier conversation that it would be a really good idea on the front end to make sure you understand what the brand is trying to accomplish in terms of their goals too. Because I'm guessing folks like us, I mean, I've experienced it. Brands come to us and we're also not super clear on their goals. They're like, I want to sponsor your thing. And we're like, okay, here's the price. And then we do it, but we don't know, was that a success? You sponsored the thing and I made the thing. So that's another takeaway is just to be sure, you know, what they're trying to accomplish with the campaign.

27:12Yes, 100%. That's something that should be communicated to a creator. And if it's not, it's totally fair game to ask that question. After a quick break, Brad shares the characteristics that make creators consistently successful when it comes to brand partnerships. And one of these might surprise you. So stick around. We'll be right back.

27:34As we approach the holiday season, it's time to start thinking about your Black Friday or Cyber Monday campaigns. I know it sounds early, but for years, I ignored this time of year because I thought it was for e-commerce and not for content businesses like mine. But then I ran a campaign in 2024. And do you know what happened? Not only was it my best month of revenue for the year, but it was my best month of revenue ever, nearly$98 ,000. I'm now convinced that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are a huge opportunity for creators like you and me. And we run a sprint in the lab every year because of it.

28:08We're about to reopen the lab to new members on our waitlist. If you're a full-time creator earning more than$100 ,000 per year or on pace to earn$100 ,000 this year, I invite you to join us. Head to creatorscience.com slash lab to get on our waitlist. We'll invite new members on October 1st, which is the perfect time to join our Black Friday sprint. That's creatorscience.com slash lab. You'll be glad you did. The Lemonati has spent decades keeping lemon on top and lime in the shadows. Their lemon agenda has infiltrated everything, even our music. That hit song named after the color of lemons?

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29:36And now back to my conversation with Brad Hughes. So thing you noticed, number one, is using the creative brief as a constraint for making fun content, not wearing the Edgar suit. Thing number two is being reliable in terms of when you deliver your deliverables in terms of timing. What else do you find as commonalities across the creators you work with who are successful and that you like working with as a company? Yeah, I think it's creators who have credibility with their audience. And you don't need to be an MD to have credibility, but we do need to see your face. We are humans. And constantly seeing you on camera and who you are really matters.

30:18We want someone who's honest and real, not trying to be overly polished or perfect. Those tend to be things that really help in terms of performance. And we like to see people who are going as deep as possible within different niche areas, especially for smaller content creators, right? So if you're a smaller content creator, you know, fighting to get to 10 ,000 followers, like you were saying, I think it's important to then be known for something, right? Don't want to just be a good general lifestyle influencer for most brands at that stage. So if you want to maximize your odds of success, I think it's all about trying to find a way to be as specialized as you can.

31:04I believe I've heard you say that the best creators you work with are the ones who say no the most often. Is that true? It is true. Yes. Say more about that. Well, now we are changing gears a little bit here. So this is getting to creators who have some scale, not necessarily talking about like, you know, a million views, but these are creators who, you know, this isn't a magic number, but call it 50 ,000 views per piece of content. Ultimately, the worst case future for influencer marketing is it becomes advertising, not advocacy. And so creators that will work with any brand, whether they believe in it or not, are making a vote for the future of their channels and the future of the industry to be closer to advertising than advocacy.

31:54When creators are protective of their audience or maybe just don't feel right inside themselves or whatever the case may be, but they'll only advocate for a brand that they really believe in over the longterm, that's going to show. Right. And so again, like if you're a creator and there's something you just, you know, doesn't feel right, then I think the answer is very clear to you. You know, it's like in hiring, if it's not an F yes, that's an F no for creators to take that a similar mentality to brand deals. And the data bears that out, right? Creators who are very selective, one, they tend to be in a privileged spot where they can be more selective.

32:38So let's recognize that. But secondly, their audience recognizes, not because they explicitly say they turned down all these deals, but sort of implicitly their audience trusts them because that's how they're wired and they're careful about what they would recommend. So I think there's a lot of power in being, I would just say discerning about who you choose to partner with. 100 % agree. Something I was thinking about earlier in the conversation when I was thinking about what would it look like if more creators were sponsored more often. I don't know what percentage of the content in my feed currently is product messaging, let's just call it, whether that's sponsored, whether that's advocacy, whether it's paid or not.

33:24But there is a future where if brands are saying, you know what, influencer marketing is the future of our marketing mix. We're gonna put way more funding there. There's a future where a drastically higher percentage of content that I see in my feed is brand coded. And I don't know if that's sustainable for those platforms long term. I wonder how the platforms themselves would react. How would Instagram react if they, at a macro level, were seeing that, hey, a larger percentage of the overall whole of content posted here is brand partnerships monetized off platform? I wonder what would happen.

34:07I don't know. It seems inherently like something would come to a head at some point. No, I think it's smart. And to be honest, you can see that, like, what's happening with TikTok versus, like, YouTube. So if we're talking about Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok for a moment, YouTube's largely the OG there. And you look at what happens is we were talking about 90-second integration before on YouTube. So if Creator X is advocating for Apple, right? Well, YouTube's actually not involved in that transaction at all. Now, YouTube does very well, thank you very much. And again, this word trust, YouTube is generally pretty darn trusted as a platform because they really do care about creators.

34:51And I'm not saying other platforms don't, but I'm saying, I think that that really shines through versus like, if you look at TikTok, if you put a organic piece of content out, you can't include a link to go off of TikTok. And yes, there's, there's reasons behind that strategically or long form content versus short form, right? Just very differently. But at the end of the day, if you want to be successful on TikTok for all intents and purposes, you are going to be running a paid campaign where TikTok is monetizing that. And again, you can run successful paid campaigns on YouTube for sure. But you are seeing some evolution of what's happening across platforms.

35:31And I do think you're right. If you go to an extreme to make a point, if 100 % of content posts are sponsored, then it might become too noisy to the consumer and they're going to consume less of the content. Now, I mean, the data doesn't show anything that would indicate that people are being turned off these social platforms currently. But those are trends that I do think absolutely need to be to be watched. And frankly, I think it happens on a micro level. If you're talking about a YouTuber, I don't recommend to them that they have every video be sponsored. It's, you know, again, an art form, but a lot of creators very, very purposely want it to be like 25 % ish of their videos where they have sponsors because it keeps their audience and frankly allows there to be more value created from those sponsors who do participate in the videos.

36:28It's so interesting that you came up with the percentage 25 % there, because as you were talking, I was thinking about, okay, sometimes legacy media has things figured out that we as an industry, the creator economy, are undervaluing that they've figured out. And so I was thinking, okay, advertising and TV has been around forever. If there's a 30-minute time slot, those episodes of television end up being about 22 minutes, which means about eight minutes as ads. And that's about 27 % of that 30-minute slot, which is an advertising. So it would seem to me that somewhere around that percentage is probably the high end of what you would want your content runtime to be advertising.

37:05Yeah, and it's super interesting because that number is true across a couple of areas. So I wouldn't say I just threw it out there, but I couldn't back that up from any study. But for creators who are posting and what you talked about is the consumers who are watching. And what's interesting is like on YouTube, while there's also pre-roll ads and mid-roll ads and post-roll, which together is pretty meaningful. And I think like what's the whole consumer experience like? And I think that's where, you know, platforms are going to have to continue to keep an eye on that. For now, I think it's in a good spot, but that doesn't mean that that won't be different in a couple of years as we're layering on shopping features here as well.

37:48I imagine one of the best metrics for deciding to work with a creator as Outloud is whether they have historic success with their campaigns. That seems like an obvious one. And you mentioned trust being such a core differentiator. I'm curious if outside of previous campaign experience, if you have any way of vetting or quantifying the trust somebody has with their audience. Yes, for sure. The answer is yes, especially when you're talking about like smaller creators. You can look at engagement rate, the number of comments that are occurring and the consistency of those. And you can look at the timing of the growth of the channel and you can look at where the followers are based.

38:38I think those are all very helpful. And I think a lot of this goes into what we were talking about earlier about being an expert in a specific niche. And if you are talking about something where you have, where people really care about underwater basket weaving, right, then that's fine. Like you've got the trust of a community about something, you know, very specific implicitly by them, you know, voting with their time and choosing to follow you. I That's a good indicator versus if you're kind of like, I mean, let's be honest. A lot of people follow what they or society deem to be attractive people on social media, right?

39:18That's fine. And that plays a role and there's nothing wrong with that. And a lot of brands want to be tied to being attractive. But typically when you're talking about brand partnerships, that's less appealing until you get to be a breakthrough level. So I assume you're not that person if you're a creator and really be able to, I don't want to say own a niche because we're talking about something that's very small, but be focused on a niche and have people who care about your POV on that specific area. Yeah, I think that's what's historically been so successful for my audience. I told you before we were recording that my folks tend to be more in the education world than the entertainment world.

40:00And in the education world, it's usually a story of like, I was really good at this thing. People started asking for my help. I was doing one on one, more and more demand, couldn't scale it. Now I make content about that thing. And so the expertise, the authority is really built in, but it seems like today in a world where for you feeds are the default on these different algorithmic platforms, that it's getting harder and harder to connect to new audiences without being equally concerned with the engagement of your content beyond the education that you're providing. Like I'm seeing a lot of people struggle because the typical, here's how I do this thing that's more tutorial just isn't as performative on an Instagram as something in the more entertainment niche.

40:50Do you guys tend to work with more, I guess, entertaining, leading creators? We've seen sort of the rise of the medical influencers here recently, which I think is like a great, it's like the best of both worlds. And it's funny, we were talking to a CMO of a large major CPG company and they're basically like, no one cares now if you have someone with a white lab coat who's a doctor and says like, this is a great probiotic. The clinical studies, generally speaking, people don't care. But what people do care is like the local mom fluencer that they follow and they say, hey, this is a great probiotic and I take it.

41:35And what's awesome is when you can have that confluence of digital fluency, call it a fancy word, right? Together with the real true credibility of being a medical professional, you know, whether you're a doctor or maybe even a skincare as an esthetician, whatever the case may be. And you have that and that's really powerful. So my challenge to creators would be like, don't go away from what you're doing, but you got to continue to evolve too on the digital fluency side. You can and should still do what you love and are passionate about, but how can you teach it in a different way? You know, it's like, hey, think of it as the student who you're not connecting with the way that you were doing it before.

42:15And the algorithm can be a decent proxy. I mean, you could always debate that, but frankly, you can't control it anyway. So you should assume that it's the right proxy, even if it's not. And continue to adapt your approach. You know, watch content has nothing to do with you, but seems to be doing really well. And what can you continue to incorporate that? So at the core, don't change in terms of delivering that value and what you're passionate about and doing education. But you got to continue to evolve and think about the mechanism through which you're communicating that to connect with your audience.

42:51I got a couple sort of rapid fire questions here as we wrap up. I saw a note that you had data from 50 ,000 creator campaigns across YouTube, TikTok, podcasts and Instagram that shows no meaningful correlation between CPM and creator performance. Tell me more about that. This one specifically, I believe is related to YouTube, but we basically looked at for all the creators that we engage with across brands. We looked at for a brand, if we worked with a hundred creators, who's the best performing creator and who's the worst performing creator and the best performing creator would get a hundred percentile and the worst performing creator would get a zero percentile.

43:28And then we layered that across all the brands and all the creators that we're working with on one axis. And the other is a CPM and try to understand. There's actually the ever so slightest, I mean, practically it's zero, but the ever so slightest correlation between showing a higher CPM correlated to a better performance. But practically speaking, there was no correlation. And I think what this tells you is that the market in aggregate is pretty damn good at pricing itself now in 2026. So if you're a creator and going back to what we talked about before, you have more demand for advertising than you want to include.

44:13What do you do? Raise your price, right? And similarly, if you do not have the sponsors that you want and people are telling you that they're not going to pay it, you're going to lower your price. And it's fascinating because a lot of brands try to optimize for the wrong metric. A lot of brands be like, hey, I need a low CPM. Well, what are you trying to accomplish? If you're trying to get trust and credibility and people going to your website and buying product, CPM is the wrong metric. And I think that's hard for brands to come to grips with sometimes. Optimizing for CPM in majority of cases, I would probably argue the vast majority of cases is not the right way to try to optimize.

44:57The data is really fascinating when you actually dig into it and layer on performance because I think that's something that's unique to us is having all this historical performance data. So if I'm hearing you correctly, are you suggesting that for the brand, they should be discerning and opinionated about who they want to work with on the merits of that person's audience and their relationship to it, rather than the pure economics of where they can get the CPM that they want? That's exactly right. Let me be clear on something. If you're looking at it for one creator, yes, if you're paying a$30 CPM instead of a$40 CPM, that's going to be better from a brand perspective.

45:39But when you look at it in aggregate, hey, a$30 creator is not necessarily better than a$50 creator. Because even if they have the same demographics, you're a same percent US male-female split, that creator oftentimes has a deeper trust of the audience as has been proven out by that audience being willing to visit a brand's website and make a purchase. And that's where we have all kinds of historical data as an agency that we're using for our brand partners to be able to help identify the right creators for those brands. Okay. Then last question, what is something you believe to be true in this space?

46:20And it's impacting how you guys operate in terms of the brands you work with, the creators that you work with, but you don't yet have pure data to support it? Well, there's a couple of new things that are happening on YouTube that I'm very excited about. One is something called Dibs, Dynamic D-Y Brand Segments, where you can now take creator video and insert a brand clip that a creator would make and that would only live for x number of views and then that can be swapped out much like a podcast ad so it's too early to have meaningful data on that but i'm very excited about that as something that's going to be you know successful and meaningful and the other thing i think is a big opportunity is youtube shorts because youtube does have so many eyeballs, has so much trust.

47:17And I think brands are just starting to get into it. And people spend a lot of time watching Instagram reels and TikToks, but people spend a lot of time on YouTube too. And YouTube shorts paid and organic is something that's going to be very successful for brands here in the near future. let's imagine that you as out loud group or as a brand could only put budget into two platforms right now which two would you choose oh goodness i mean i'm gonna answer the question but i'm gonna get a caveat first i mean it really just depends like what are you trying to accomplish you know because they all have so different but what i would say is i podcast is wonderful because you have the pixel, right?

48:04Like in a more meaningful, holistic way than any of the other platforms, because it's not a walled garden. So TLDR, you can put a podcast in the RSS feed, which is how this podcast gets distributed to Spotify, Apple podcasts, wherever you're listening to this through an RSS feed. So you can drop a pixel and then any device in the household. So if you're downloading this on your phone, but your spouse uses the same router at night and has a laptop Pixel can pick up when your spouse or whoever has devices that are using that router at night, the Pixel can pick that up. So that's really powerful from a conversion perspective.

48:40And I'm going to cheat on the second one a little bit and say YouTube, because YouTube does have the long form content and storytelling, which includes clickable links as well. And it's got the short form aspect of shorts. So I would probably go there if I had to without knowing the objectives. but there's plenty of times where we're just running Instagram and TikTok campaigns too. And I feel very good about that, but that's probably still a little bit of a weaselly answer, but at least I landed on two for you here.

49:14If you enjoyed this episode, let me know. Tag me at jklaus on Twitter or Instagram. You can comment on this episode. If you're listening on Spotify, I love reading the comments, or if you want to give me an early birthday gift, leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts. Those go a long way in helping us grow the show. They make me feel younger. They give me strength. So please consider leaving a rating review on Apple Podcasts. If you want to learn more about Brad, visit his website at outloudgroup.com. There's a link to that in the show notes as well. Thank you for listening. I'll talk to you next week.

50:23We'll see you next time. dressed make your move order on the sweet green app