The Creator Economy’s Abundance Crisis

0:00All right, 2026. We've now been doing this podcast for eight years, Colin. Yeah, which is truly incredible and the fact that this is year 10 of colin and smear on youtube Year 15 in total of making youtube videos Yeah, that's crazy and there's also a lot of like big milestones like smosh. It's year 20 For them, right? Like these are we are entering in the truly like crazy era of our industry and And it does feel like 2026 is a year where things have arrived in a very specific way. Of course, we talked about this in the last episode, but like really seeing how the streamers are taking to creators is very eye opening to me.

0:44Like the Netflixes and the Hulus and the Disney Pluses, like there's a lot of stuff that we hear that isn't public yet, but there's a lot of creator streamer deals that are about to hit. And that is a very substantial moment. It's very different. It is finally the moment where it's creators are entertainment. Yeah. And it's going to be interesting to follow and really see what does it mean to be a creator? When I think of creator, I think of Instagram, I think of YouTube. I don't think of Netflix, but maybe I will in the future. I don't know. Who knows? All right, so we are here in Montana, Big Sky, Montana, the site of the fourth annual Spotter Creator Summit.

1:28It's something that we do every year, get together with a bunch of top creators, have a week of brainstorming, of workshopping problems, of hearing from really interesting guests. And we're going to tell you a little bit about what we're hearing and what we're doing at this summit. We're also going to talk about some New Year's Eve reading that I did, which was Adam Masseri's Instagram post about the future of Instagram. If you're listening, I imagine you're like, oh, Samir, I also spent New Year's Eve reading Adam Masseri's Instagram post. Of course. You know what? I'm going to say, I bet you there's other people out there who did that.

2:04New Year's Eve? Yeah. Comment on this on Spotify or send us a tweet. If you were like me, cozied up by the fire, swiping through Adam Masseri's 20 slide Instagram post about the future of Instagram. Maybe one of you printed it out. Truly riveting. Made it into a book. It was riveting. It was riveting, and we're going to dive into it. All right. So let's start with what we're doing here in Montana and some things that we're learning from other creators. So every year for the last four years, Samir and I, with Spotter, we host this summit with a ton of top creators, and it really is a true gift as a creator to get to spend four days to just reflect on last year, plan for next year, and hear from really interesting people.

2:45You get all these unexpected creative inputs that sort of have pretty big impacts on what you do. And in the past, we've heard from JJ Abrams. We've heard from the team at OpenAI, I think like a month after ChatGPT launched. And so we've had some - Did you do your ChatGPT wrapped? No, but you mentioned it and I really want to. I did it. And because of that, I was in the 0.01 % of first users of ChatGPT, which is pretty crazy. Wow. Wow. And flex. It's just a flex. Cool. I'll check my rap and see if I'm there with you. I don't know. But yeah, we also, you know, this year we heard from Issa Rae. We heard from author Kim Scott about managing and hiring and how to talk to employees.

3:31It's just we heard from people from different brands that are looking to work with creators. And so it's just a really well-rounded, interesting four days to get to take a deep breath and plan the year. So we set the theme for this. And I want to share the theme with you guys because it came to me in a vision during the holidays. It came very clear to me, which is the art of being memorable. And this is because I had this vision of a supply and demand graph. Also, if anyone is with me, if they also had visions of a supply and demand graph during the holidays, let me know. But I was thinking about the world of creators and how in 2020, I remember the feeling as we were creating and starting to pick up with the Colin and Samir show that, okay, there is a massive demand all of a sudden from advertisers because TV was kind of shut down and people were all on their phones and on the internet.

4:25Massive demand from advertisers to work with creators and a very low supply. And a massive demand from audiences. And a massive demand from audiences. Because TV and streaming was not what it was because of COVID. And over the past, like now we're, it's 2026. Like it's been six years since that. And what has happened over the past six years is the supply side has gone way up of content. We'll get to that again with Misseri's post because that has a few different reasons. but the supply of good content on your phone is unbelievably high. We are in the era of abundance of good content. The demand is still high and getting higher.

5:07But what happens when supply is high and demand is high? What happens is you need curation, right? Like if you have demand and you're trying to make a deal or you're trying to say, Hey, I'm supposed to work with a hundred creators. You go to the market and you go, well, there's so many, there's so many options. What do I, who do I choose? And what we feel as creators is unbelievably important now to work on your narrative and go, here's why to choose me, where, what is my story? How is that story being told? And like, just making a good video is like not, it is not enough at all to be in the market and actually have a good business.

5:44And that's something that's really been sticking with me and thinking a lot about where the future of the creator ads business is and even the audience, right? Like the audience has so many options now of really good content. And it also feels like to me, every idea I have for a video is going to get made by someone else. Or has been made. Or has been made, unless it is a uniquely personal idea. So that was like the framework going into this of how do you, how do you be memorable? Like, how do you make sure that at the end of 2026, when we look back December 31st, 2026, our audience remembers what we did and brands when they're making decisions, they go like, oh yeah, Colin and Samir would be a good brand for this.

6:36Yeah. How do you make moments that are memorable? That's what we've been talking about here. And, you know, I was saying to a creator the other day that, you know, you can get 10 million views. But if you get 10 million views, even if you get it a few times throughout the year, it does not imply that you crossed over culturally, and that communities are really talking about you, they're actually engaged, or that press is picking it up. And so you actually now have to make a really concerted effort to tell the story of the story, not only of your video that you pulled off, but of your entire channel and your entire brand.

7:12That's actually more important than the one-off videos. The story of who you are needs to translate across culture and make its way to audiences and make its way clearly to brands. So Issa Rae was one of the speakers this year. And something she said that really stuck with me was, you know, also if you're unfamiliar with Issa Rae, she started on YouTube. She started making a show called The Misadventures of an Awkward Black Girl. And it was a sketch show or a skit show. And she did 24 episodes on YouTube. And then it got picked up by HBO and got turned into a very popular show called Insecure.

7:47Won an Emmy. Won an Emmy. She then got like a big deal with HBO and still has a massive deal with HBO to produce shows. And what she was talking about, the primary difference between like being a creator and going to Hollywood and what Hollywood has been in the past is Hollywood is a great marketing engine and a great curator of monoculture. And that has started to change as Hollywood reacts to our world and reacts to how the audience is consuming content. But I thought it was a really good point that, you know, traditionally what has made the movie business and Hollywood really great is they tell us what to care about and who to care about.

8:25And they invest a lot in marketing. They invest tens of millions of dollars into marketing to make sure we know the thing is coming out. What was really cool is she was in Barbie, which was one of the most well-marketed, most successful movies, of course, of the past few years. And, you know, it was on billboards. It was on TV. The actors were on the late night shows. They were traveling and doing press circuits. And like, that is something that creators, we don't really spend money on marketing. We consider our videos to be marketing in itself. Like our videos travel algorithmically and from mouth to mouth and that is the marketing.

9:10But it is another level, you know, if you're going to be on these streamers or even if you just want to be on YouTube, but you want to cross over culturally thinking about how can I actually invest in marketing? And now that can be at multiple ends of the spectrum. That can be someone just, I was talking to a creator here who just posted Instagram stories, bringing people along the journey of making the video, sort of hyping the story of the story of the video she was making so that when it came out, audiences knew. Some creators work with PR and publicists, so you can get traditional headlines.

9:42But there's this next level that I think some of the bigger creators who have more money to maybe spend on marketing, or some of the creators who work with brands who want to put up the money to take these videos and these creators and their channels to another level similar to Hollywood, which is billboards, which is going on late night. The hard thing is the pace, right? Like you think about creators here. I mean, Michelle Kari is here and I think she does some of the best job at marketing her videos. Like her Tom Cruise stunt was very well marketed. She came on our show to talk about it. There's a lot of headlines about the stunt.

10:14But I think for us, we move at a pace that once we put out a project, our full focus is on the next project and the next video when do you market it right because because what happens is like you finish a movie and then there's all this time in between when it's actually done and released and then once it's released you have allotted time to market it there's not a pace that you're moving at necessarily i mean maybe as an actor you're jumping to another movie but i think us as like production companies to to actually remind you that we made a thing and made it a big deal is really hard. Like you look at like even Jimmy, right?

10:49With Beast Games, that is a great example of the difference between something getting marketed and his YouTube videos. Because Beast Games is with Amazon Prime. It's coming out, actually, while you're listening to this, it is out now. Beast Games season two is out. And, you know, he's going on different shows. He's going on like a press tour. If you search his name on YouTube right now, you'll see him on a bunch of different interviews. There's a lot of press. He's, he's posting about it a lot. Um, there will be billboards up to remind you of it like that. That is the most traditional conventional marketing, um, that we will see in the creator space.

11:22But he also spends like$4 million on a YouTube video. There's not like a billboard up for one of his YouTube videos to remind you to go watch this massive project that he made on YouTube. His YouTube videos are a big deal, but if every video is a big deal, they become less of a big deal. Then nothing's a big deal. Then nothing's a big deal. And I think even for him, what's the story of the story for him? It is beast games. And I think like that for every creator, I would urge you to think about whether it's one time a year, four times a year, what are the things that you do that are a big deal, even if you do upload a video every single week, right?

12:00I think it's important to think about for us, press publish NYC, our big event for me, when I look back on turn 25, that was our big deal. That's a big deal. Yeah. That, you know, from the photos we took, from the investment we made and how that event transpired. Like, I want people to look at us last year and go, that was, that was their big deal. And that allowed us to create a story of a story that our audience can know about that brands could get involved with. Yeah. And we invested like irrationally, you know, there was no reason to do it, but you and I wanted to do it. We invested in wheat pastings across New York city, which is like those, those posters that go up, uh, are on like construction sites and stuff.

12:41Yeah. Because I was like, this is, this is a big deal. We need to figure out how to eventize this and make it, make it matter. I think where I think we missed is after it happened, I don't know how to continue telling that story. And I think that's where people are, like Hollywood has been really good that after the fact, once they've produced the thing, they, they continue, continue telling the story for a long time. So I think as the, the, the long story short here is I think one thing that we are all recognizing is that as content gets more abundant, we have to solve how to stand out both from like better ideas.

13:16Like I think we all have to have better ideas and more interesting ideas and more, more ideas that are personal and, and things that only we can do, but we also have to tell the story of those ideas and respect the marketing of those ideas. Because now we're just swimming in a sea of like, cool, if it's not you, there's another person to fill the slot. And I've noticed that too, in just like brand negotiations going into 2026, I would say, you know, where I first started to feel this high supply, high demand side is there's a lot more take it or leave it from brands, which didn't used to be the case.

13:52there's a lot more like, you know, Hey, here's our offer. And you're like, cool. Okay. Like typically it's like, all right, this part doesn't work for us. Like here's the, here's the red lines. And like you go back and there's, there's brands now who are like, Oh, okay. If you have notes on this, all good, you know, and it's not exactly that harsh by any means. There's nothing, there's nothing actually, it's been like that, but I'm starting to feel that there likely is, it is moving towards that direction of take it or leave it because there is a high supply. And the only way that you can not be in the take it or leave it category is to be a one-of-one, which means investing in marketing and storytelling.

14:29I don't even know that like reach and impressions and views is the metric now. Like that doesn't feel like the metric. It feels like a much more qualitative metric, which I guess it always has been. But the qualitative metric of like, what is your narrative? Who is your audience? Who are you comparable to? Are you showing up on the Time 100 list? Are you showing up on the cover of the Hollywood Reporter? Like, somebody has to curate these people for the industry. Aaron from Spotter was telling me today that there was a scenario he had heard of that, you know, a creator was looking to work with a brand, very successful creator.

15:10Brand looked up to the creator and there was no traditional PR. There was no press about them, yeah. about them. And that turned the brand off of like, oh, well, the publications that I care about are not covering this creator. So even though the viewership, the metrics, maybe even the engagement, the communities there, this one determining factor of what this brand considers cultural relevance didn't show up in the search. So now the other thing that we have been talking about quite a bit here, is while we're starting to see long form emerge into the space of potential to move to streamers, hyper premium long form content, category exclusive sponsorships, the classic brand integration to me feels like it has moved to short form content.

15:59And the more I talk to more creators, the more I think that is true, that like the bread and butter integration, the, Hey, let me give you, you know,$50 ,000,$75 ,000, uh, for, for you to integrate my brand into a video is in short form content. There's a different category of sponsorship and long form content. Now that's much harder to get much more blue chip. An example that was shown here was the, uh, most recent dude, perfect video, which is sponsored by all state. Uh, and, and that was a project that that's butter did with dude perfect. That's like the Allstate field goal net was turning 20 and like they made this big, it's integrated into the content.

16:40It's squad games with Dude Perfect and Savannah Bananas. And that is a much more like integrated partnership that also extends to them making short form content to making Instagram stuff. And I think the long form integration is, I think it will always exist that we'll have the like quick break in this episode to tell you about Squarespace. Like that probably will exist. But the bigger dollars are moving towards like a much more category specific deal, a much more creative deal, and much more 360 deal. Like whereas before, I think again in 2020, you're looking at, you know, it's January 2020. And I think we could look and say, hey, we're making 10 videos in Q1.

17:32I'm not worried about selling that inventory right now because in two weeks, someone's going to probably reach out and go, hey, can I buy an ad spot in your show? I don't know that that's how it works as much anymore with long-form content. That experience is happening in short-form content. But the long-form content sales cycle is getting longer and it's getting more blue chip and it's getting more custom. It's also being replaced a little bit with creators showing up in the ads. I think I spoke, I talked about this last episode, but the, you know, Emma Chamberlain Shopify ad that plays as pre-roll on YouTube, you know, the way that ad is shot, the way she delivers the information about Shopify, it's not going to be in a video on her channel, but it works really well as an ad.

18:19So I think it's being a bit replaced by that. And I am seeing some dedicated videos, meaning the entire long form video is dedicated to the brand the same way that in a short form piece of content, because it is short, it's 60 seconds and you got it. You're not, you're not breaking from a 60 second short to say, now let me tell you about this brand in 10 seconds. The whole short is about the brand that does happen on YouTube. And when it's done well, that is my favorite form of long form integration and advertising. Like Yes Theory, when Amar is running the marathon and it's sponsored by Runa, the running app that helped him train.

18:56It's integrated throughout and it actually elevates the video and makes it better. I think the other reason for short-form content, and this was discussed over the past couple of days, is performance marketing. Performance marketing, meaning the ability to boost a post or put paid media against a post. in short form content, there's a very natural flow into that. If you give me a 60 second or 30 second or 15 second short form vertical video, I know how to run that as paid media. And I can measure that with my performance marketing budget, which is typically the biggest budget in a brand. So anyway, that's a trend that we're seeing.

19:37And, you know, I think the third thing that has been discussed here is a lot about like the actual, like what, what do we all make now that is memorable? Considering that as you spend your time scrolling on Instagram or opening up YouTube, there's a lot of interesting things happening where, you know, this week, Neurosama, which is a partially AI VTuber, became the most watched, sorry, the most subscribed to Twitch streamer in paid subscribers, 165 ,000 paid subscribers at$5 a month. So around$820 ,000 a month in top line revenue. Now, the reason why that is important is largely because of what Adam Mosseri posted.

20:26So I think we should read Adam's post and talk about this tension that we're all feeling now of what do we make? What do we make to show up on these platforms? AI means that there will only be an increase in content. There will only be more creators and it will be more difficult, I believe, to be memorable. So let's read what, I'll read what he said here and then we can respond to it. Again, posted on New Year's Eve. Imagine Samir with a glass of wine and his phone. This was real. I was like next to a fire. Yeah, getting ready to celebrate the new year with Adam Masseri. Okay. He says, The key risk Instagram faces is that as the world changes more quickly, the platform fails to keep up.

21:16Looking forward to 2026, one major shift, authenticity is becoming infinitely reproducible. Everything that made creators matter, the ability to be real, to connect, to have a voice that couldn't be faked, is now accessible to anyone with the right tools. Deep fakes are getting better. AI generates photos and videos indistinguishable from captured media. Power has shifted from institutions to individuals because the internet made it so anyone with a compelling idea could find an audience. The cost of distributing information is zero. Individuals, not publishers or brands, established that there's a significant market for content from people.

21:54Trust in institutions is at an all-time low. We've turned to self-captured content from creators we trust and admire. We like to complain about AI slop, but there's a lot of amazing AI content. Even the quality AI content has a look, though. Too slick, skin too smooth. That will change. We're going to see more realistic AI content. Authenticity is becoming a scarce resource, driving more demand for creator content, not less. The bar is shifting from can you create to can you create something that only you could create. Unless you're under 25, you probably think of Instagram as a feed of square photos, polished makeup, skin smoothing, and beautiful landscapes.

22:34That feed is dead. People stopped sharing personal moments to feed years ago. The primary way people share now is in DMs, blurry photos and shaky videos of daily experiences, shoe shots, and unflattering candids. This raw aesthetic has bled into public content and across art forms. The camera companies are betting on the wrong aesthetic. They're competing to make everyone look like a pro photographer from 2015. But in a world where AI can generate flawless imagery, the professional look becomes the tell. Flattering imagery is cheap to produce and boring to consume. People want content that feels real.

23:13Savvy creators are leaning into unproduced, unflattering images. In a world where everything can be perfected, imperfection becomes a signal. Rawness isn't just aesthetic preference anymore, it's proof. It's defensive. A way of saying, this is real because it's imperfect. Relatively quickly, AI will create any aesthetic you like, including an imperfect one, that presents itself as authentic. At that point, we'll need to shift our focus to who says something instead of what is being said. For most of my life, I could safely assume photographs or videos were largely accurate captures of moments that happened.

23:47This is clearly no longer the case, and it's going to take us years to adapt. We're going to move from assuming that what we see is real by default to starting with skepticism, paying attention to who is sharing something and why. This will be uncomfortable. We're genetically predisposed to believing our eyes. Platforms like Instagram will do good work identifying AI content, but they'll get worse at it over time as AI gets better. It will be more practical to fingerprint real media than fake media. Camera manufacturers will cryptographically sign images at Capture, creating a chain of custody.

24:22Labeling is only part of the solution. We need to surface much more context about the account's sharing content so people can make informed decisions. Who is behind the account? In a world of infinite abundance and infinite doubt, the creators who can maintain trust and signal authenticity by being real, transparent, and consistent will stand out. We need to build the best creative tools, label AI-generated content, and verify authentic content. Surface credibility signals about who's posting, continue to improve ranking for originality. Instagram is going to have to evolve in a number of ways and fast.

24:59It's a great post. It really is. You know, obviously we've had Adam on the show and we've talked to him a few times. Like one of the things I love about Adam is he kind of just says it how it is. You know how some people think Instagram is about posting photos of your life? Yeah. That died years ago. Yeah. Like it is, it's a very blunt description of our moment in time. And similar to what I'm saying at the beginning of this podcast, that the supply is at a all time high. It is about to hit a velocity that I don't, we've never seen before. We've never seen this supply of media in the palm of our hands.

25:43And the media that is being generated, what Adam is saying, is obviously we're starting to see it now. People are like, oh, people are angry about AI. People are, oh, this doesn't look good. You can obviously tell, but in three years, you're not going to be able to tell. Probably in less time. And there's going to be an influx of stuff that you'll watch that feel, it just is real to you. That's it. Because like he's saying, it's going to be hard for them to identify AI content. It'll be easier for us to signify what's real. The one thing that I would hedge against here, and I put this, I'm doing a keynote in Dubai this weekend, and I put this as my last slide.

26:21Although if you're there, I kind of want this to be a... Earmuffs. Yeah, whatever. I'll just share it. I just put the last slide as honestly have something to say, period. Just that's the last thing I want to leave people with, which is when I read this post, my caution to creators is looking at this and suggesting, okay, authenticity is a strategy, right? When Adam is saying that, like the only people that'll win are people who signal authenticity. I don't think you can manufacture that. I don't think you can manufacture real in the way that Adam's talking about, in the way that I like to consume right now.