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- Issue #71: Google’s push to scale creator impact
Issue #71: Google’s push to scale creator impact
The fastest way for digital marketing pros to look smart in the weekly stand-up
☕ Good morning, platform people
Here’s your coffee-fuelled run through the adtech and digital marketing stories worth knowing so far this week.
🗞️ Top Stories
OpenAI and Smartly bring conversational ads closer to ChatGPT
OpenAI is working with Smartly on ad formats built for ChatGPT, signalling a move towards more native conversational advertising.Yahoo pushes its DSP further downmarket
Yahoo is adding more AI-led tools to make its DSP more accessible for mid-market, performance-focused advertisers.PubMatic and Amnet launch agentic campaign in France
PubMatic and Amnet have launched what they call France’s first agentic advertising campaign using Claude to speed up execution.Omnicom audit of The Trade Desk finds no issues
Omnicom’ third-party audit of The Trade Desk is supportive of the DSP’s transparency practice, in direct contrast to the recent audit from Publicis.YouTube expands Creator Partnerships API
YouTube has added new AI-powered tools to its Creator Partnerships API, helping brands find creators and scale partnerships more easily.
💭 60-Second Take – Google’s push to scale creator impact
With the Creator Partnerships API announcement, Google is trying to make creator campaigns on YouTube easier to plan, buy and measure at scale, with the broader goal of winning more share of wallet from rival platforms.
The bigger ambition is to move creator partnerships beyond one-off collaborations and into something much closer to mainstream paid media.
Competing for creator spend
Meta and TikTok have been strong at attracting creator budgets because they feel faster, more native and often more performance-led. YouTube’s response is to lean on its own strengths: a huge creator base, stronger cross-screen viewing and close links to Google’s market-leading ad stack. The aim is to bring creator activity closer to standard paid media execution.
There is still real headroom on YouTube
YouTube still has genuine room for growth, with media investment yet to fully follow watch time onto the platform. It combines creator content, premium video, CTV reach and existing advertiser relationships, giving Google a strong case for consolidating more creator spend inside its ecosystem. If brands can find creators faster and activate creator-led content more easily across formats and screens, YouTube becomes a more compelling home for scaled creator partnerships amplified by paid media.
Scaling organic partnerships is still the hard part
The challenge is that organic creator partnerships do not automatically translate into scalable paid media. They are often bespoke, relationship-led and difficult to standardise. Scaling them means tighter rights management, better operational consistency and, of course, stronger measurement. Authenticity is what makes creator partnerships work, and the niche audience relationships creators hold are often central to performance. The real test for YouTube is whether those partnerships can scale without losing what made them effective in the first place.
Overall, this is a play for market share, not just a product update. Google wants YouTube creator partnerships to become more scalable, more measurable and more central to paid media planning.
Got feedback, suggestions or interested in partnerships? Hit reply and let us know.
See you next time,