Influence Weekly

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Oct 2026

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Join us as we dive deeper into the latest trends, insights, and stories from the world of influencer marketing and the creator economy. Our podcast brings you exclusive interviews with industry leaders, in-depth analysis of key topics, and a behind-the-scenes look at the stories that matter most to our community.

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November 4, 2026Episode 4818 min

November 2026 Creator Economy News Recap: You Paid For It Twice

In this November episode, hosts Ceci Carloni and Nii Ahene break down three stories that together show what brands are actually paying for in creator marketing right now: what a post costs after it works, what a follower count is still buying, and which problem the industry has quietly given up on solving. Your creator post takes off. The paid team sees it, wants money behind it, and asks for the usage rights. That is the moment you find out what they cost. One creator charged two hundred dollars a day for usage after the post was already working. Nobody did anything wrong. The rate just was not locked, so there is now a number in your budget that did not exist in the brief you approved. Finance will not ask why it happened. They will ask why you did not see it coming. So what were you buying the first time? A creator deal comes as one price, but there are three things inside it: production, distribution, and usage. Usage is the first thing brands cut to hit a number. It is also the only part that matters once the post performs, and by then the creator sets the price. Underneath that, the number most brands still price on has stopped working. Almost all views now go to people who do not follow the creator at all, so a five hundred follower account can outrun a five hundred thousand follower account on the same post. There is no trust score. Nobody has built one. Ceci and Nii also get into the October roundtable, where thirty executives, founders and talent reps were asked to name the biggest unsolved problem in the creator economy and most of them said measurement, and into what Nii would actually change before Black Friday. If you are defending a creator budget this quarter, this is the half hour that tells you where it is leaking. Chapters 00:00 Cold open 00:31 One price, three things you are actually buying 02:47 The post is the audition. The usage rights are the bill 05:10 Your paid team is a different agency, and nobody is coordinating them 05:45 Follower count stopped telling you who will buy 07:59 What to look at instead, and only from the last 60 days 09:12 30 executives name the biggest unsolved problem 10:14 The one problem that gets solved first 11:57 The problem we will still be arguing about in three years 14:38 Attribution is possible, and here is the $100 test 16:12 What to change before Q4, and what to leave alone Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: H07Q1BOCJ3FN7OT7 The Big Three by Influence Weekly: 3 Biggest Stories. 1 Essential Conversation.

October 29, 2026Episode 4730 min

Paying for Reach That Builds the Category Instead of the Brand, with Mack Reynolds (Shuttlerock)

Scroll your category’s feed for ten minutes. The same faces, the same talking-to-camera POV, the same three beats. Some of those creators are on your roster. Some are on your competitor’s. The reach reports look fine, so nobody flags it. Here is what nobody puts on the dashboard: that work may be buying attention for your category instead of your brand. Finance already cut your production money and asked for more content than you have ever made, so the easy answer is to keep running the people who already work. That is the version of the spend you cannot see, and it is the one that costs you the quarter. Mack Reynolds spent years inside Meta watching which content actually won, and he will tell you they were almost always wrong about which content they thought would win. He has a test that takes an afternoon: put your last year of work on a wall, put your three closest competitors next to it, and look. He watched a hotel brand go from a handful of assets to dozens per property and move bookings 13 percent. He has seen the other side too, brands running two or three ideas everywhere and calling it scale. His verdict is blunt. If it looks just like everybody else’s, the reach is not building anything you own. If you run creator and social at a brand and the feed has started to blur, this is the episode that tells you what still makes you recognizable. Chapters 00:00 Cold open 01:06 The content became the targeting, and your brief has not caught up 05:36 Finance cut production and asked for five times the content 10:08 Two ways brands waste a bigger content budget 12:42 The one that is worse, and why smart teams land there 14:33 The wall test: how to tell if your work is invisible 17:40 What creativity actually needs saving from 20:29 The line on AI work you would put your name on 24:14 One agency, one brand book, a flat budget: what changes first 28:02 Why he thinks the golden age is ahead Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: PNR3T7PFVEFC8SJS The Big Three by Influence Weekly: 3 Biggest Stories. 1 Essential Conversation.

October 22, 2026Episode 4638 min

Stop Buying the Worst Video a Creator Will Ever Make w/ Dan Albert (456 Growth Talent)

Every March you build the list again. Thirty, forty, sixty creators, new negotiations, new briefs, new product shipped to people who have never touched it. Three weeks later you pull the recap deck and the budget goes back to zero. Then the next quarter starts and you do all of it again. Here is the part nobody puts in the contract. Every first video a creator makes is their worst, and a campaign only ever buys that first video. You are paying full price for the draft, four times a year, and paying again to rediscover, rebrief, reship, and renegotiate on top of it. The brand next to you is on month nine with the same creator, running content already tested against real sales data. Dan Albert represents more than 600 social sellers driving around $40 million in GMV a month. He watched QVC scrap the loyalty tiers its creators had built three years of their feeds around, and the earnings drowned out overnight. He has 200 creators on retainer, some with fewer than 6,000 followers, earning $25,000 to $100,000 a year. And he says the thousand dollar post is almost never the cheaper option, it just looks like it on the line item. If your creator budget resets to zero every quarter and you have been calling that a strategy, this is the episode that shows you what the resets are actually costing you, and what to protect before the next one. Chapters 00:00 Teaser 00:15 Cold open 00:45 Why the campaign budget goes back to zero and the retainer one does not 04:30 Every first video is the worst one, and campaigns only buy that one 08:21 The trust that only shows up after the fourth post 12:37 What happened when QVC changed the rules on the creators who built it 14:37 Killing the program before the data says anything 18:24 How to defend this to a CMO who wants the number now 21:30 Deciding which creators have earned a year of your budget 25:07 The exit clause that protects the brand and nobody else 33:46 What brands actually pay per creator per month 40:16 When a campaign is right, and when a retainer becomes the trap 44:03 What to change before next year’s budget is set Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: Z0GL7ZKEM0NAFLCI The Big Three by Influence Weekly: 3 Biggest Stories. 1 Essential Conversation.

October 16, 2026Episode 4546 min

Talent Managers Keep a List of the Brands That Lowball, with Gigi Harville (The Paul Harville Group)

Your agency is sending offers out under your logo right now. Somebody on the other side is reading them and deciding whether your brand gets a reply next quarter. Gigi Harville manages talent, and she has been doing it since 2009. She sees what hits creator inboxes: three TikToks, a story, six months of exclusivity, ad rights, $250. She says no on the spot. Then she tells the other managers, and they tell theirs. No one sends you an email about it. Your shortlist just gets thinner, the creators you wanted start passing, and nobody in your Monday meeting can explain why. The cheapest offer you ever sent is the one line finance will never find, because it does not show up as a cost. It shows up as access you no longer have. She is not anti-brand. She told one creator to accept a fee well below her rate, because the brand came back fast and excited and had clearly run out of budget. That brand returned months later with three times the money. In the same week she watched a creator with 10,000 followers, every video clearing 100,000 views, get offered $500 and almost take it. Her verdict is blunt. They are offering crumbs, they know their own budget, and if creators start saying no together, the budget comes up. If you run creator marketing and you have never seen the offer that goes out with your name on it, watch this one. Chapters 00:00 Cold open 00:17 Follower count stopped setting the price, and nothing clean replaced it 09:03 The small creator pitch is ten years old. Why it is different this time 10:10 Same engagement, lower rate, and who keeps getting it 10:56 The terms nobody can redline, and the likeness rights that never expire 25:09 What a creator is worth once the scope of work decides the price 29:42 The below rate offer worth taking, and the one that is an insult 32:02 $250 for three videos. The brands that get cut off a roster 34:14 Engagement is purchasable now, so she watches the lives instead 40:06 Selling a smaller creator to a CMO who only knows the big names Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: IH7G4PMANDB2VSFW The Big Three by Influence Weekly: 3 Biggest Stories. 1 Essential Conversation.

October 9, 2026Episode 4437 min

The Creator Economy Is Not a PR Tactic, with Gregory Curtis from Empower Media

Your shoppers are not browsing anymore. They are following one person who eats, breathes and posts a single subject, and they buy what she tells them to buy. Your deck still ranks that person by follower count, because that is the column your agency sends you. Here is the part that should keep you up. Your creator money is sitting in the wrong line item. It is filed as publicity, as social, as a nice moment, which means when finance pulls the report there is no media plan to point at. You are spending real dollars in a place your CFO has no column for, and that is a budget you cannot defend twice. Gregory Curtis is Director of Brand Marketing at Empower Media, the agency behind an award winning JD Sports campaign. He pulled a report on a 22,000 follower account with a gorgeous feed and found the audience was 60 percent real. He watched a brand fall in love with a 50,000 follower page whose audience was 70 percent in India. And he has sat in the room where a marketer had to explain the numbers after the fact. His verdict, said flat: creators are media assets, and most brands are not buying them that way. If you own a creator budget and you can already hear the question coming from finance, this is the episode that tells you how to walk in with an answer. Chapters 00:00 Cold open 00:22 The number on your brief stopped meaning anything 05:01 Why the small creator pitch is different this time 08:36 Ten thousand followers beats a hundred thousand, every time 11:20 When the big name is still worth the money 15:33 Filed as publicity: how creator spend loses the room 22:32 The beautiful feed that was 60 percent real 29:32 The bots your agency is not flagging 32:44 Walking into the budget review with proof 37:04 What the best creators are building next Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: UZ9M2SWRFHJNZHEK The Big Three by Influence Weekly: 3 Biggest Stories. 1 Essential Conversation.

October 5, 2026Episode 4321 min

The One Number Worth Judging a Creator On Does Not Exist Yet. With Kristen Wiley (Statusphere)

Your customers are not asking you how they found the product. They saw a video from someone with 500 followers, trusted her, and bought. Then Google took the credit for the sale, and the number sitting on your brief, the one your agency keeps optimizing against, had nothing to do with it. Here is the part that should land in your budget review. There is no agreed price for any of this. Kristen Wiley, founder and CEO of Statusphere, has spent fifteen years watching the range stretch past anything a rate card can hold. She has seen a creator with a million followers post for free product. She has seen a creator with a thousand followers get paid twenty thousand dollars. Her words for the whole market: there is no normal. So when your CMO asks what you are buying and what it costs, the honest answer is that nobody has built the number yet. Wiley would use a trust score if one existed. It does not. Impressions got pulled out of Instagram and TikTok, so anything still reporting them is deriving them from a formula nobody can show you. EMV gets calculated differently by every platform selling it. If you are defending a creator budget with numbers you cannot fully stand behind, this is the episode that tells you which ones are actually dead, what a real audit looks like, and what is still solid under you. Chapters 00:00 Cold open 00:21 The algorithm quietly took follower count off the table 04:49 Attention bought reach. Trust buys the sale 06:08 The small account converts better and looks worse in the deck 09:18 Free product or twenty thousand dollars for the same post 11:05 Why paying only for performance punishes the creator who sold it 12:40 Google and Meta got marketers drunk on last click 14:15 How to tell a bought audience from a real one before you sign 18:17 Taking the small account bet upstairs to a CMO 20:07 The one number worth having does not exist yet 20:59 The metrics to stop putting on the report Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: HR3WXQOF8CVGL5BI The Big Three by Influence Weekly: 3 Biggest Stories. 1 Essential Conversation.

October 1, 2026Episode 4216 min

October 2026 Creator Economy News Recap: 5 Million Views, Nothing to Show for It

In this October episode, hosts Ceci Carloni and Nii Ahene break down three stories that together show what brands are actually paying for in creator marketing right now: what a view is worth, what a fee is buying, and who owns the content after the campaign ends. Your UGC is dead by Thursday. Not underperforming. Dead. Most creator posts stop moving two days after they go up, and the next batch does the same thing, and the line item keeps getting approved because nobody has said it out loud in a budget meeting. One AI startup ran a UGC program for three months this year. Five million views. Tons of engagement. No results they could point at. They shut it down. Two months later an agency took the same product, used twelve creators instead of a crowd, and got one hundred million views in twelve weeks. So what did the first five million buy? That is the uncomfortable part of this month. The best UGC creators now have brands bidding against each other for them, and if your answer is to pay ten thousand a video when someone else paid five, you are in a race to the bottom with your own budget. The top fraction of a percent will always be expensive. Everyone else is a training problem nobody is funding. Ceci and Nii also get into Fashion Week, where a creator deal went from a free invitation to a twenty five thousand dollar fee and most of them never see a runway, and into perpetuity rights, where thirty three people in the industry were asked if it is ever fair and most said no. If you are defending a creator budget this quarter, this is the half hour that tells you which part of it is real. Chapters 00:00 Cold open 00:22 Five million views, no results, program shut down 01:51 Twelve creators, one hundred million views, and what actually changed 02:40 Your UGC is dead two days after it posts 03:33 Brands are bidding against each other for the same creators 04:41 Paying more per video is a race to the bottom with your own money 05:06 Fashion Week costs twenty five thousand a post and nobody goes to the shows 08:10 Any event can be bought into a creator moment now 09:51 Is perpetuity ever fair? Thirty three people in the industry answered 11:14 The deal you signed for five hundred dollars that blocks your next one 13:01 Most creator content stops working in sixty days, so why are you buying forever 14:58 What is coming next month Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: 84BMNYFFENC5ZTGB The Big Three by Influence Weekly: 3 Biggest Stories. 1 Essential Conversation.

September 29, 2026Episode 4133 min

Reach Is the New Follower Count: Why Smaller Creator Accounts Are More Valuable to Brands w/ Adam Harris (Gaggl)

Your customers are spending their evenings in small rooms where the host knows their names. Seventy percent of what they watch comes from accounts they never followed. Your media kit still prices a deal off a follower number, because that is the number your CMO recognizes and the number your agency keeps putting on the slide. Nobody in the room will say the quiet part. The roster that looks strongest upstairs is the roster that converts worst. Finance already asked the only question that matters, how many sales will it drive, and the big names you paid for went straight into the ether. There is no line on your dashboard for a post that disappeared. Adam Harris sold brand partnerships at Twitch when nobody wanted them and now runs creator hosted TV at Gaggl, where he is co-founder. He has heard the CMO objection in its purest form, I do not know who these people are, but my kid follows Mr Beast. He has A/B tested the two rosters against each other on every campaign he runs, and the small creators come back with five times the engagement. Every time. He is not telling you to fire the big names. He is telling you that you have been buying one thing and reporting on another, and that the fix is smaller and cheaper than the meeting you are dreading. If you have to defend your creator budget this quarter, start here. Chapters 00:00 Cold open 01:34 The number on your media kit stopped predicting anything 03:55 The three objections that killed your last small creator pitch 10:02 The micro creator story was true five years ago and still lost the budget 13:25 Five times the engagement, and the reach you give up to get it 17:02 What you are actually buying when you buy a small community 19:26 What 50,000 of the right people is worth 21:47 Followers can be bought, and only a human can tell you whose are real 25:17 How to take the small account bet upstairs and survive the room 30:36 The NFL already handed its content over. Your category has not Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: ZV3AVIKJZ6EQ7F5E The Big Three by Influence Weekly: 3 Biggest Stories. 1 Essential Conversation.

September 25, 2026Episode 4034 min

Every Brand Cuts Usage Rights to Save Money. They All Regret It. With Julia Salume (Moburst)

Your creator quotes came back higher again this year, and the number arrives as one line on an invoice. Nobody can tell you what is inside it. Not the creator, not your agency, and not the manager who says the rate is the rate. So you do what everyone does when the check looks too big. You cut the usage rights, because that is the line that feels optional in the room. It saves you a few hundred dollars in a budget your CFO is already circling. Then the post takes off, and the only asset you actually wanted is the one you do not own. Julia Salume, Head of Influencer and UGC at Moburst, has watched this land both ways. A brand comes back after the post pops and the creator has already done the math, because the leverage moved across the table. Two hundred dollars a day, every day, for a video the brand thought it had paid for. Meanwhile the paid media team is still waiting on a file, and the momentum is gone. Her verdict is blunt. If a creator sends you one blended number and cannot break it into production, distribution, and usage, that is a red flag about what they think their own work is worth. If you are defending a creator budget this quarter and you cannot say what each dollar bought, this is the episode that tells you where the money actually goes and what is still worth paying for. Chapters 00:00 Cold open 01:06 One invoice, three products, and why the total looks insane 04:18 What you are actually buying before you negotiate anything 07:08 Deals went from three thousand to seventy four hundred. Here is what changed. 11:00 You bought deliverables. Your CMO is grading you on results. 12:50 The first line every brand cuts, and the regret that follows 15:15 Splitting a ten thousand dollar quote line by line 17:44 Follower count is still on your brief, and the math behind it is broken 21:16 Usage runs twenty to thirty percent of production, every month 24:20 Paid media never gets told the rights expired 27:11 The renegotiation you walk into with no leverage 29:44 What to change in your next outreach email 31:35 The one thing to fix if you sat in the CMO seat Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: QIUZTF7K9GNSKPQD The Big Three by Influence Weekly: 3 Biggest Stories. 1 Essential Conversation.

September 18, 2026Episode 3928 min

Why Is Creator Pricing Still the Wild West? with Shirel Benji of Creator Origin

Four years ago, a brand opened a media kit, looked at the follower count, and priced the deal off it. Shirel Benji, founder and CEO of Creator Origin, says that number hasn't disappeared, but it's stopped being the thing that actually predicts a campaign's results. In this episode, she breaks down what changed in how platforms distribute content, why relevance now matters more than reach, and why the industry still can't agree on what a creator's price should even be based on. Shirel walks through the real difference between an influencer and a creator, why a Seattle coffee-truck activation staffed with 40 nano and micro creators outperformed the handful of mid-tier names in the room, and how her team actually vets a creator's engagement by hand before a brand ever signs off. She also gets candid about what happens when a CMO wants the big name in the deck and the smaller account is the one quietly driving conversions. In this episode: * Why follower count stopped predicting anything once platforms shifted to discovery-based feeds * The difference between buying reach and buying relevance, and why that distinction matters more as budgets tighten * Why an influencer and a creator aren't the same thing, and what that means for how brands staff a campaign * The Seattle coffee-truck story: how 40 nano and micro creators out-converted a handful of bigger names * Why there's still no standard pricing calculator for creators, and what the industry is doing instead * What Creator Origin actually asks for when vetting a creator's engagement, beyond a bot-detection tool * How to defend a roster full of small accounts to a CMO who only recognizes the big names * What Shirel would change first about creator budgets if she had the CMO seat Timestamps: 00:00 – Comparing 2026 to 2022: why follower count stopped predicting anything 00:32 – What actually changed in how platforms distribute content 03:50 – Relevance over reach: what brands are really buying 06:24 – Influencer vs. creator: why they're not the same 09:56 – A 10K account at 10% engagement vs. a 100K account at 1%: does it hold up? 13:16 – The Seattle coffee-truck story: nano and micro creators outperforming bigger names 15:12 – Why there's still no standard calculator for pricing a creator 19:43 – How Creator Origin actually vets a creator's engagement by hand 22:06 – Making the case for small accounts to a skeptical CMO 26:17 – If Shirel had the CMO seat: the first thing she'd change about creator budgets 27:36 – Her closing message to creators just starting out Shirel Benji is the founder and CEO of Creator Origin, an agency helping brands structure creator campaigns across nano, micro, and mega tiers. 🎧 Subscribe for more conversations with leaders across the creator economy. The Big Three by Influence Weekly: 3 Biggest Stories. 1 Essential Conversation.