The Power Brokers’ Predictions for 2026's Creator Economy: ‘Scale Is Losing Leverage’
Execs from CAA, Night Media, Snap, WME and more on the new discovery, sports surge, AI’s impact and a potential creator IPO
I cover the creator economy at Like & Subscribe, a standalone newsletter that’s being sampled today for paid subscribers to The Ankler. I interviewed a top kindness influencer, scooped Netflix’s podcast deal with iHeartMedia, wrote about Patreon’s strategy to poach Substack creators and spoke to two Gen Z media founders about winning young audiences. I’m natalie@theankler.com
Welcome to my last edition of Like & Subscribe for 2025. Before I dive in, I want to take a moment to personally thank all of you who subscribed over the past year — and invite Ankler subscribers to sign up now for more of my in-depth coverage in 2026 (which won’t all make its way into your Ankler feed). What began as a hunch that there were a lot of you eager to read more deeply about the forces shaping the creator economy today has led to an incredibly rewarding and fun year for me, amid a monumental year for creators.
Last week I unpacked for you the big deals and key trends that drove 12 months of booming growth in the business and influence of digital creators, from the Netflix-YouTube battles for top podcast talent to the increasingly lucrative evolution of creator-led brands. So where do we go from here? More than a dozen industry experts, including executives, dealmakers and talent, gave me their takes on what they think 2026 has in store.
During our conversations, a few key takeaways emerged. For starters, everyone’s expecting more of what we saw in 2025. More video podcasts, more Hollywood deals, more traditional celebrities crossing over into digital domains. My expert sources are also predicting that 2026 will be the year of the sports creator, the year of the friend group and the year that a creator-first company files for an IPO. But while creators seem to have found their footing at the forefront of culture, there are still some big questions swirling about how AI will transform their businesses and how the social media platforms will impact their ability to find and reach their audiences.
For this column, I spoke with more than a dozen of the power brokers shaping the creator economy — including Reed Duchscher, CEO of Night Media, agency bigwigs Brent Weinstein of CAA and Jade Sherman of Gersh and top Snap exec Jim Shepherd — about what actually changes in 2026.
Their message was unusually consistent: the creator economy is entering its most consequential year yet. The easy growth is over. Scale alone no longer guarantees leverage. Discovery is breaking. AI is about to flood the feed. And for the first time, a creator-built company may be preparing to test Wall Street.
What happens next will determine which creators, platforms and brands gain power — and which quietly lose it.
Here’s what they told me everyone should watch, just some of the key 2026 narratives I’ll be covering over at Like & Subscribe:
Why Hollywood and creators are moving toward each other — and where the leverage really sits
How discovery is being quietly reengineered as algorithms stop rewarding size
Why AI “slop” could make trusted, human creators more valuable, not less
Why scale is losing its power — and what replaces it
What MrBeast’s next move could unlock (or break) for the entire creator economy
