By Kimeko McCoy • October 21, 2025 •
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The wheeling and dealing of the creator economy is changing as its maturation continues.
The space is growing up as brands like Blue Apron are in-housing their influencer strategies to curb costs and build better relationships with creators and platforms like YouTube, which recently began testing dynamic ad insertions, are allowing creators to monetize their older videos.
“The way that you’re [creators are] interfacing with the market is no different than, I would say, a lot of TV networks,” said David Huntzinger, svp and talent manager at Night, a talent management firm that manages creators including Kai Cenat, Hasan Piker, and Sam and Colby. Huntzinger recently joined the Digiday Podcast. He added, “The benefit of being a creator is that you own your own distribution.”
On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, Huntzinger joins hosts Kimeko McCoy, senior marketing reporter, and Tim Peterson, executive editor, video and audio, about the creator economy’s inflection point and maturation, as well as what YouTube’s dynamic ad insertion means for creator monetization.
Also in this episode, Google’s Privacy Sandbox saga finally comes to an end, the rise of agentic AI introduces ad context protocol, Pinterest is reducing its AI slop and Meta withdraws from the Media Rating Council (MRC).
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
What creators care about in brand deals
What creators care about outside of having a good deal and making some money on these ads is that they want the audience t
