Good morning. Calling all LA creators: Got a burning business question you need answered? Want to hear what your peers are troubleshooting? Just need your morning latte?

Please join us October 15 in Venice for Coffee With Creators—featuring a live Creator Support session with Colin and Samir.

— Syd Cohen

Today’s lineup:

Advertising Week is underway in New York, bringing together leaders across brands, agencies, media, and tech. For the second year, the conference is making a concerted push into the creator economy, with creator attendance expected to more than double from roughly 1K in 2025 to 2.5K this year.

Here are three announcements that caught our attention →

On the front lines: Dhar Mann, who is serving as Advertising Week’s first Chief Content Officer, promised to help broker $100M in deals between brands and creators over the next year. He also unveiled plans for Creator City—a four-acre production campus opening next February in LA. It will feature five soundstages and other creative spaces geared toward bringing creators and brands together. 

In M&A: Business media company Morning Brew announced its all-cash acquisition of Express Checkout, a creator-led media company covering CPG and ecommerce.

From platforms: In an effort to strengthen its position as an ecommerce hub, TikTok launched several advertising and shopping features. Its new TikTok Ad Network allows brands to extend campaigns outside the platform to 400K+ apps.  

We’ve seen Hollywood studios, talent agencies, and media companies build dedicated creator programs. Now one of the world’s largest live entertainment companies is making its move.

Live Nation just launched Creator Nation, a new M&A company aimed at helping creators build businesses across content, commerce, brand partnerships, and live experiences.

Here’s how it plans to do it →

Worth noting: Live Nation recently canceled its first-ever creator festival, For You Fest, which was set to take place this November in Irvine, CA. 

Big picture: IRL events have dominated the creator economy this year—from multi-day livestream series like Streamer Games to business-focused summits like our own Press Publish LA. But Live Nation’s bet on creators extends beyond getting them on stage. Creator Nation gives the company a way to invest in the businesses surrounding creators—and potentially participate in more of the revenue they generate.

For a limited time, YouTube is reportedly rolling out a new invite-only tool in YouTube Studio that gives creators a look at their competitors' analytics.

“Channel Search” lets creators discover other channels and see backend analytics that historically haven't been public facing, including: 

Creators can also sort a channel’s videos by relevance, recency, popularity, and sponsorship.

How we see it: For creators seeking inspiration, competitive insights, or collaborators, Channel Search could make all three easier. 

Privacy, though, remains an open question. YouTube has not yet commented publicly on the feature, including whether creators can opt out or limit which data is visible about their channels.