M&A Heatwave: Traditional Media and Agencies Double Down on the Creator Economy

Good Morning,

PMG kicked off the year by acquiring heavyweight influencer agency Digital Voices, signaling a major shift toward high-scale, data-driven creator partnerships within traditional media structures. The deal allows PMG to bridge the gap between performance marketing and the creator economy, establishing a massive footprint across London and New York

Meanwhile, Global is signaling that traditional media’s future is creator-led, taking a majority stake in Gary Neville’s The Overlap. After a massive 2025 where the brand clocked 2.2 billion views, the sports powerhouse will be folded into the new Global Studios infrastructure—building a multi-format network that connects YouTube-first content with institutional ad sales.

We’ll keep an eye out on the sports side of the Creator Economy as we head into the year of a Fifa World Cup.

Quartermast Creator Economy Index

Layoff Watch

• Meta is cutting roughly 600 roles from its AI unit, according to a Wednesday announcement from Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang

The Weekly Roundup:

1. Spotify Video Expansion: Spotify lowers Partner Program barriers to creators with just 1,000 subscribers as video consumption nearly doubles, signaling a major push to capture YouTube’s disenchanted mid-tier creators, signaling a major push to capture YouTube’s disenchanted mid-tier creators (The Hollywood Reporter)

2. Reddit Challenges Ad Giants: Reddit unveils "Max Campaigns," an AI-powered media buying tool designed to automate targeting and bidding while leveraging user conversations to influence product placement in AI chatbots (Adweek)

3. AI Market Explosion: The AI creator economy market is projected to hit $12.85 billion by 2029, driven by an exponential rise in generative tools and a shift toward automated audience analytics (GlobeNewswire)

4. Rumble / Tether Partnership: The freedom-first video platform launches the Rumble Wallet, a non-custodial crypto tool integrated with Tether and Bitcoin to enable native tipping without banking intermediaries (Source)

5. CAA sign Scalable: Hollywood powerhouse CAA signs Scalable, the media company from veteran reporters Kaya Yurieff and Jasmine Enberg, to scale creator economy coverage into live events and brand extensions (Deadline)

6. Investment Pivot to Infrastructure: VCs move away from "buzzy" social media stars toward the "boring" parts of the stack, specifically AI video generation, social commerce, and community apps(Business Insider)

7. Fandom as Identity: Brands move beyond traditional reach to prioritize "community-first" marketing, with players like New Balance and HOKA building rituals rather than just optimized media plans(Creativebrief)

8. The Mental Health Crisis: New data reveals a systemic crisis where 1 in 10 creators report suicidal thoughts linked to their work, highlighting the psychological toll of algorithmic volatility (Yahoo)

9. Vaseline’s TikTok Blueprint: Unilever shifts resources to "social listening" after TikTok user-generated "life hacks" reinvent the 150-year-old brand for Gen Z (The Guardian)

10. Partnerships Evolve for 2026: Transactional, one-off influencer posts are replaced by long-term co-creation models where brand and creator values must align to maintain audience trust (Forbes)

11. Industrialized Virality: Beast Industries hires a "Head of Viral Marketing," signaling a shift where CEOs treat creator-led growth as core, data-driven business infrastructure (Digiday)

12. CES Dedicated Creator Hub: CES 2026 launches an expanded "Creator Space" in Las Vegas, featuring dedicated stages for workflow optimization and AI-driven storytelling tech (CES.tech)

Upcoming Events

• 1 Billion Followers Summit, Dubai: January 9 - 11, 2026

• Creator Economy Live West, Las Vegas: January 13-14, 2026

De-Influence

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