Why a once-anonymous creator unmasked herself to build a bigger media brand 

In 2018, Kristi Cook was an anonymous YouTuber making videos about internet celebrity drama and gossip on a channel known as Spill Sesh, with only her disembodied voice doling out the week’s hottest gossip. The channel became wildly popular, garnering over 700,000 subscribers in just a few years (now 860,000) across more than 1,000 videos with over 350 million views. 

At the time, Spill Sesh highlighted a relatively untouched niche: taking TMZ-style reporting (which she was familiar with as she once worked for the media company) and applying it to internet celebrities, influencers, and content creators. In 2023, she told The New York Times that she earned around $20,000 a month through Google AdSense.

But Cook felt that, despite her success, her creator journey had grown stagnant.

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Stagwell is building its own AI media curation marketplace

Stagwell is moving to wrest control of ad-inventory curation from DSP and SSP marketplaces and bring it in-house. The holding company is set to launch Stagwell Curate, an AI platform that pulls curated  CTV, online video, display and audio ad inventory from publishers and adtech partners into its own central reservoir, Digiday has learned.

According to Matt Adams, global CEO of Stagwell Media Platform, it’s an attempt to reduce the company’s reliance on “ubiquitous” marketplace solutions like The Trade Desk’s OpenPath.

“This isn’t just using an off-the-shelf package provided by an SSP or within a DSP’s environment. This is about the curation of a bespoke inventory package,” said Adams.

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