Author: Alyssa Mercante

2026 will be the year authenticity gets repriced in the creator economy. 

The importance, reach, and financial power of the creator economy is well-established — now everyone is fighting for a piece of the pie. As such, it will become increasingly important that these pies feel freshly baked by hand rather than stale and mass-produced.

With AI-generated content flooding social media platforms, embracing the messiness and imperfection of being human will help creators stand out in the spreading sea of slapdash slop.

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CES functioned less as a turning point than a temperature check for the ad industry.

Behind the stage demos and glossy AI announcements, the advertising industry arrived in Las Vegas with a quieter set of questions than previous years. Q4 held up better than feared but not well enough to justify old certainties. Budgets remained cautious. Flexibility continued to beat commitments. Linear dollars kept leaking into CTV, retail media and data-rich platforms. And the promise of automation — once sold as a cure-all — is now colliding with a more unforgiving arbiter: the CFO.

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