Key Takeaways From Variety’s Business of Creators Summit at CES 2026

The bustling and booming creator economy was in the spotlight at the first-ever Variety Business of Creators Summit presented by Samsung Ads at CES.

The half-day program on Thursday, Jan. 8, featured a lineup of top Hollywood and media leaders, brand execs, creators, marketers and agencies unpacking the latest trends at the intersection of creators and entertainment. The Business of Creators Summit followed the previous day’s Variety Entertainment Summit at CES, held at the Aria resort and casino in Las Vegas.

Here are key takeaways from the event.

Creators Are Redefining Entertainment — and Giving Brands New Opportunities

Kicking off the event was Kerry Nelson, head of brand marketing at Samsung Ads, who told the audience that creators “are revolutionizing how stories are told, how communities form, how audiences connect and how brands show up in those moments. It’s a redefinition of what entertainment can be and who gets to shape it.” In that context, she highlighted Samsung TV Plus, the company’s free, ad-supported television (FAST) streaming service. Samsung TV Plus, which counts more than 88 million monthly active users, features a lineup of creator-driven channels, including those from to YouTube creator MrBeast (aka Jimmy Donaldson), Dhar Mann, Michelle Khare and the Try Guys. Nelson concluded: “For advertisers, the opportunity is huge: premium, brand-safe environments paired with authentic storytelling and measurable outcomes, all in one place.”

Being a Full-Time Creator Is Exhausting, but Fans Crave Authentic Voices

On the “Masters of the Creator-Verse” panel, top digital creator Hannah Stocking — who double-majored in biology and chemistry in college and did embryonic stem-cell research — explained how she caught the bug making funny six-second Vine videos. Now, 13 years into her career, she said the job can be all-consuming. “It really is, at least for me, a rat race. It’s a 24/7 job. I think consistency is key in this space. I think if you do take some time off, your engagement takes a severe hit, and then when you need to come back, you need to make sure you come back with a banger video,” said Stocking. “I say 24/7 because even if I’m having a conversation with someone, I’m still thinking of ideas for how can I elevate myself and create more IP and all of that.” Stocking added, “My dad’s still confused at what I do.”

So-called AI “virtual influencers” have already cropped up on the internet. But Aleen Dreksler, founder and CEO of digital media company Betches, said a world saturated with AI-generated content could benefit human creators. “I do think that audiences might get sick of [AI video] and will want to go back to finding real human connection, whether that online and offline,” said Dreksler. “Trust is going to be the No. 1 form of currency for brands to reach audiences [and] for creators to reach their own audiences.”

Watch the full panel discussion:

New Hollywood Power Players: The Rise of Creators on TV

Not every YouTuber is going to be right for television, said Takashi Nakano, VP of content and programming for Samsung TV Plus. Those who do make the leap are those “who create content in a prolific manner, who are engaged with the data, who can adapt and change quickly and produce relatively inexpensively in this new world and put stuff on TV and that have people come and watch it,” Nakano said. One of the creators Samsung has teamed with is Mark Rober, a former NASA engineer who specializes in science-related videos.

Rishita Patel, head of media, for Rober’s CrunchLabs, explained the rationale for doing a FAST deal with Samsung: “Mark has grown this incredibly authentic and organic audience, but it is a co-viewing audience. It’s a family audience. And being present in the living room and expanding our audience that way made a ton of strategic sense for us.” She added, “The idea that it is lean back [viewing], but there’s so many opportunities to still make it lean-forward and expand.”

Watch the full panel discussion:

The Creator Personality Type

Are creators just… born with je ne sais quoi that lets them aggregate a fanbase? Raina Penchansky, CEO and co-founder of influencer management agency DBA and co-head of UTA Creators, shared some thoughts. “Something sort of interesting about the creator economy is, we all know those people, whether it was, like, in high school or present day, who have that sort of personality where they’re oversharers,” she said. Penchansky continued, “Whether or not Instagram existed, this was going to happen” — in living rooms, on a group chat, wherever. “That’s the sort of essence, I think, of the most successful creators.”

And, maybe it goes without saying, it’s helpful to have an irrational exuberance about the work. Appearing on the panel with Penchansky were Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin, co-founders of lifestyle brand The Home Edit, which is part of Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine media company — both of whom said Monday is their favorite day of the week because they get to work. “We just love the excitement of like, ‘We now have five days to create,'” Shearer said. “We have like five full days of like emails and business to happen.” Added Teplin, “Things are happening. The weekends just suck!”

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The ‘Affinity Economy’?

Metrics used to track the influence of digital creators have been an amalgam of followers, comments, shares and “likes.” Evan Shapiro, a veteran producer and entertainment industry exec who now calls himself a “media cartographer,” says that “we need to move to what I call the affinity economy built around key passion indices.” For example, he said: How quickly does a fan go from “first view” to “buying a T-shirt”? “You can measure that shit,” according to Shapiro. “BBC Studios does it all the time with ‘Bluey.’ ITV does it all the time with ‘Love Island.'” His point: “You don’t need scale for scale’s sake.” Once you build an audience, “you’ll also be able to monetize it in a way where you and your fans are in agreement,” he said.

A Power Combo: Bringing Live Shopping Into the Creator Era

Sandie Hawkins previously led the launch of TikTok’s live shopping business in North America. Now she’s one month into the job as CEO of TalkShopLive, which provides a platform to let brands and creators host livestreamed entertainment events — that are designed to, of course, sell you stuff. Live shopping has been huge in Asia. Why not the U.S.? “The problem that I saw with live shopping [in North America] is the way it works right now is when you go live, you’re stuck on one platform,” she said. “And what TalkShopLive really helps to do is as a creator, as somebody who’s making content, you can free that content now through TalkShopLive, so you can publish that content and syndicate it out to any publisher and to a lot of different platforms from one place.”

For live shopping, the key is to have a highly energetic, “big personality” — and someone who can sustain that for upwards of 60 minutes, Hawkins said. “When you’re going live, that personality has to go from a 10 to 100, and you have to be constantly engaging,” she said.

Watch the full discussion with TalkShopLive’s Hawkins:

Empowering Voices From Across the Spectrum

Substack, the newsletter and podcasting publishing platform, has garnered attention as a place where some big-name journalists have set up shop after leaving their outlets, including Paul Krugman (ex-New York Times), Jim Acosta (ex-CNN) and Mehdi Hasan (ex-MSNBC). “All that sort of stuff gets a lot of attention and we love it,” said Hamish McKenzie, co-founder of Substack. “But what we’re most excited about is a new generation of voices that can succeed now in the media ecosystem because there are no barriers to starting and there’s this really simple, transparent business model that actually works and can help them sustain their work.” Substack has a number of rivals, of course, like Patreon and Beehiiv. But McKenzie argued that Substack “is much more like YouTube. It’s a place you can go as a publisher to create and distribute your work and find an audience and monetize all in the same place.”

Watch the full discussion:

Why Marriott Sees Creators as Key to Breaking Through Clutter

Peggy Roe, chief customer officer at Marriott International, said the hotel operator wants to move “social first” in its marketing “because it is such a platform to tell the story in different ways and even from different perspectives… The same hotel and the same experience can come to life in multiple different ways.” But there’s a lot of noise. Behnaz Ghahramani, Marriott’s SVP of marketing, noted that “we’re not just competing with other brands on social. We’re competing with everyone who’s posting about your cousin and, you know, your favorite dog and all the AI content that’s now flooding our feeds. And we want to be able to cut through in a really meaningful way. And we need creators at the heart of that to be telling our stories in an authentic way across all the platforms.”

Watch the full discussion:

Audiences Unlocked: The Future of Creator Marketing

In the event’s final panel, industry experts discussed best practices and go-forward trends for brands in working with creators as an integral part of their marketing strategies. Cameron Curtis, EVP of global digital marketing at Warner Bros. Studio Group, said his team approaches the relationship with creators as “co-authorship”: “That’s probably the biggest change for us, is that we work with creators at every step of our campaigns… We bring creators into the fold and we want them to be part of the storytelling, you know?” Dara Treseder, CMO of Autodesk, noted: “I think the biggest change is that creator marketing is now a core part of the go-to-market launch plan. So gone are the days where this is like an afterthought.”

What’s critical is ensuring the goals for brands and creators are aligned, said Jared Shulman, SVP, head of strategy and creator marketing, CAA Brand Consulting. “This is a really a relationship business, right?” he said. “We have the relationship with our own agents at CAA, relationships with managers and relationships with creators themselves, and we build these relationships very early on with brands.”

Watch the full panel discussion: