Influence Weekly

Join us as we dive deeper into the latest trends, insights, and stories from the world of influencer marketing and the creator economy. Our podcast brings you exclusive interviews with industry leaders, in-depth analysis of key topics, and a behind-the-scenes look at the stories that matter most to our community.

Influence Weekly is a business podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 93 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Unknown Host hosts Influence Weekly, a business show with 93 episodes published.

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  Episode #42

  October 2026 Creator Economy News Recap: 5 Million Views, Nothing to Show for It

  Sep 30, 202617 minS1

  In this October episode, hosts Ceci Carloni and Nii Ahene break down three stories that together show what brands are actually paying for in creator marketing right now: what a view is worth, what a fee is buying, and who owns the content after the campaign ends. Your UGC is dead by Thursday. Not underperforming. Dead. Most creator posts stop moving two days after they go up, and the next batch does the same thing, and the line item keeps getting approved because nobody has said it out loud in a budget meeting. One AI startup ran a UGC program for three months this year. Five million views. Tons of engagement. No results they could point at. They shut it down. Two months later an agency took the same product, used twelve creators instead of a crowd, and got one hundred million views in twelve weeks. So what did the first five million buy? That is the uncomfortable part of this month. The best UGC creators now have brands bidding against each other for them, and if your answer is to pay ten thousand a video when someone else paid five, you are in a race to the bottom with your own budget. The top fraction of a percent will always be expensive. Everyone else is a training problem nobody is funding. Ceci and Nii also get into Fashion Week, where a creator deal went from a free invitation to a twenty five thousand dollar fee and most of them never see a runway, and into perpetuity rights, where thirty three people in the industry were asked if it is ever fair and most said no. If you are defending a creator budget this quarter, this is the half hour that tells you which part of it is real. Chapters 00:00 Cold open 00:22 Five million views, no results, program shut down 01:51 Twelve creators, one hundred million views, and what actually changed 02:40 Your UGC is dead two days after it posts 03:33 Brands are bidding against each other for the same creators 04:41 Paying more per video is a race to the bottom with your own money 05:06 Fashion Week costs twenty five thousand a post and nobody goes to the shows 08:10 Any event can be bought into a creator moment now 09:51 Is perpetuity ever fair? Thirty three people in the industry answered 11:14 The deal you signed for five hundred dollars that blocks your next one 13:01 Most creator content stops working in sixty days, so why are you buying forever 14:58 What is coming next month Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: 84BMNYFFENC5ZTGB The Big Three by Influence Weekly: 3 Biggest Stories. 1 Essential Conversation.

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  Episode #41

  Reach Is the New Follower Count: Why Smaller Creator Accounts Are More Valuable to Brands w/ Adam Harris (Gaggl)

  Sep 29, 202633 minS1

  Your customers are spending their evenings in small rooms where the host knows their names. Seventy percent of what they watch comes from accounts they never followed. Your media kit still prices a deal off a follower number, because that is the number your CMO recognizes and the number your agency keeps putting on the slide. Nobody in the room will say the quiet part. The roster that looks strongest upstairs is the roster that converts worst. Finance already asked the only question that matters, how many sales will it drive, and the big names you paid for went straight into the ether. There is no line on your dashboard for a post that disappeared. Adam Harris sold brand partnerships at Twitch when nobody wanted them and now runs creator hosted TV at Gaggl, where he is co-founder. He has heard the CMO objection in its purest form, I do not know who these people are, but my kid follows Mr Beast. He has A/B tested the two rosters against each other on every campaign he runs, and the small creators come back with five times the engagement. Every time. He is not telling you to fire the big names. He is telling you that you have been buying one thing and reporting on another, and that the fix is smaller and cheaper than the meeting you are dreading. If you have to defend your creator budget this quarter, start here. Chapters 00:00 Cold open 01:34 The number on your media kit stopped predicting anything 03:55 The three objections that killed your last small creator pitch 10:02 The micro creator story was true five years ago and still lost the budget 13:25 Five times the engagement, and the reach you give up to get it 17:02 What you are actually buying when you buy a small community 19:26 What 50,000 of the right people is worth 21:47 Followers can be bought, and only a human can tell you whose are real 25:17 How to take the small account bet upstairs and survive the room 30:36 The NFL already handed its content over. Your category has not Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: ZV3AVIKJZ6EQ7F5E The Big Three by Influence Weekly: 3 Biggest Stories. 1 Essential Conversation.

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  Episode #40

  Every Brand Cuts Usage Rights to Save Money. They All Regret It. With Julia Salume (Moburst)

  Sep 25, 202635 minS1

  Your creator quotes came back higher again this year, and the number arrives as one line on an invoice. Nobody can tell you what is inside it. Not the creator, not your agency, and not the manager who says the rate is the rate. So you do what everyone does when the check looks too big. You cut the usage rights, because that is the line that feels optional in the room. It saves you a few hundred dollars in a budget your CFO is already circling. Then the post takes off, and the only asset you actually wanted is the one you do not own. Julia Salume, Head of Influencer and UGC at Moburst, has watched this land both ways. A brand comes back after the post pops and the creator has already done the math, because the leverage moved across the table. Two hundred dollars a day, every day, for a video the brand thought it had paid for. Meanwhile the paid media team is still waiting on a file, and the momentum is gone. Her verdict is blunt. If a creator sends you one blended number and cannot break it into production, distribution, and usage, that is a red flag about what they think their own work is worth. If you are defending a creator budget this quarter and you cannot say what each dollar bought, this is the episode that tells you where the money actually goes and what is still worth paying for. Chapters 00:00 Cold open 01:06 One invoice, three products, and why the total looks insane 04:18 What you are actually buying before you negotiate anything 07:08 Deals went from three thousand to seventy four hundred. Here is what changed. 11:00 You bought deliverables. Your CMO is grading you on results. 12:50 The first line every brand cuts, and the regret that follows 15:15 Splitting a ten thousand dollar quote line by line 17:44 Follower count is still on your brief, and the math behind it is broken 21:16 Usage runs twenty to thirty percent of production, every month 24:20 Paid media never gets told the rights expired 27:11 The renegotiation you walk into with no leverage 29:44 What to change in your next outreach email 31:35 The one thing to fix if you sat in the CMO seat Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: QIUZTF7K9GNSKPQD The Big Three by Influence Weekly: 3 Biggest Stories. 1 Essential Conversation.

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  Episode #39

  Why Is Creator Pricing Still the Wild West? with Shirel Benji of Creator Origin

  Sep 18, 202629 minS1

  Four years ago, a brand opened a media kit, looked at the follower count, and priced the deal off it. Shirel Benji, founder and CEO of Creator Origin, says that number hasn't disappeared, but it's stopped being the thing that actually predicts a campaign's results. In this episode, she breaks down what changed in how platforms distribute content, why relevance now matters more than reach, and why the industry still can't agree on what a creator's price should even be based on. Shirel walks through the real difference between an influencer and a creator, why a Seattle coffee-truck activation staffed with 40 nano and micro creators outperformed the handful of mid-tier names in the room, and how her team actually vets a creator's engagement by hand before a brand ever signs off. She also gets candid about what happens when a CMO wants the big name in the deck and the smaller account is the one quietly driving conversions. In this episode: * Why follower count stopped predicting anything once platforms shifted to discovery-based feeds * The difference between buying reach and buying relevance, and why that distinction matters more as budgets tighten * Why an influencer and a creator aren't the same thing, and what that means for how brands staff a campaign * The Seattle coffee-truck story: how 40 nano and micro creators out-converted a handful of bigger names * Why there's still no standard pricing calculator for creators, and what the industry is doing instead * What Creator Origin actually asks for when vetting a creator's engagement, beyond a bot-detection tool * How to defend a roster full of small accounts to a CMO who only recognizes the big names * What Shirel would change first about creator budgets if she had the CMO seat Timestamps: 00:00 – Comparing 2026 to 2022: why follower count stopped predicting anything 00:32 – What actually changed in how platforms distribute content 03:50 – Relevance over reach: what brands are really buying 06:24 – Influencer vs. creator: why they're not the same 09:56 – A 10K account at 10% engagement vs. a 100K account at 1%: does it hold up? 13:16 – The Seattle coffee-truck story: nano and micro creators outperforming bigger names 15:12 – Why there's still no standard calculator for pricing a creator 19:43 – How Creator Origin actually vets a creator's engagement by hand 22:06 – Making the case for small accounts to a skeptical CMO 26:17 – If Shirel had the CMO seat: the first thing she'd change about creator budgets 27:36 – Her closing message to creators just starting out Shirel Benji is the founder and CEO of Creator Origin, an agency helping brands structure creator campaigns across nano, micro, and mega tiers. Subscribe for more conversations with leaders across the creator economy. The Big Three by Influence Weekly: 3 Biggest Stories. 1 Essential Conversation.

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  Episode #38

  AI Changing How Discovery in the Creator Economy Works, with Yehuda Neuman of PartnerCentric

  Sep 9, 202649 minS1

  Your customers are starting to ask ChatGPT which brand to buy. The answer it gives them comes partly from creators. And nobody can tell you how it decides. Not the platforms, not the agencies, not even the people who built it. That should worry anyone who has ever had to defend a creator budget. Three years ago finance won the argument: prove the sale or lose the spend. Now the AI rewards the awareness those same creators build, and there is no line on your dashboard for that. You could be paying $14,000 for a post that did its job in a place you cannot see. Yehuda Neuman ran creator programs for ByteDance and built celebrity deals before that. He has watched one AI assistant name a random LinkedIn user the world's top expert because the man said so on his own profile. He has watched a video with 30 views outrank a million-follower account. And he will tell you, with no hedging, that if you are still buying creators on follower count, you are paying for the wrong thing. If you run creator marketing at a brand and the ground under you feels like it is moving, this is the episode that tells you why, and what is still solid. Chapters 00:00 Cold open 01:06 How shoppers find brands now, and how brands find creators worth paying 05:26 The creator videos already showing up in AI answers 07:36 Finance won the performance argument. Then the AI changed the scoreboard 11:56 Getting your brand into the AI's answer is your job, not the creator's 16:39 Nobody knows how the AI decides who to trust 21:17 Should you be paying YouTube creators more now 25:49 What he would stop paying creators for 30:25 Why follower count is still on your brief, and who put it there 36:04 One huge creator or an army of small ones 37:39 The creator who moved a sale that no link can prove 41:20 When affiliate, influencer, and AI visibility become one budget 46:24 If you still buy on follower count, you are paying for the wrong thing Subscribe for more conversations with leaders across the creator economy. Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: VKJJY3KHNBD74KOB The Big Three by Influence Weekly: 3 Biggest Stories. 1 Essential Conversation.

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