This Week: AI-powered shopping agents are poised to reshape ecommerce, and creators who sell things. Plus: Web Summit insights, why “slop coding” is a growing risk, and how creators and brands should prepare. Also in the mix: TikTok’s mental health misinformation mess, Meta’s monopoly trial ends, Discord’s ad gamble, and read to the end for three studies that might surprise you about where we shop, where we listen, and where we shouldn’t go for therapy advice.
Hi, I’m Jim Louderback and this is my weekly creator economy newsletter. If you’ve received it, then you are either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you.
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TOP STORIES
SHOPPING 4.0 – WHAT’S YOUR STRATEGY
Remember when your refrigerator was going to shop for you? Neither do I, although it’s been promised for a while. But something similar is brewing and it promises to change commerce (again). First, we had malls, then websites and ecommerce (still just 16% of US retail, closer to 25% if you remove cars and gas). Now, argues @rex Woodbury, we’re about to enter the agentic commerce age. It’ll start with utility stuff (think bread and milk) and then move into emotional buys. If you sell anything online, it’s time to prepare. Should you build an AI shopping agent with your voice and vibe? Probably. Optimize a version of your storefront for AI agents? Definitely.
- Related: @Benedict Evans’ latest presentation, “AI Eats the World”, explores ecommerce among many other things. Wondering what’s up with AI? Read it now.
THE ROAD TO AGI IS PAVED WITH SLOP
Lots of talk last week about if and when AI will become “General Intelligence”, and not just a hallucinating parrot. I recapped a Web Summit Vancouver session here, where Gary Marcus and two other experts shared their optimistic and pessimistic views. And a conversation from Google IO between Sergey Brin and Demis Hassabis of Deep Mind surfaced too. They also seemed skeptical about an imminent breakthrough, saying that simple scaling won’t be enough. We’ll need real breakthroughs in reasoning, consistency, and world modeling.
Across both conversations, AGI timelines varied widely. But most agreed – apart from Gary Marcus – that its impact will eclipse even the web and mobile revolutions. I’d go further: it may eclipse the creator revolution too.
There was also lots of talk about slop. Poorly generated content isn’t just clogging our feeds, it’s contaminating training data too. As AI starts eating its own dogfood, the quality of those models will suffer. Even worse, cybercriminals are already injecting malware into code packages used for AI training. “Slop coding” is quickly becoming a big red flag for vibe coders and corporate IT teams too.
VANCOUVER’S FINEST ON THE MOVE
Congrats to CAA and @Brent Weinstein, as he moves into a senior leadership role there. Brent was a brilliant early visionary in the digital space while at UTA and was our secret VidCon weapon too. CAA has been upping its game in the creator economy space recently and it’s great to see the venerable firm expanding its leadership roster along with its talent roster. (aside, not THAT Vancouver).
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PLATFORMS
YOUTUBE
- Goofy AI: YouTube released a half-baked video inspiration tool for creators. Much hilarity ensued.
- But Will There Be a Laugh-Track? Bloomberg explores how sitcoms are likely the next TV format to be devoured by YouTubeTV. But how about micro-sitcoms?
- Faster Approval: YouTube streamlines its ad review process for uploaded videos, meaning more money quicker for creators.
- Interactive Shorts: YouTube plans to roll out Google Lens support for Shorts, letting viewers find locations, stuff and more in their favorite videos.
- Tops on TV: YouTube leads TV viewing rankings for third month in a row.
META
- Bullying Up, Enforcement Mistakes Down: Those are two top takeaways from Meta’s self-reported Q1 2025 quarterly integrity report.
- Good Work if You Can Get It: Here’s what Meta pays its employees.
- Instagram Not Just for Squares: Now hipster photos in shot in 3:4 can be natively updated and displayed.
- Trial Ends, Breakup to Come? The courtroom battle is over. Meta’s monopoly trial now enters the penalty phase—plus appeals, of course. But don’t expect a verdict before the holidays.
TIKTOK
- Shop Study Shows Broad Usage: New study shows 1/3rd of US TikTok users have bought from Shop in the last 12 months, but a paltry 12% were influenced by a creator or celebrity.
- TikTok Therapy? Maybe Not: Turns out more than half of TikTok’s trending mental health content is full of bad info. TBH, ChatGPT might be more qualified.
- 16 Days and Counting: Just 16 days until TikTok needs to find a buyer or get another stay of execution from the US government.
- LinkedIn Expands Analytics: New features for creators provide more granular data on conversions.
- How to Grow Newsletter Subs: Substack’s advice for growing your newsletter applies just as well to Beehiiv and other platforms.
- Want to work with B2B Creators on LinkedIn? LinkedIn’s latest eBook explains why it’s not like B2C and how trusted voices drive complex business sales.
QUIBIS
OTHER CREATOR ECONOMY
- Kai U A Success: At least that’s what his manager says. My takeaway: We need more creator education from the experts.
- Beige Meme Suit Ending: Thankfully.
- News is Hard: Business Insider lays off 21% of its staff, including stalwart Creator Economy reporter @amanda Perelli
- Basketball Pins: Pinterest just announced a partnership with the WNBA’s New York Liberty. LinkedIn exec @Dani Markovits riffs on the news to explore how creators are changing sports.
CREATOR BUSINESS
- Karat is Now a Bank: You can now bank with Karat, and if you squirrel away enough money, get interest as well! Good for creators, and their terms and rates are equivalent or better than competitors.
- CGA Rider Gets High Marks: Nearly two months after releasing its new legal rider for brand deals, creators appear to be embracing it.
- Roblox Expands Currency: Roblox launches new quest-focused currency called Orbs, because I guess Robucks wasn’t enough.
- Expanding SE Asia’s Creator Economy: Ecommerce leader Lazada will invest $100M to build out its creator-fueled shopping engine.
- Stan Gets Stanned: Creator @Steven Bartlett takes ownership position in creator monetization platform Stan.
MARKETING AND BRANDS
- Agency Consolidation: Is it bad for the creator economy? Interesting think piece from @ryan schram
- Forget Conversion: Insightful conversation with @Abby Ho, who runs social and digital for Disney branded television, on how Disney builds and reinforces fandom.
- Can AI Ads Be Additive? Programmatic ad pioneer @joe marchese warns that ads could destroy AI, just like they did to Cable TV.
- That Didn’t Take Long: Hot off a new funding round, Whalar snapped up The Business of Creativity – @Sir John Hegarty’s consulting and content firm. Fun fact, Hegerty was an early Whalar investor.
- Google’s AI Overview Ads: Here’s where those ads will show up in Google’s AI-generated search results. This is not going to go well.
- Discord Launches Unskippable Video Ads. This might also not go well.
CREATOR TECH – AI, AR, VR, MORE
- Bifurcation TBD? We might end up with two internets. One for AI and one for the rest of us.
- Avoid the AI Backlash: @Phil Ranta with some simple tips for creators to not get AI-cancelled.
- Shadenfreude:SEO-optimized web publishers get their just rewards, start imagining how to change in the age of AI.
RESEARCH
Audio Research
Interesting study on how audio is being consumed in the UK – with likely parallels in the US and beyond. Live radio still dominates, while a quarter of the UK population listens to podcasts weekly. Interestingly more than half of those podcasts are consumed at home.
YouTube Demand Generation Study
A new study from Fospha claims brands that scale YouTube and demand-gen campaigns see up to 145% higher revenue growth, with full-funnel YouTube driving far better ROAS than Last Click models suggest. Yes, it’s vendor-backed and lacks any methodology of note, but the directional insights (and case studies) are worth a look—especially if you’re still under-investing in upper-funnel video. Rigorous and repeatable, alas, this is not.
Where’s Jim? On my way to Paris for @VivaTech – it’s going to be so fun! And then @VidCon. Hope to see you at one or the other!
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I’ve built and sold multiple creator economy startups to top media companies – including an MCN to Discovery and VidCon to Paramount. Subscribe here to get the full newsletter every Monday.
Let me know what you think – email me at jim@louderback.com. Thanks for reading and see you around the internet.
