Two converging signals should reshape how your team thinks about creator media buying right now. First, a veteran ad sales executive with a track record of managing $350M-plus in national digital revenue has been hired specifically to reposition creator content as a premium network buy — not an experimental line item. That move lands alongside a growing chorus of brand strategists arguing that creator marketing must be planned with the same rigor as a traditional media buy: audience targeting, flight windows, and measurable reach. If your brand partners or clients are still treating creator spend as a discretionary social budget rather than a structured media allocation, the industry is moving past them. Second, TVision's State of Streaming report adds hard data to the debate: niche creator channels win on attention quality, while studio channels and large-scale creator operations win on raw view volume. That split matters enormously for your deal structures — attention-weighted CPMs and brand suitability metrics now favor the smaller, more culturally specific creator, even if the audience numbers look modest on a media plan.