It’s Wednesday and nine new emojis are on the way. If a fiery meteor and a cracked smiley face aren’t symbolic of 2026, we don’t know what is.

PLATFORM PARTNERS

The expansion: Agentio is already a leader in AI-powered creator advertising on YouTube. Now, a deal with Meta will allow the three-year-old firm to expand its capabilities to Facebook and Instagram.

Brands active on those two platforms can apply Agentio’s AI insights to generate insights, creator matches, and live partnership ads. Users can also merge the new Facebook and Instagram capabilities with Agentio’s YouTube-based suite, allowing for cross-platform campaigns that leverage creators across Meta- and Google-owned properties.

As explained on Agentio’s landing page for Meta campaigns, the company’s tech can turn “insight on Monday” into “creator ads by Friday.”

The firm: Bolstered by a booming creator economy, Agentio has announced funding rounds in each of the past three years (a $4.25 million seed round in 2023, a $12 million Series A in 2024, and a $40 million Series B in 2025). At the time of its Series B, the company reached a valuation of $340 million while working alongside “many thousands” of creators.

As it expands its business to Meta platforms, Agentio is touting the effectiveness of its approach. According to a press release, beta users of Agentio’s Meta partnership ads enjoyed 81% higher ROAS compared to the same brands’ non-Agentio creator partnership ads. Agentio content also drove 89% higher click-through rates.

AI LITERACY

The AI education: TikTok was one of the first social media companies to add labels to AI-generated content—but after two years, those tags don’t seem to be as effective as the platform had hoped.

One 2025 study found that “having labels did not significantly change [user] engagement behaviors,” while another concluded that “labels that simply informed participants that content was generated using AI tended to have little impact on respondents’ stated likelihood of engaging.”

Labels don’t seem to be making a dent in the amount of AI slop on TikTok, either. Kapwing recently reported that more than half of the posts recommended to new TikTok accounts are low-effort, AI-generated videos.

So, the video platform is taking a different approach. In tandem with partners like NoFiltr and Rasberry Pi Foundation, TikTok is teaching its community how to recognize AI-generated content—and how they themselves can use the technology responsibly.

In addition to releasing those educational pieces of content, TikTok is continuing to crack down on accounts that misuse AI. The app reported that it removed 86 million fake accounts during the first three months of 2026, and it plans to improve its detection tools to support future takedowns.

The long-term approach: Those added transparency measures are promising—but at the end of the day, TikTok is still exacerbating the AI slop problem by making it easy and profitable for users to post genAI videos. If the platform truly wants to make an impact, it will need a sustainable, long-term solution.

That’s where C2PA comes in. TikTok was one of the first major social apps to use C2PA labels, which make it easier to identify AI-generated content as it moves across platforms. Now, the short-form video hub is joining C2PA’s Steering Committee to help promote the proliferation of C2PA labels across the internet.

STUDY SAYS

The economic impact: Brands skeptical of creator advertising might want to take a look at the latest research on influencer-focused ad buys.

A recent study conducted by Public First, for instance, found that TikTok added an approximate total of £10 billion (~$13.4 million) to the British economy over the past two years.

Small businesses are getting a big piece of that pie. According to Public First, those firms used TikTok to get an estimated £3.4 billion (~$4.5 million) boost in 2025. The video app also supported about 153,000 jobs.

And while 300,000 small businesses are currently selling on TikTok Shop, those businesses don’t have to do all the selling themselves—because creator recs are doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Public First found that over 10 million people in the U.K. visited a shop or restaurant after learning about it on TikTok. To account for the increased traffic, 28% of businesses featured on TikTok hired extra staff, and 84% said TikTok recs led to sales boosts.

The ad data: Another recent report dove deeper into the sales impact of creator-led media. In a study dubbed The Creator Effectiveness Playbook, TikTok, WPP Media, and System1 analyzed 1,217 paid TikTok ads across eight markets and found that creator-led ads have the strongest long-term sales impact among all marketing channels. A “long-term multiplier” of 3.35 made creator-led media slightly more powerful than linear TV (3.27) and out-of-home (2.33) campaigns.

The Playbook noted that advertisers are in the best position to reap those rewards when they prioritize “high emotion” and “high early branding” in their creator spots. But no matter the approach, creator ads on average proved to be 23% more effective than brand ads in the realms of brand awareness and ad recall.

WATCH THIS 👀

The creator engagement: If you hear wedding bells in the distance, it’s probably because two of Twitch’s favorite streamers are tying the knot. Ludwig announced his engagement to QTCinderella during a recent stream, prompting a flood of congratulations from fans. (Plus a few humorous reactions to the proposal itself, which included a cheese pizza).

Of course, no creator announcement would be complete without a generous helping of drama. Two days after a VOD of Ludwig’s big reveal went up on his secondary YouTube channel, the creator posted a follow-up video to address objections from viewers that it wasn’t announced on his main channel.

So, if you were wondering, Ludwig does in fact think his upcoming marriage is main channel-worthy news; he just doesn’t personally oversee what gets posted to his secondary YouTube hub.

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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Drew Baldwin, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen.