Amazon

Brands Lean on News Creators for Earned Media

Brands are broadening earned media strategies to include news-adjacent creators on social platforms — such as TikTok explainers, creator-led podcasts and niche hosts — as audiences increasingly consume news on social media and LLMs shift discovery. Marketers including Tropicana’s Naked Smoothie, NASCAR and Amazon are experimenting with creator-driven interviews, seeded content and ‘editorial exchange’ events to reach consumers outside traditional press. Industry sources say creators can drive engagement and awareness while legacy press provides credibility; measurement and attribution remain unsettled, with marketers testing new metrics like fandom, engagement value and earned media value. Some agencies are also exploring creator tactics to influence LLM search results by revamping FAQ pages and briefing creators.

Cloudflare launches compliant crawler, sparking publisher tension

Cloudflare released a Crawl API (a crawl endpoint within its browser rendering API) that can scrape an entire website with one request and return content in HTML, Markdown, or structured JSON. The launch prompted publisher backlash after some sites reported they could not initially block Cloudflare’s crawler; Cloudflare product lead James Smith acknowledged messaging and implementation issues and said they have been fixed. The product is positioned as a compliant intermediary between publishers and AI builders, intended to respect publisher controls, reduce inefficient mass crawling, and create monetization options (following a prior pay-per-crawl offering). Publishers welcome tools that reduce server strain and preserve page performance, while some remain wary that intermediaries concentrating crawl control could shift power dynamics. Cloudflare says the goal is to establish best practices and support both supply (publishers) and demand (AI companies) sides of an emerging licensed AI content market.

Netflix reshapes upfronts with multi-year advertiser deals

Netflix is increasingly striking single- and multi-year commercial agreements with advertisers that go beyond traditional annual upfront commitments. The deals — described by agency executives as “JBP-lite” or “upfront-plus” — can grant participating advertisers early access and first-right-of-refusal on opportunities, sponsorship and product-placement access to Netflix IP, and technology/innovation perks tied to spend thresholds. Netflix has used “endeavor” models (perk unlocks as spend milestones are met) rather than fixed annual guarantees. Executives say this approach has evolved since Netflix launched its ad-supported business in 2022 and is being expanded to more advertisers, sometimes with materially higher spend thresholds. The company declined to comment and agency sources say the deals make Netflix resemble tech-platform sellers like Amazon and YouTube.