In our fourth guest episode, host Ceci Carloni sits down with Greg Glenday, CEO of Acast, for an in-depth conversation about why 2026 is the year podcasting finally becomes mainstream—and what brands are still getting wrong about discovery, measurement, and showing up authentically in audio.

🎙️ The Meritocracy of Podcasting: Unlike traditional media where gatekeepers decide what content reaches audiences, or social platforms where algorithms put their thumb on the scale, podcasting is a pure meritocracy—listeners decide what's good by seeking it out. Greg argues this makes it fundamentally different from every other medium, but also harder for the industry to categorize. Podcasting doesn't fit neatly into audio, video, influencer, or social teams, so agencies and brands are still trying to find where it belongs.

🎯 Discovery Isn't Broken—It's Just Slow: The challenge isn't technology or algorithms—it's trust. Building a relationship with a podcast host takes time, unlike the instant judgment you make with Netflix shows. Greg shares how Acast is tackling discovery through curation, playlist experiments, cross-promotion, and transcription data that surfaces topical connections. But the real unlock? Getting brands to understand they're buying audiences, not creators—and 25 mid-sized shows with overlapping audiences can be more effective than one massive podcast.

💰 Why Big Brands Haven't Arrived Yet: Most top 250 US brands still don't buy podcasting. Greg uses peer pressure to wake them up: "Are direct response advertisers like Athletic Greens and BetterHelp smarter than billion-dollar CMOs? They only buy channels that work—and they've been growing with podcasting for years." The missing pieces are trusted third-party measurement, brand safety verification (now solved with partners like Barometer), and understanding that podcast ads should feel additive, not disruptive—intimate conversations, not roadside billboards.

From why podcasting is narrative influence (not just audio) to how revenue should spread beyond the top 200 shows to why sought-not-served content changes everything about brand safety—this conversation captures podcasting at its inflection point.

The Big Three by Influence Weekly: 3 Biggest Stories. 1 Essential Conversation.

In this infrastructure-focused episode, hosts Ceci Carloni and Nii Ahene unpack three stories built from original Net Influencer research and platform updates that reveal where the creator economy's operational foundations need to evolve:

🏗️ What 2026 Needs: Build Things That Last: Net Influencer surveyed 92 industry professionals asking what the creator economy needs more of this year. The overwhelming consensus? Long-term partnerships, performance clarity, creator freedom, and systems that treat creators like businesses—not viral machines. The alignment across voices reveals the industry knows exactly what sustainable growth requires: less guesswork, more intention, and relationships built over time to test, learn, and identify what actually drives ROI.

📄 Contract Infrastructure Breakdown: In another roundtable on managing creator contracts at scale, a clear pattern emerged—contracts have evolved from paperwork to infrastructure, but the tools haven't kept up. Teams are still piecing together PDFs, emails, DocuSign, and manual processes. Contracts work fine with 10 creators but become bottlenecks at 50-100. Nii predicts the future isn't all-in-one platforms but best-of-breed solutions for specific workflow pieces, similar to how Lumeno focuses solely on payments while integrating with other systems.

🔍 Google Centralizes Creator Discovery: Google launched creator search inside Google Ads for YouTube partnerships, adding keyword-based discovery and structured filters directly into their paid media platform. This isn't just a feature—it's a signal that Google understands YouTube is one of their most AI-resistant assets and that the convergence of organic, creator, and paid is accelerating. By making creator discovery live inside ads infrastructure, Google is betting that easier access to creators equals more paid amplification dollars.

From industry-wide alignment on sustainable growth needs to the operational chaos of scaling contracts to platforms centralizing creator workflows—this episode captures the infrastructure gaps and platform responses defining the creator economy's next evolution.

The Big Three by Influence Weekly: 3 Biggest Stories. 1 Essential Conversation.

In our third guest episode, host Ceci Carloni sits down with David Abbey, co-founder and CEO of Endlss, to explore what happens when you actually listen to what brands need—and rebuild your entire platform around those insights.

🔄 The Pivot That Changed Everything: David shares the story of building Trend, a social marketplace designed to solve multi-brand checkout friction, only to discover creators wouldn't adopt it. Instead of forcing the product, he spent years listening to hundreds of brands describe their real problems: gifting chaos, manual payments through PayPal spreadsheets, communication nightmares at scale. This led to rebuilding from scratch and launching Endlss—an all-in-one influencer and affiliate platform where the entire feature set is free, and brands only pay as they scale.

📈 Where Creator Programs Break: Drawing from migrating brands with 1,000+ creators from competitors, David pinpoints exactly when systems fail: it's not one thing, it's the compound effect. Manual gifting works with 10 creators but breaks at 100. Email communication is fine for 25 but becomes impossible at 500. The 90-10 rule applies—90% of your results come from 10% of creators, but you can't identify them without proper infrastructure. The brands crushing it? Three-year-old digital natives who grew up in this space versus legacy companies still figuring out change management.

🎯 The Alignment Problem: David argues the biggest miss in creator marketing isn't budget or tools—it's alignment. Brands think "we need influencers" instead of "we need influencers aligned with our brand values whose audiences will resonate." He contrasts spray-and-pray approaches (message 100 people, hope for results) with strategic selection (carefully choose 100, introduce yourself, build relationships). One partner agency increased client revenue 80% in a single month by focusing entirely on alignment over volume.

From the hard lessons of building the wrong product to identifying exactly where scale breaks to why AI should accelerate creativity but never replace content—this conversation captures the builder's perspective on what infrastructure the creator economy actually needs.

The Big Three by Influence Weekly: 3 Biggest Stories. 1 Essential Conversation.