NEW YORK—Ad spend in the creator economy has more than doubled since 2021 from $13.9B to $29.5B in 2024 and that amount is projected to reach $37 billion in 2025 — a 26% increase year-over-year and about 4x faster than the media industry overall, according to a new report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

In its 2025 Creator Economy Ad Spend & Strategy Report, the association says the surge in investments in the U.S. creator economy “is reshaping modern media strategies.”

Creator ad spend has jumped up the ranks as brands are now treating creators as a distinct channel, not just a tactic within social media, IAB said, with nearly half (48%) of ad spenders considering creators a “must buy,” ranking only behind social media and paid search.

“Leveraging the creator economy to connect with audiences is no longer experimental for marketers — it’s essential,” said David Cohen, CEO, IAB. “The significant growth we’re seeing reflects a deepening commitment from brands to invest in creator-driven strategies. However, with that maturity comes a need for clear standards, better measurement, and tools to navigate an incredibly fragmented ecosystem.”

Additional key findings from the report reveal how brands are leveraging creator advertising to activate, scale, and measure their media strategies.

While brands leverage creator campaigns most often for awareness and reach, the study found sales is also among their top campaign goals:

• Building brand awareness (43%)
• Reaching new audiences (41%)
• Enhancing brand reputation / trust (35%)
• Driving online sales / conversions (32%)

With online sales listed as the fourth most common goal, brands are also utilizing creators across the purchase funnel, IAB says, with 40% of buyers ranking overall ROI as their top KPI for creator campaigns.

“Creators are unmatched when it comes to storytelling and cultural relevance — however, brands are also seeing them as performance drivers when integrated strategically,” added Chris Bruderle, Vice President, Industry Insights & Content Strategy, IAB. “Creator marketing isn’t just about awareness — it’s proving its value across the full funnel.”

The report also noted the challenges in helping connect content creators with the right brands and audiences, IAB said, with a third of the brands surveyed considering it their biggest hurdle.

According to the study, more than half of brands said creator reputation (58%) and audience alignment (56%) are among the top criteria when selecting a creator to align with their brand, demonstrating that credibility and relevance define effective partnerships.

“The creator marketing ecosystem is still highly fragmented, with varying partnership models, siloed budgets, and limited standardization making it tough for marketers to assess things like audience fit or creator credibility at scale,” said Zoe Soon, Vice President, Experience Center, IAB. “The result is an environment where strategic matchmaking is often more art than science, and where brands are calling for better discovery tools to guide their investment decisions.”

When it comes to artificial intelligence, nearly three-in-four creator ad buyers are already using or planning to use AI within the next year, IAB said.

This increasing reliance on AI underscores a strategic shift toward automation that prioritizes scale, speed, and creative optimization. Those currently using AI for creator content are leveraging it for content refinement, work efficiency, and scalability, rather than full creative replacement:

• Content editing (49%)
• Creator briefs (46%)
• Content personalization (45%)

However, despite AI’s growing role, 95% of advertisers have concerns about using AI in creator marketing overall, according to IAB. Brands state their top concern with AI is the loss of human connection, which is a very important consideration when “building genuine, relatable experiences” and the top reason they invest in creator marketing.

Brands are calling for better attribution, more consistent reporting, and operational tools to link creator efforts to measurable business outcomes.

Measurement, standards, and tools that promote transparency and comparability emerged as the top opportunity areas for improvement, including:

• Advanced attribution
• Consistent reporting
• Creator discovery and vetting tools
• Standards for audience authentication and fraud prevention

Soon concluded, “Without these foundational elements, it’s difficult to link creator activations to meaningful business outcomes, which is a critical next step as creator advertising becomes a core part of modern media strategy.”

New York City, NY – October 22, 2019 –Pond5, the world’s largest royalty-free video marketplace, today announced the launch of Marquee, a new content collection on Pond5, made up entirely of premium-quality footage, found exclusively on Pond5 and hand curated to appeal to the most high-end creative agencies in the world.

Each piece of content in the exclusive Marquee collection is shot by experienced filmmakers, such as Warren Miller Entertainment, Shannon Wild, Francisco Aliwalas, and Corey Jenkins, and hand curated by a team of skilled creative professionals with the needs of top agencies, production companies and Fortune 500 brands in mind.

"The Marquee collection allows me the freedom to create content I’m passionate about and filming the best shots possible," says Corey Jenkins, a top Pond5 contributor.

Agencies can view the entire Marquee Collection on Pond5.com or explore a curated set of content below:

• Travel - travel-themed content featuring lush footage of adventure, relaxation, nature, and more
• Fitness and Wellness - inspiring clips of self-improvement and self-empowerment
• Business - business-themed content appealing to diverse industries across healthcare, technology, small business and more
• Food - mouth-watering close-ups of food, food preparation and mealtime
• Connections - footage of our connected universe of work, friends and family around the world
• Adventure - an extreme view from the highest peaks to the lowest caverns

About Pond5:

Pond5 (https://www.pond5.com) is the world’s largest video marketplace, providing the footage, inspiration, and resources today’s content creators need to tell their stories in film, television, advertising, social media, online video, and beyond. With more than 17 million video clips, tools including patented Visual Search for video, and integrations for all major video-editing software, Pond5 is the go-to video marketplace for filmmakers, media organizations, and marketers worldwide. Pond5 is venture-backed with offices in New York, Dublin, Prague, London, and LA.

Press Contact:

Megan Linebarger

(617) 480-3674

megan@zazilmediagroup.com

Sports coverage is changing. More than ever before, we’re finding that leagues, clubs, associations and event organizers are taking control of their own content. Organizers can be federations, teams, leagues, tours, individual events and the agencies that represent them. For the purposes of this article, let’s oversimplify and refer to them as “leagues,” knowing that they self-identify and can be organized with great diversity.

When we ask why leagues are producing so much more than before, we see a variety of inter-related factors driving this trend. When you look at them together, it’s hard to imagine how every league in the future wouldn’t have a unit that works and functions a lot like a multimedia sports newsroom.

Below are some of the catalysts we found to be driving this movement:

1. Leagues spent millions to capitalize on social. Over the past five to 10 years, every league has needed to invest in and develop a social strategy to capitalize on the popularity of sport on those platforms. Many developed content strategies that were social first but have realized that actually it’s not everything, and now seek to make the most of those investments through broader and more diverse distribution of that content via more traditional channels.
2. Leagues are plugging the holes created by the shrinkage of independent newsrooms. Sports desks are not immune to the pressures to reduce costs in the face of falling ad revenue. Leagues are stepping in to create coverage of their events to ensure fans can follow all their action, not just the events independent newsrooms can justify covering.
3. Gaming revenue is growing. It turns out that gap is widening from both sides as integration gets tighter between leagues and the gambling industry. Leagues have greater incentive to serve that constituency, often with events that don’t warrant mainstream coverage but pull their weight through the gaming audience. Again, the leagues find themselves incentivised to create coverage themselves.
4. Sports fans want more personal, authentic content that only leagues can produce. Modern fans want to see athletes sharing personal stories, inside jokes and having real conversations. They have an aversion to watching the traditional press conference, which too often feels staged and choreographed to be as inauthentic and “safe” as possible. Event organizers have found themselves in a unique position to capture or create more fun, off-the-pitch content that Gen Z sports fans want, and news organizations can’t realistically produce at scale.
5. Leagues are seeing a bright light at the end of the online tunnel. Traditional TV sport distribution has developed organically over the past 80 years into a very lucrative but also ungainly web of rights deals. They come with restrictions that can limit innovation and very shallow audience data. Increasingly organizers are finding the more predictable, controlled and transparent business OTT and online platform partnerships offer them are more satisfying. These services are most successful when games are supplemented with news coverage, interviews, etc., which the leagues are producing for them. It will be awhile before those gargantuan and complicated broadcast contracts take a back seat to digital distribution for top leagues, but if this trend continues it might not be quite as long as you think because …
6. Leagues are making it a priority to get to know (and cross-sell to) fans directly. Front offices are combining customer data from ticket sales, merchandise sales, online viewing and social engagement to develop CRM systems that aim to categorize and keep track of all fans. Data from content consumption can be a key piece of this puzzle (see #5). With better data on fan behavior, leagues can cross-sell their services more efficiently and create content that is measurably better at achieving specific goals.
7. Most leagues have global expansion plans. Breaking into a new market, often across a language barrier, to a land where news coverage does not generally prioritize your sport is a lofty goal shared by almost all leagues. This creates an incentive for leagues to create content fans in these regions can use to stay connected.
8. Sponsors expect a lot more than just a bit of signage. They want to see their products being used organically in the context of the sport. They want to activate in creative ways, especially on social, and they want to measure everything they can. As the sponsorships continue to become more valuable and complex, sports bodies will be under pressure to find new ways to prove those sponsors are getting value for their money. The news content created by leagues provides another platform for sponsorship activation that can range from simple to innovative.

If most of these trends continue, leagues will have incentive to develop more comprehensive files of news style content for their fans and I fully expect those newsrooms to start surpassing some more sophisticated broadcast and digital news publishers on the maturity curve, at least in their chosen domain.

In these trends, there are new opportunities for traditional media companies to partner with leagues in new ways. At Reuters, we’ve expanded what was a more regional sports agency globally —Action Images—to help leagues benefit from our traditional media know-how to create, monetize and distribute their own news content globally.

If you’re at a sports desk and this new competition is making you queasy, don’t reach for the Alka-Seltzer just yet. There is one big catch for the purists out there. Everyone knows this content is always going to at least come with some perceived bias. The leagues will openly admit they have an agenda in creating this content; the fans know it instinctively. We won’t read many negative opinions on questionable coaching decisions, bad behavior off the pitch by athletes, the latest front office scandal or labor disputes in league-generated content. That’s still squarely the role of independent media, and readers will always seek and value balanced coverage for the competitions they love most.

Rob Shack is vice president of Reuters Sport. 

New York, NY – June 19, 2018 – Adorama, the trusted source for market-leading photo, video, audio, imaging and electronics products and information, invites visual storytellers to New York City this June to hear how world-renowned photographers and filmmakers have leveraged social and online platforms to build their successful businesses and brands at Adorama INSPIRE. Chris Burkard, renowned photographer and filmmaker (“Under an Arctic Sky”) and Instagram star with 3 million followers will lead the brand building session on Storytelling in the Digital Age and Prince McClinton, creative powerhouse and business phenom behind Art of Visuals, the creative community platform with over 1 million followers, will take attendees into The Business of Content Creation.

In addition to the specially curated brand building sessions, Adorama INSPIRE will also feature a session on Crowdfunding and Building Your Audience with successful crowdfunder and filmmaker Christina Raia and Producing a Successful Livestream with broadcast expert Alex Lindsay.

Storytelling in the Digital Age with Chris Burkard

Attendees are invited to join renowned global adventure photographer and Instagram star (3 million followers and climbing), Chris Burkard, as he talks compelling content and engaging storytelling in a highly saturated social media landscape. The session, moderated by acclaimed travel photographer and editor-in-chief at Resource Travel, Michael Bonocore, will explore the necessary skills and approach to developing a social media following, generating engagement, and how to leverage this following. Attendees can expect a captivating dialogue covering how and why social media is used as a storytelling tool in the digital age, how to be sure people are seeing and actively engaging with your content, and how to effectively convey passionate experiences to followers.

“The art of long-form storytelling is rapidly disappearing as our attention spans become ever shorter and we are continuously exposed to new content on our various feeds,” says Michael Bonocore. “With this, social media becomes the number one place where it is absolutely critical to catch, and keep, someone’s attention long enough for them to want to hear your story. So how do we as creatives tell the stories that we are passionate about in just a few square-cropped photos? And how do we ensure people are actually seeing and actively engaging with our visual stories? I am excited to sit down with Chris Burkard at Adorama INSPIRE to talk about his passion for social media and storytelling, and how he has successfully combined them to create one of the most dynamic social media feeds on the internet today.”

Details:

• Thursday, June 28th
• 10:00am- 12:00pm
• Union Square Ballroom
• Admission: Free

The Business of Content Creation with Prince McClinton (Art of Visuals)

Prince McClinton, founder of Art of Visuals, one of the world’s largest creative communities inspiring over 1 million people daily via the wildly successful Art of Visuals Instagram creative community, sits down with amazing artists and creators - Josh Perrett, Paola Franqui, Josh Alvarez and Paul Seibert - to discuss photography, video, travel and the business of content creation. To be followed by a gallery reception celebrating art curated from the @artofvisuals community. Must be 18+ to attend.

Details:

• Monday, June 25th
• 6:30pm- 9:30pm
• Union Square Ballroom
• Admission: Free

Crowdfunding to Build Independence

This specially designed crowdfunding workshop led by expert Christina Raia takes attendees inside successful campaign strategies and the essential steps taken to connect with audiences, reach crowdfunding goals, and ultimately, distribution, with the end goal of a building a sustainable career. Christina Raia, NYC-based writer and director, the founder of CongestedCat Productions and the crowdfunding director at Seed&Spark, will host this workshop on financing film projects. Her work, a collection of short films, a web series and two feature films, has gained a large online following through multiple crowdfunding campaigns. She has been covered by press outlets such as Indiewire, AfterEllen and BuzzFeed.

Details:

• Tuesday, June 26th
• 6:30pm- 8:30pm
• Union Square Ballroom
• Admission: Free

Producing a Successful Livestream

Join livestream expert Alex Lindsay for an in-depth discussion on what is needed to execute a successful live internet broadcast. Alex has produced over 1,500 livestreams for celebrities, Fortune 100 companies and TV networks, which have been streamed from every continent to most of the popular live platforms. Folks of all skill levels are welcome to attend this free event, from on-the-go run-and-gun YouTubers to the big guns with broadcast trucks - events of all sizes will be discussed. Attendees can expect insights on planning, from video, audio and encoding, to learning how to manage the most important factors of an event that can often thwart a stream. Along the way, Alex will break down broadcasts and dive into key metrics to identify what makes a live web event great beyond just technical success.

Details:

• Thursday, June 28th
• 4:00pm- 6:00pm
• Union Square Ballroom
• Admission: Free

The weeklong Adorama INSPIRE conference-festival pays homage to cinematography, photography and social influence, offering specially curated workshops and community platforms that focus on improving technical expertise. Attendees can find the full Adorama INSPIRE schedule and registration details here.

ADORAMA: More Than a Camera Store

Adorama is more than a camera store – it’s one of the world’s largest photography, video, audio and computer retailers. Serving customers for more than 40 years, Adorama has grown from its flagship NYC store to include the leading online destination for imaging and consumer electronics. Adorama’s vast product offerings encompass professional video and audio, connected home, musical instruments and more, while its services include an in-house photo lab, AdoramaPix; resources and gear for photographers, filmmakers, production studios, broadcasting and post houses, and recording artists through Adorama Business Solutions; professional equipment rental at Adorama Rental Company; and the award-winning Adorama Learning Center, which offers free creative education via online channels such as the popular AdoramaTV on YouTube.

Visit ADORAMA at www.adorama.com.

Press Contact

Alexis Isaacs

Zazil Media Group

(e) alexis@zazilmediagroup.com

(p) +1 773 816 7944

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New York City, NY – March 27, 2018 –Frame.io, the leading workflow management platform for video teams, will preview the all new Frame.io at NAB 2018, in anticipation of the full release early this summer. The next generation of the company’s media review and collaboration software, the all new Frame.io will be reengineered for speed. Large projects can load up to 100X faster and uploading media now supports Gigabit speeds and beyond. Broader media support, better version control, new commenting tools, and enhanced search top the list of over 150 new features and improvements coming to Frame.io.

What’s New in Frame.io
The all new Frame.io sets a new industry standard with a never-before-seen set of collaboration tools for content creators. Used by all types of creatives – from freelancers working with individual clients to small internal teams and massive distributed organizations – Frame.io offers both professional and enterprise solutions to meet the unique needs of anyone creating video.

New features in the all new Frame.io will include:

• Advanced media browser with enhanced search and a new uploader with nested folder support. The new Frame.io will be up to one-hundred times faster with a new media browser that enables users to fly through thousands of assets at lightning speed. New sorting and search options make it easier for users to find exactly what they need in less time. The all new uploader can support speeds above 1 Gigabit and retains full nested folder structures during upload.
• Revamped core video playback and state-of-the-art media experiences for video, audio, images, multi-page PDFs and animated GIFs. The Rebuilt Core Video Playback Engine means faster/smoother playback with less buffering, at up to 4K resolution.
• Rich, range-based commenting. Comments that support attachments and new range-based feedback. Range-based comments unlock a whole new level of communication. Users simply drag the comment handle over the timeline to create a range and better reference the underlying content.
• Presence. See who's currently watching (live) and who's already watched with clip history. Clip statistics show you play count, historical views, and even let you set up a notification when a specific person or group of people start viewing.
• New version control. The new version manager in the all new Frame.io lets users add, remove or rearrange versions from the stack.

And over 150 additional features and improvements:

• All new apps and integrations for enhanced workflows
• Improved playback performance with HLS and DASH streaming
• Visual watermarking
• Media lifecycle management
• Dozens of security features in support of a commitment to offer the most secure platform available for video review

http://blog.frame.io/2018/03/27/all-new-frame-io/

In addition to these brand new features, Frame.io shipped a completely redesigned player experience in February 2018 that laid the foundation for the new Frame.io and many more features to come. The new player page supports 360-degree VR content with spatial annotations so users can highlight a specific target within the frame. With a polished design and improved performance on mobile browsers, the player page allows users to an easily add descriptions to files, clearly see what date and version they are working on and collaborate even more quickly with their teams and clients.

Meet with Frame.io at NAB 2018
The Frame.io team and product demos will be hosted at the Western Digital booth (SL6316) in the South Lower Hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center. To request a private meeting, please contact sales@frame.io.

Schedule a Press Briefing with Frame.io at NAB 2018
Members of the registered press attending the 2018 NAB Show are invited to request a press briefing with a representative from Frame.io. To schedule a briefing, please contact Megan Linebarger at megan@zazilmediagroup.com.

About Frame.io
Frame.io powers the future of creative collaboration. Today’s leading media companies use Frame.io to streamline their video review and collaboration process with teammates, clients and a variety of other stakeholders. Frame.io is all about what happens before distribution, before you reach the finish line. They make getting there faster, smoother and more efficient with a single platform that works seamlessly across web and mobile. Frame.io for iOS is the winner of a 2016 Apple Design Award.

Frame.io is backed by industry heavyweights including FirstMark Capital, Accel Partners and Jared Leto. To learn more please visit www.frame.io.

Press Contact
Megan Linebarger
Zazil Media Group
(e) megan@zazilmediagroup.com
(p) +1 (617) 480-3674

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New York City, NY – April 5, 2018 –Pond5, the world’s leading content marketplace for high-quality royalty-free video and other media, today announced the expansion of its patent-pending AI-based Visual Search platform to include groundbreaking browser-focused and mobile applications.

Allowing users to search by images instead of words, the artificial intelligence that drives Pond5 Visual Search gives customers the ability to show, rather than tell, what they’re looking for. Eliminating the difficult task of trying to put a visual concept into words, Visual Search delivers instant results for licensable media with a similar look to any file a customer chooses.

“Our team used state-of-the-art deep-learning techniques to build and train a neural network that allows users to search Pond5 using visual assets that inspire them,” explained Lawrence Lazare, Sr. Director, Product Management at Pond5. “By adding AI-based search into our industry-leading search experience, we also vastly reduced the amount of time it takes to find the perfect video clip, photo, or illustration.”

With the continued evolution of the internet into a primarily visual medium, video has continued to gain prominence at an exponential pace, making Pond5’s introduction of Visual Search for video a game-changing development. On the site, customers can use the feature, which recognizes patterns in imagery, either by scrolling over a search result in the Pond5 marketplace or uploading a file from their own computer.

Further utilizing the neural network-based technology, the first of the new Visual Search applications is a browser extension available for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari that lets users search using any video or image they find on the web. With the extensions, customers can select any visual web result and use it to find similar video and image results on Pond5. The extensions even include the ability to erase parts of the selected image before searching, for more refined results.

Early adopters of Pond5 Visual Search have already found it to be extremely liberating. "Pond5’s new Visual Search features make it much easier — and faster — to pinpoint clips that are exactly what we need,” said Michele Kurtz, Vice President of Development at Half Yard Productions.

The second new application of the technology is an industry-first mobile web Visual Search. Giving users the ability to search for media using the camera on their mobile device or media uploaded from their camera roll, it’s an ideal solution for location scouters, traveling producers, and creators in search of ideas. By utilizing this on-the-go functionality, customers can capture imagery any time that inspiration strikes and immediately find similar results on Pond5.

“Visual Search is absolutely the future,” said Pond5 CEO Jason Teichman. “It’s a new yet familiar way to find exactly what you’re envisioning for your project. And inspiration can strike at any time, so it’s important that you’re not limited to a single method of searching. By expanding on our custom neural-network engine, Pond5 can now always give you a way to find what you’re looking for, regardless of whether you’re on the site, browsing the web, or walking down the street. It’s just the latest example of our commitment to making content discovery as easy and intuitive as possible, and to constantly innovating on behalf of both our artists and our customers.”

To learn more about Pond5 Visual Search and how each of the new features works, as well as to download the browser extensions, visit pond5.com/visual-search.

Meet with Pond5 at NAB
Professionals attending the NAB Show can book a private meeting and demonstration with the Pond5 sales team at the 2018 NAB Show in Las Vegas. To request a meeting, please contact NAB2018@pond5.com.

Schedule a Private Press Briefing with Pond5 at NAB
Members of the NAB registered press are invited to schedule a private briefing with a member of the Pond5 executive team. To request a briefing, please contact Megan Linebarger at megan@zazilmediagroup.com.

About Pond5
Pond5 is transforming the role of video in the creative process by connecting producers, creative directors, and editors to more than 60,000 filmmakers and creators in over 150 countries. The company strives to improve creative production through its innovative artist technology, easy-to-use platform, and ever-growing library of more than ten million royalty-free video clips, plus millions of music tracks, sound effects, photos and other high-quality media. Pond5 is a venture-backed company funded by Accel Partners and Stripes Group with offices located in New York, Dublin, and Prague.

For more information, please visit https://www.pond5.com.

Press Contact:
Megan Linebarger
Zazil Media Group
(e) megan@zazilmediagroup.com
(p) +1 (617) 480-3674

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‘Engagement’ is a key watchword for media businesses. Shows are trying to outdo each other with on-screen tweets, Orange rooms, lower third crawls and Facebook pages. We are desperate to create opportunities for our audiences to engage with our programs by contributing pithy commentary and parrot hashtags via social media related to the topic of the moment.

Desperate is an apt term. As we watch the breadth of media stocks miss their numbers this quarter, one has to wonder if we are doing enough. I don’t think we are.

NO NEW CONTENT

What seems odd to me is that while all this effort is put into social dialogue, little or no effort is put into creating actual content to capture and hold an engaged, younger, social media-aware audience. The airwaves fill with costly, syndicated content that does nothing to reinforce the connection between the station and its community. At the same time, audiences are fragmented and tuned out. They’ve abandoned local stations for their DVRs and streaming services, ignoring the local scene all together. Cable companies are similarly pressed to attract viewers.

I’ve long been baffled by the lack of local production at TV stations and cable networks beyond news and public affairs. When the news ends, stations turn out the lights, studios sit empty, and control rooms gather dust. I’d have assumed by now that in the drive to innovate and capture audience, someone would have tried to create a local game show, local sports coverage or talker that would engage younger viewers and give them a reason to take another look, or increasingly even a first look, at the ‘old media.’

When I’ve asked general managers to explain this lack, their quick answer is that local productions are too expensive. How can that be? Is it really more viable to leave a huge capital investment in infrastructure lying fallow while the station’s brand dies during quiet times?

'Love at First Skype' is an example of a new breed of live television. It uses Video Call Center technology that was developed for use in co-productions for broadcast and cable television networks and stations.

I’m not suggesting that local programs would be free. Of course there would be costs in terms of staff and the cost of promotion, but the opportunity for capturing a new, untapped audience should at least be worth a look. New technology solutions for remote control, high quality video call-ins, and even remote hosting mean stations have economical options for producing live, local conten 

What makes local news work and the reason it continues to ring the cash registers for hundreds of stations, after all, is its immediate relevance to the community. I think there is a tremendous opportunity out there for local stations to capture young viewers. I think the biggest obstacle is one of mindset. Local stations today think of themselves solely as local programmers with local advertisers and local competitors. Outside of news, they’ve completely ceded the role of content creator.

ENGAGING ENTERTAINMENT

Today’s emergent audiences are specifically looking for engagement with their entertainment, hence the popularity of services like Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, SnapChat, as well as interactivity-driven ‘channels’ such as gaming network Twitch. Local producers can embrace this ethos. Outstanding local programming such as call-in talk shows with a focus on a particular niche can deliver the engagement stations crave. Done well such programming even creates an opportunity for local stations to syndicate content themselves or expand their audience virally using OTT distribution direct to the consumer. It is even possible to grow local, non-news talent into regional and national figures. Imagine what could be done with a polished studio, a skilled host, and modern technologies.

Fortunately there are innovators who are waking up to the opportunity:

• CBS launched ‘Upstate Sports Edge’ featuring hyper-local coverage of local high-school and college level sports on Monday, Aug. 31.
• The Video Call Center has begun creating compelling, DVR-resistant live, interactive talk television. Its unique format features callers dialing in via video calling such as Skype and the entire show is controlled by the on-air host with no control room. It’s now offering its innovative technology to TV and cable channels to create their own programming. 
• We are starting to see personalized news options that know the viewer. Think of it as a hybrid of your newscast with a social media-style “like” button. It’s early days, but to get a sense of what is possible take a look at http://watchup.com/ or http://www.reuters.tv/.

If we want to see this business grow, we’ll need to dust off the cobwebs of TV creativity and create our own opportunities. It is time for local stations to recapture what they do best, engaging a local audience.