Creators are Coming for TV, and Brands Need New Playbook: Universal Ads’ Daniel Druger
Creators conquered social media, expanded into long-form video and are now coming for the biggest screen in the house.
Daniel Druger, vice president of product at Universal Ads/Comcast, sees television as the next major destination for creator-led marketing. Speaking with Beet.TV editorial director Lisa Granatstein at the IAB CreatorFronts 2026, Druger said creators increasingly have the production quality, content libraries and storytelling chops needed to compete for TV audiences and advertising dollars.
“Creators now will migrate to TV as an additional platform,” Druger said. Their growing role makes sense because television remains particularly well suited to storytelling and premium content, while creators have become increasingly sophisticated storytellers themselves.
Your social strategy needs a TV rewrite
There is, however, a small problem. Marketers spent years figuring out how to make creator campaigns work on phones. Now some are apparently tempted to put those same ideas on a 65-inch television and call it innovation.
Druger said brands often approach creator advertising on television much as they do social media, even though the viewing experiences are fundamentally different. Social feeds are often algorithmically driven and consumed on mobile devices. TV generally means a full-screen experience in which viewers deliberately select programming.
Brands therefore need “a new creative mindset, with a new development mindset, and a new strategy to capture attention,” Druger said.
There’s some historical irony here. Traditional TV advertisers once tried to carry their television playbooks onto social platforms, where they discovered that an ad designed for the living-room screen didn’t automatically become TikTok-native because somebody cropped it vertically. Now the migration is running in reverse as social-first marketers look toward connected TV.
Universal Ads wants to remove the speed bumps
Universal Ads was built around a straightforward ambition: make buying television advertising considerably less painful.
“Our mission was to make TV ad buying as easy and seamless as Meta is for social or Google is for search,” Druger said.
That means a self-service platform without fees or media markups, along with measurement and optimization capabilities more familiar to digital advertisers. For creator campaigns, Universal Ads has also launched Creator Studio, which connects brands with creators to develop advertising intended specifically for television.
The company is expanding the equation beyond creator-made commercials. Universal Ads also announced creator content inventory, letting advertisers place ads within creators’ long-form programming. That gives creators a role on both sides of the business. They can make the advertising and provide the programming surrounding it. Somewhere, a media plan just discovered vertical integration.
AI gets a job, but not the whole department
Artificial intelligence is inevitably part of this transition, although Druger resisted treating AI as a magic wand capable of making every expensive television production problem disappear.
“AI plays a role in that, but is not the key component of removing friction,” he said.
Universal Ads instead wants advertisers to choose how they produce creative. That could mean established agencies and high-end production or AI-generated concepts and creative development. The platform is also integrating AI capabilities across creative, targeting, measurement and optimization while working with outside partners.
The larger goal, Druger said, is to remain agnostic about how an advertiser gets there. If brands can use the partners and production methods they prefer while achieving their business objectives, Universal Ads has done its job.
The audience already beat advertisers there
Perhaps the most important part of the creator-to-TV story is that viewers haven’t waited for the advertising industry to hold a symposium about it.
Creator programming is already showing up on television screens through platforms that began as social or digital services. Audiences follow personalities, seek out their programming and increasingly watch that content on the biggest screen available.
“It’s not a matter of whether this changes consumer viewing behavior,” Druger said. “It already has.”
The remaining challenge is adapting television to that behavior. Druger sees creator programming not as a replacement for sports, entertainment or traditional premium productions, but as another format that can become part of television’s programming mix.
“This is just a natural evolution,” he said.
Reality television expanded the definition of TV. Sports grew into an increasingly important pillar of the business. Creator content may be the next addition. And after years of television executives worrying about viewers fleeing toward social media, social media’s creators may be arriving back on television carrying an audience with them.
You’re watching Beet.TV coverage of the 2026 IAB CreatorFronts. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
Creators conquered social media, expanded into long-form video and are now coming for the biggest screen in the house.
Daniel Druger, vice president of product at Universal Ads/Comcast, sees television as the next major destination for creator-led marketing. Speaking with Beet.TV editorial director Lisa Granatstein at the IAB CreatorFronts 2026, Druger said creators increasingly have the production quality, content libraries and storytelling chops needed to compete for TV audiences and advertising dollars.
“Creators now will migrate to TV as an additional platform,” Druger said. Their growing role makes sense because television remains particularly well suited to storytelling and premium content, while creators have become increasingly sophisticated storytellers themselves.
Your social strategy needs a TV rewrite
There is, however, a small problem. Marketers spent years figuring out how to make creator campaigns work on phones. Now some are apparently tempted to put those same ideas on a 65-inch television and call it innovation.
Druger said brands often approach creator advertising on television much as they do social media, even though the viewing experiences are fundamentally different. Social feeds are often algorithmically driven and consumed on mobile devices. TV generally means a full-screen experience in which viewers deliberately select programming.
Brands therefore need “a new creative mindset, with a new development mindset, and a new strategy to capture attention,” Druger said.
There’s some historical irony here. Traditional TV advertisers once tried to carry their television playbooks onto social platforms, where they discovered that an ad designed for the living-room screen didn’t automatically become TikTok-native because somebody cropped it vertically. Now the migration is running in reverse as social-first marketers look toward connected TV.
Universal Ads wants to remove the speed bumps
Universal Ads was built around a straightforward ambition: make buying television advertising considerably less painful.
“Our mission was to make TV ad buying as easy and seamless as Meta is for social or Google is for search,” Druger said.
That means a self-service platform without fees or media markups, along with measurement and optimization capabilities more familiar to digital advertisers. For creator campaigns, Universal Ads has also launched Creator Studio, which connects brands with creators to develop advertising intended specifically for television.
The company is expanding the equation beyond creator-made commercials. Universal Ads also announced creator content inventory, letting advertisers place ads within creators’ long-form programming. That gives creators a role on both sides of the business. They can make the advertising and provide the programming surrounding it. Somewhere, a media plan just discovered vertical integration.
AI gets a job, but not the whole department
Artificial intelligence is inevitably part of this transition, although Druger resisted treating AI as a magic wand capable of making every expensive television production problem disappear.
“AI plays a role in that, but is not the key component of removing friction,” he said.
Universal Ads instead wants advertisers to choose how they produce creative. That could mean established agencies and high-end production or AI-generated concepts and creative development. The platform is also integrating AI capabilities across creative, targeting, measurement and optimization while working with outside partners.
The larger goal, Druger said, is to remain agnostic about how an advertiser gets there. If brands can use the partners and production methods they prefer while achieving their business objectives, Universal Ads has done its job.
The audience already beat advertisers there
Perhaps the most important part of the creator-to-TV story is that viewers haven’t waited for the advertising industry to hold a symposium about it.
Creator programming is already showing up on television screens through platforms that began as social or digital services. Audiences follow personalities, seek out their programming and increasingly watch that content on the biggest screen available.
“It’s not a matter of whether this changes consumer viewing behavior,” Druger said. “It already has.”
The remaining challenge is adapting television to that behavior. Druger sees creator programming not as a replacement for sports, entertainment or traditional premium productions, but as another format that can become part of television’s programming mix.
“This is just a natural evolution,” he said.
Reality television expanded the definition of TV. Sports grew into an increasingly important pillar of the business. Creator content may be the next addition. And after years of television executives worrying about viewers fleeing toward social media, social media’s creators may be arriving back on television carrying an audience with them.
You’re watching Beet.TV coverage of the 2026 IAB CreatorFronts. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
