Brands Are Rethinking Earned Media Around Niche News Creators

NASCAR, Tropicana's Naked Smoothie brand, and Amazon are directing earned media budgets toward niche news creators on TikTok and creator-led podcasts, treating them the way PR teams once reserved placements for morning shows and late-night television.

The shift is documented in reporting from Digiday, which spoke with seven marketing organisations about their earned media strategies. Two of the seven have not yet deployed creators for this purpose. Among those that have, measurement remains the primary unresolved challenge.

How brands are using creator channels

NASCAR partnered with the Breaking and Entering creator account in February to conduct driver interviews, placing its talent, including NASCAR Cup Series driver Ross Chastain, in a format its traditional press relations rarely touched. Tropicana's Naked Smoothie brand seeded content with Deuxmoi, a pop culture creator account, and amplified the coverage through paid media. Amazon held its first formal "editorial exchange" in Seattle, briefing both journalists and creators simultaneously on AI and sustainability initiatives.

UnderCurrent, a talent management agency, has launched a dedicated service that books celebrities, founders, and CEOs onto creator shows and podcasts, pitching it directly to PR teams as earned media placement. The firm treats creator slots on the same planning calendar as traditional press appearances.

Why the shift is happening now

76% of Gen Z gets news from social media, according to Pew Research, and more than half of all U.S. adults consume news through social channels at least occasionally. For communications teams, that data reshapes the fundamental question: where is the target audience actually paying attention?

The shift is also driven by what is happening in AI search. Creator content and news publisher articles now surface side by side in AI Overviews and chatbot responses. A well-placed mention in a niche news creator's TikTok or podcast can appear in AI-generated answers in the same way a trade press placement would, creating a search visibility benefit from earned media that was historically difficult to measure through traditional attribution models.

Measurement is still the central problem

No standardised framework has emerged for measuring creator-based earned media. NASCAR uses what it describes as fandom metrics. Tropicana tracks earned media value, a metric borrowed from traditional PR that applies a dollar amount to coverage based on equivalent advertising spend. Neither provides the campaign-level attribution that performance marketing teams typically require.

The marketers interviewed consistently describe creator placements as supplementing rather than replacing traditional press coverage. A major newspaper or broadcast mention still carries credibility signals that a TikTok creator cannot replicate. The value of creator placements is understood as reach and audience specificity: accessing a highly targeted group that would not consume the same content through traditional channels.

Publicists are increasingly pitching creator booking managers with the same outreach discipline as journalist contacts, and agencies like UnderCurrent are formalising that relationship into a bookable, accountable service.