As Yahoo’s creator program matures, the corporate is more and more evolving from a writer right into a creator platform in its personal proper.
Yahoo launched Yahoo for Creators, a creator publishing platform, in March 2024. Within the yr and three months since, creators have taken on a extra seen function on Yahoo’s homepage, with a devoted creator vertical and creator content material showing alongside conventional writer content material on the Yahoo app and within the firm’s newsletters.
The OG web large is seeking to safe its piece of the creator economic system, and it’s introduced on big-name creators corresponding to Nick DiGiovanni to assist accomplish the duty. Yahoo now has 135 lifestyle-focused creators in its program.
In June 2025, Yahoo for Creators generated its highest income and engagement since launch, in accordance with a Yahoo consultant, although they declined to share particular numbers.
By means of its creator program, Yahoo is evolving from its roots as a content material aggregator and editorial writer to extra of a distribution platform for particular person creators. This system permits creators to publish authentic content material immediately on Yahoo’s web site and entry instruments like advert monetization — with a 50/50 income break up — affiliate commerce alternatives and viewers analytics, just like platforms like Substack or YouTube. Every creator has a devoted moderator from Yahoo’s creator assist workforce that offers suggestions and vets content material in real-time after it’s printed. Yahoo’s desktop and cell websites had roughly 233 million distinctive guests in Might 2025, in accordance with numbers shared by Comscore.
Whereas it could sound like Yahoo is positioning itself extra as a social platform for creator content material distribution, Kat Downs Mulder, gm and svp at Yahoo Information, pushed again on that concept. She emphasised that content material from writer syndication companions stays essential to Yahoo Information, alongside the rising creator-driven content material discovered on the location. Yahoo sees the creator program as a option to develop its function as an aggregation platform. At the moment, there’s a waitlist of creators who wish to get into this system.
“We consider [our network] as giving [audiences] a need-to-know, the highest information — which we’ve got loads of from publishers. After which we’ve got this want-to-know — issues which can be simply fascinating and intriguing — about totally different matters that matter in your life. We have now a few of that content material from publishers, however we additionally more and more have that content material from creators,” Downs Mulder mentioned.
This system is primarily geared towards written content material, however permits creators to embed audio and video into their posts and contains creators corresponding to DiGiovanni — the Masterchef finalist-turned high meals creator — who’re primarily referred to as video personalities.
Creator Anika Gandhi, who constructed her viewers sharing woodworking movies on Instagram and TikTok, has been working with Yahoo for a couple of yr, writing articles about do-it-yourself initiatives and residential enchancment. “Throughout this time, I’ve seen development in my viewers as my work has reached new readers,” she mentioned. “The credibility of getting my initiatives featured on Yahoo has helped set up me as an authority within the DIY and woodworking house.” Yahoo declined to share particular person web page view counts for particular creator articles, however creators have mentioned that high-performing articles can draw over 300,000 views, in accordance with reporting by Bloomberg in February.
Publishers are going through mounting stress, as a result of site visitors challenges from AI and algorithm adjustments in search, in addition to youthful generations shifting their media consumption habits to social and video platforms. In response, many are turning to creators to achieve the rising creator economic system pie — and the advertiser income that comes with it.
Publishers like The Unbiased, Quick Firm, Inc and Morning Brew are amongst those who have not too long ago launched creator applications and creator-led initiatives, as they attempt to capitalize on audiences’ urge for food for creator and personality-led content material, together with the advertiser income it brings. Extra advert spend will go to creator content material than skilled media by subsequent yr, in accordance with a forecast by advertising and marketing analysis middle WARC. Globally, 51% of promoting will go to conventional media content material this yr, down from 72% in 2019.
“Publishers are realizing that creator ‘stock’ is a strategic asset,” mentioned Evan Wray, co-founder of influencer monetization platform Mavely and president of influencer advertising and marketing firm Later.
Yahoo’s creators program provides the writer extra socially native content material that it may well promote advertisements in opposition to and entice customers, Wray mentioned. It might additionally faucet into the built-in social distribution from creators, who’re prone to cross-promote their content material on different massive social platforms.
Yahoo’s 50/50 advert income break up with creators mirrors different platforms, like YouTube and Fb, which pay 55 % of video advert income to creators, or TikTok, whose TikTok Pulse advert income program provides creators a 50 % lower.
Up to now, creators collaborating in Yahoo’s program — who’ve entry to a dashboard displaying metrics corresponding to viewership and engagement — say they’re happy with the outcomes. Journey author Alesandra Dubin instructed Digiday that the income share had elevated her earnings “considerably,” though she didn’t share particular numbers, and praised the dearth of editorial management exerted by Yahoo over her content material.
“There’s little or no purple tape, and I’ve had the liberty to publish what I would like, how I would like,” she mentioned.
Downs Mulder declined to share how Yahoo is packaging and promoting creator content material to advertisers. Yahoo doesn’t impose content material manufacturing necessities for creators in this system — nor does the content material need to be unique to Yahoo’s platform, in accordance with Downs Mulder. For now, not one of the creator content material is completely made for Yahoo’s program. Creators are capable of publish content material on to the platform with out intermediation by a moderator, though moderators evaluation the content material after it goes reside to make sure that it abides by Yahoo’s requirements, with the writer’s preliminary vetting course of supposed to move off any potential model security issues. (Up to now, there have been no points, in accordance with an organization consultant.)
Some creators, significantly freelance writers accustomed to the flat upfront charges paid by conventional media retailers like Yahoo, may have time to regulate to the platform’s creator-led strategy, which depends extra on performance-based commissions quite than assured funds. Final month, Yahoo creator Cassandra Brooklyn commented on LinkedIn that some articles would possibly generate solely $50, whereas others might usher in hundreds, however the inconsistency could make it troublesome to rely on as a major supply of earnings.
Nevertheless, she added that it does present a invaluable alternative to publish content material that may be laborious to position elsewhere, corresponding to area of interest matters like cycling-focused journey items.
Jessica Brown, managing director of digital funding at WPP Media, mentioned she sees Yahoo’s creator program as an extra distribution channel for manufacturers to align with creators. Despite the fact that there are quite a few creator platforms the place advertising and marketing budgets might go — and a few duplication is probably going — a model’s message nonetheless resonates and performs effectively when it’s instructed by means of the “genuine voice” of a creator, Brown mentioned.
“If the audiences I’m making an attempt to achieve are on Yahoo or are partaking with a creator on Yahoo, that’s nice, as a result of it’s simply one other method for me to search out them and attain them,” Brown mentioned.
For creators with bigger followings on different platforms, nonetheless, the presence of conventional writer content material alongside their very own on platforms like Yahoo creates pure competitors, even when the writer provides itself as a distribution community for creators. Political creator Kaivan Shroff, for instance, maintains an identical relationship with the writer MeidasTouch, often posting authentic content material on the writer’s web site. Nevertheless, the creator has prioritized his private social media pages in latest months, perceiving that MeidasTouch favors its personal content material over that of creators. (A MeidasTouch consultant didn’t reply to a request for remark.)
“They have an inclination to principally push out their very own branded content material — which is all good,” Shroff mentioned. “I’ve been posting on Instagram.”
Jeremy Whitt, government media director at full-service company Hanson Dodge, was unsurprised to listen to that June 2025 was Yahoo for Creators’ most profitable month but. He mentioned that writer–creator applications corresponding to Yahoo’s are a beautiful prospect for his purchasers as a result of they symbolize a possibility to indicate up alongside creators — a rising space of curiosity for advertisers throughout industries — whereas tapping into the naturally massive scale of Yahoo’s platform.
“You’ve got a possibility right here to get into a sort of content material that customers are gravitating in direction of — which is creator content material — however to not need to depend on both one million relationships to get the size you want, or hoping that possibly one thing will choose up virally,” Whitt mentioned. “You’ve received this built-in scale from a writer, and I feel that’s why it’s interesting to an advertiser.”
