Creator Content Crossing the Media Chasm at Web Summit Vancouver 2026
We are now seeing a groundswell of creator content coming from social platforms and podcasts that challenges everything about how legacy media has operated. The Web Summit conference that happened in Vancouver this week, which The Guardian dubbed “Glastonbury for geeks,” served up a next-gen creator vibe in its Creative Summit typified by a panel titled “How Fandom is Transforming Entertainment” that explored how responsive fan communities are driving and defining content creation.
The session included panelists from Amazon, user-generated storytelling platform Wattpad, and Vancouver-based entertainment and arts weekly Georgia Straight.
Amazon Prime Video VP International Kelly Day at Web Summit Vancouver 2026
“Over the last several years, we’ve been leaning into these fandoms and thinking very intentionally about how we work with creators and IP owners, to bring these stories to life on Prime Video and bring them to fans all over the world,” said Kelly Day, VP International at Amazon Prime Video.
Day discussed one popular streaming series, Culpa Mia, that started as a story written by Argentine-Spanish author Mercedes Ron on Wattpad. It then became a book trilogy and a three-part Spanish streaming series subbed and dubbed into 30 different languages and distributed worldwide.
“These shows really operate at the same level as some of our biggest shows coming out of the US,” Day said. “The Culpa franchise has had over one hundred million viewers worldwide, over 90% of them were outside of Spain. That’s really an incredible footprint for the IP and these franchises."
Social Loop
Day went on to discuss the arc of Culpa Mia’s journey from small-market web fiction to worldwide streaming hit. “[Culpa] really traveled a lot through word of mouth on TikTok and Instagram and became this global sensation,” said Day. “When we decided to do a UK version, it was a big bet. We weren’t entirely sure how the fans were going to react to it, but they completely embraced it. We see the fans have embraced the authenticity of [the two leads’] relationship and also embraced the different adaptation."
Mercedes Ron's Culpa Mia abd other works on Wattpad and Amazon
In a world where many, many young people now want to become influencers, viewers are very interested in interacting with creators and promoting creator content, as opposed to consuming content created in legacy entertainment formats. Day argues that it’s incumbent on mainstream platforms not only to acknowledge the ways that fan communities drive content but to fully embrace the trend.
“Especially with Gen Z, when you're trying to develop things for younger audiences in particular, authenticity is so critical,” Day said. “We try to build true community with the fandoms and with the audiences and be as honest and true to the book and the characters as possible."
Day described Prime’s adoption and adaptation of stories originating on creator platforms like Wattpad as part of “a virtuous cycle. They'll become popular. They'll have a great viewership. We'll develop them. They'll become popular movie franchises, which will then drive even more people to go back and read the original stories on Wattpad or to interact with them on TikTok and other social platforms.”
According to Wattpad President David J. Lee, the platform “is about community, and it's about Gen Z discovering and pulling into a storyline. Their friends can learn about it as well. This generation wants to discover content from another place, a different culture. They want to see a storyline reimagined in the way they haven't seen before.”
Lee says the “virtuous cycle” Day references starts with organic growth on Wattpad. “We see these stories emerge out of nowhere with well over 100,000,000 reads," he said. "We can see in what languages they're being read, what demographics, and who's in which episode and which chapter. We can measure reads or read time or MAU [Monthly Active Readers]. The broader company has about 145,000,000 monthly active users. They spend an average of 30 to 60 minutes every day reading these stories. We've seen up to 120,000 new stories arrive every day from 27,000,000 creators,” he noted.
The company also has data on what resonates with readers and this is the perfect funnel for Amazon Prime to further identify compelling narratives.
“We mine a lot of social data to look at what stories and conversations people are really talking about,” said Day. “At the end of the day, it starts with finding those stories that we really think are going to resonate.”
Moving FAST
Another panel, “The Rise and Reach of New Media,” looked at top influencers moving from podcasts to SVOD, AVOD, and FAST channels. The panel featured Young Turks host Cenk Uygur, Red Seat Ventures VP Business Development Chris Peterson, and CBC news EP Megan Stewart.
“We work with creators that span everything from political, literature, crime, sports, comedy,” said Peterson, “and the reality is that for each of those creators, not even genre wise, for each individual, you often have to have a really bespoke distribution plan.”
Red Seat Ventures VP Business Development Chris Peterson at Web Summit 2026
While content creators trying to move from social platforms to more established streaming platforms is not new, what is new is the size of the audience these content creators are reaching. And in fact, the top creators have their finger on the pulse of exactly who their audience is.
The moderator asked, “How do you learn that about the audience? How do you know what content fits where for growing audiences, diverse audiences? How do you get the content to them?”
"All our creators, no matter what the genre is, are able to tell us exactly who is in their audience,” said Peterson. There’s already a scale to their content businesses, typically, when they get involved. “We want to make sure we're in those places [where listeners expect us], but then also think about, 'Okay, we'd really like to get a FAST channel,’” Peterson said.
Peterson explained that podcast network Red Seat aims “to have distribution on Roku, Samsung, et cetera, because we think we can actually find a new audience there that's not already maybe listening to your audio podcast or on your YouTube channel. We’re owned by Fox, we’re part of the Tubi Media Group. We work with Tubi to put a lot of our creators, like Crime Junkie, to reach a younger multicultural audience." He said the platform is performing very well.
The New Media Moguls
Social media’s demonstrated ability to help content creators grow their businesses by targeting distribution on FAST channels, SVOD, and AVOD exemplifies how far social has come to become a dominant media format. "Red Seat Ventures has been around for 11 years and we work with top creators to help them build out their digital businesses,” said Peterson, “and it’s bespoke for each one. Oftentimes that includes the audio podcast and YouTube channels, and then we monetize it via ads and/or subscription. But we also do live events or basically anything that a creator might want to do.”
Since Red Seat was acquired by Fox, he said, the company has been “able to do deals with top creators that we probably would have had to think twice about before,” Peterson said.
This means they can not only potentially write very large minimum guarantees but also let creators think much bigger than previous revenue models from podcasting and YouTube. “We have the backing of Fox and Tubi where we’d like to be able to pull some levers on some other legacy media channels to help the creators find the audiences that they literally are never going to find on their own.
Essential to the success of Red Seat and its creator clients is “meeting the audience where they're already at,” Peterson said. “And if that means it’s on an Instagram feed with Reels or if it's on a FAST channel, you just have to be there. It’s not a one-size-fits-all by genre or creator."
Peterson said that the Crime Junkie property he referenced earlier gets billions of annual impressions just from an audio podcast, but now the team is adding video, growing the brand and trying to create more. "They took $40 million from the Chernin Group last year," he said.
Although the rising influence and importance of creators still has plenty of room to grow, it’s clear they have truly crossed the media chasm to stake their claim alongside traditional and legacy genres.
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