The pendulum does not swing. It has been changed.
As we enter the second year of the Trump administration, mainstream brands are becoming more comfortable working with conservative creatives and shifting ad dollars to political creatives. That’s what several experts in the creative economy told me at SXSW 2026.
Last year, Business Insider reported that blue-chip advertisers were embracing right-wing outlets like Fox News and the Daily Wire. Fox News told Business Insider at the time that it had 125 new advertisers following Trump’s election. The publication reported that companies are afraid of that “to avoid the conservative forums.” [was] danger to their companies,” while others want to avoid “showing political allegiances on both sides of the aisle.”
Now, experts say the same shift is happening in the fast-growing creative economy, where advertisers will spend an estimated $37 billion by 2025, according to the IAB.
“There’s definitely a comfort level with conservatives, no doubt. Look at the mainstream brands that support every channel today, right?” said Arthur Leopold, CEO and founder of Agentio, an advertising startup for program creators, in an interview with SXSW.
“If you consider how much the pendulum has moved, five years ago, if you were a brand and you didn’t have a pride flag in June …” Leopold told me, “There would be a small boycott and the national news would be that X, Y, Z brand does not have a pride flag. But now you think back to the last year, and you didn’t respond well to the desensi brand? in the public and because of that, brands care less that they work with Ben Shapiro or Meidas Touch.
Conservative media is home to hundreds of right-wing podcasters, YouTubers, and broadcasters. And let’s not forget about the right-leaning manosphere. While these creators have been getting deals from compliance-aligned products like Black Rifle Coffee, many are still banned from mainstream products.
At the same time, that means that creatives who pride themselves on development sometimes lose the dollars they’ve been counting on.
Creators often receive limited income from monetization programs on platforms such as YouTube or TikTok. In general, product deals are essential to building a sustainable career as a creator. So, if progressive creators who speak out about LGBTQ+ rights or climate change can’t secure partnerships, their voices may disappear from your feed.
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“These are amazing, amazing people. Amazing people, but there are brands that feel like they shouldn’t be supporting them. Whereas, two years ago, everyone was,” Leopold said.
Antonia Alakija, a creative economy strategist and Meta and TikTok alum, told Mashable that she definitely sees brands looking for more political creators.
“I think before it’s OK to have more of a social perspective or a moral perspective. I see brands choosing creators who don’t really address those topics and who don’t have a bipartisan brand, just to be different from the ideas that are going on right now. So, I would say, in terms of the choice of creators, I see that,” said Alakija.
Brooke Berry, Snapchat’s head of creator development, told Mashable that creators who find it difficult to get deals because of their political beliefs shouldn’t feel like they need to silence themselves. Instead, they should find other formats and topics that they can build around their content that speaks volumes.
“I had one of my TV star creators say, you know, on another forum, it’s hard for him sometimes to get deals, because he’s so talkative and opinionated,” Berry said. “But that’s when I told him, you don’t have to stop what you’re talking about, but you need to target content formats within other areas. Like, you’re on the spectrum, you’re on the spectrum, you have high-functioning autism, and you’re very vocal about that. Find formats within that brands can connect to.”
However, speaking out can still impact a creator’s ability to land deals, as Mashable previously reported.
“Even sometimes if you do political things, if you have a list of any political things, that can affect the chances, right now,” Alakija warned.
Leopold told me that there are, of course, strong corporate lines. Whether on the right or the left, extreme views or arguments are generally unattractive to brands, for obvious reasons.
“If there are creators who might be too controversial or say something that might hurt the brand, we have to be honest about that, and we’re not going to get into them. We’re a closed forum, right?” Leopold told me. “And brands can also say, ‘Hey, we want to work with creators who are more aligned with certain causes, political or otherwise. You know, we’re a brand that wants a male audience and success on channels like Ben Shapiro’s. So, OK, there are similar channels, like outdoor lifestyle channels or political channels that have similar audiences.”
The tendency to support political and conservative creatives worries left-wing creatives trying to make ends meet in a crowded creative economy.
However, that is about the pendulum.
They always turn back in the end.
Quotations in this essay have been slightly edited for clarity and grammar.
