“I've been trying to benchmark comps for my category for months. Every database either buckets us into 'digital media' or misses the deals entirely.” — Founder, social media publisher

Welcome to our 13,000+ readers!

If you're not yet a subscriber, sign up here for the most widely-read newsletter on M&A and strategy for the creator economy and social agencies.

Hi readers,

Welcome to the first edition of our Quarterly Transaction Comparables Report.

Our goal is straightforward: build the most useful, credible dataset of M&A activity and public company benchmarks at the intersections of the creator economy we work in every day — talent management, marketing and advertising agencies, media publishers, audio and podcasting, commerce, ad tech, and content platforms.

There is no single great source of truth for deal activity in our industry. Valuations live scattered across press releases, private databases, and secondhand chatter. The existing aggregators either miss our niches entirely or bucket them into categories too broad to be useful. We built this because we've needed it ourselves; for pricing conversations with clients, buyer-seller benchmarking, and shaping market narratives in our daily M&A work.

If it's valuable to us, we think it will be to you.

RockWater runs sell-side M&A processes across the creator economy every week. We live these deals. This report is our attempt to bring more rigor and transparency to an industry that needs both — and it's a natural extension of what we already publish through our weekly newsletter, LinkedIn deal breakdowns, and video commentary.

A quick note on what's inside:

"Creator Economy" has become an increasingly amorphous term. As creators diversify their businesses and blur the lines between content, commerce, and culture, they're less a niche vertical and more simply the economy.

To make sense of it, we built a framework of seven subcategories — designed to be mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive. It's imperfect and will evolve with the industry, but it's a useful lens on an otherwise unwieldy space:

1. Talent Management — Managing creator careers, sourcing revenue, and building long-term brand equity.

2. Advertising Agencies — Deploying advertiser media spend into creator-driven content.

3. Media Publishers — Producing and distributing creator content at scale.

4. Audio — The ecosystem built around podcasting as a distinct, fast-growing subset of the creator economy.

5. Commerce — Enabling the development and distribution of physical and digital creator products.

6. Ad Tech + SaaS — The infrastructure powering content creation, distribution, and turnkey advertising solutions.

7. Content Platforms — The digital destinations where consumers go for creator content.

If you find this useful, the best thing you can do is share it and subscribe. We publish free weekly analysis in our newsletter, cover live deals on LinkedIn, and keep our full body of work — event recaps, deal videos, thought leadership on our website.

Spot a deal we missed? Disagree with a category? Have a dataset you'd be open to sharing or partnering on? Tell us: [email protected].

— Chris Erwin

Founder, RockWater

-- Mike Booth

Partner, RockWater

Also below: 9 active buy/sell mandates. Signups for our London and VidCon exec events. Deep dive analysis on the Creator Economy Q1 2026 Transactions. And how to join RockWater — the front door to the creator economy.

Thinking about a sale or acquisition? Reply to this email.

—> Read the full Q1 2026 Transaction Report 

New here? Subscribe to the RockWater newsletter for weekly creator economy M&A analysis.

UPCOMING EVENTS

• May 18 — London: Creator x Podcast Mixer in Shoreditch — RSVP here, use code 35Rock for 35% off

• Jun 23 — LA: The Official Night Before VidCon Party is back, now as the official partner with Vidcon— RSVP here, use code RW10 for $10 tix

Sponsor slots still open — email [email protected]

HIRING

The front door to the creator economy.

We're building out the RockWater team. Open roles:

• Full-time Business Analyst / Chief of Staff (NYC, in-office a few days/week)

• Part-time MBA Intern (East Coast)

• Exceptional mid-level deal runners (open application)

Looking for people obsessed with creators and media. Smart, ambitious, no ego. Builders, not spreadsheet jockeys. Small team, big deals, real exposure.

—> Apply here

LIVE DEAL FLOW

If you're a qualified buyer, email [email protected] for details:

Agencies

• Global Creator e-Learning & Monetization Agency | $24M Revenue

• Influencer Talent Mgmt (Beauty, Comedy, Sports) | >$1M EBITDA

• Influencer Marketing / Talent Mgmt (Faith Focus) | >$1M EBITDA

• Content Production / Influencer Mgmt (APAC / Culinary) | <$1M EBITDA

Technology

• Influencer Mktg Platform (Shoppable Video) | $7M Revenue

• Influencer Mktg Platform (IRL Activation) | $926K ARR

• Digital Learning Business (Entrepreneurship) | <$1M Revenue

Media

• YouTube Channel (Shopping / Deals) | $1.8M EBITDA

• Social Publisher (70+ O&O Accounts) | $1.5M+ EBITDA