AIVANTA Bets a Scored-Introduction Summit on Brands Working With Hundreds of Creators

AIVANTA will put 150 brand and creator leaders through a single-track summit in New York on November 18, backed by software that logs and scores every introduction the company makes between a brand and a creator. Founder and CEO Donnovan Andrews is counting on that system to turn Authentic, the company's brand-creator summit, into the start of relationships he expects brands to need by the hundreds.

AIVANTA, a New York media holding company founded in January 2026, built the tool in-house. It records each introduction, collects the grades those introductions receive, and rolls them into a composite score. A second phase, Andrews says, will let the company proactively generate introductions over time rather than only record them.

What problem does the summit address?

Andrews' argument starts with search. He points to Google's most recent earnings as showing "cracks" in its search business, and to publisher discussion of "Google Zero" — a future of no search traffic that he notes has not arrived.

"What that means from my perspective is that the relationship that creators have with their audiences will become that much more valuable," Andrews said.

Authentic is AIVANTA's first event since acquiring FPT Media, organizer of the Brand Storytelling and Elevate conferences. The one-day summit at the People Inc. Auditorium brings brand CMOs, creators, talent agencies, platforms, publishers and investors into one room. In Andrews' view, that format gives attendees "a connected view of the entire industry" in place of separate conversations.

Andrews arrived from the agency side. He started as a media planner at Omnicom's OMD and later founded Performance Bridge Advertising, whose clients included four American Express divisions and Coca-Cola. He most recently served as a Global Consulting Principal for AI at Ogilvy Consulting and holds 18 AI certifications.

How does the introduction system work?

Most attendees assume an event ends when they go home. "Most people think that coming to these events is you show up, you try to meet people, and you're either successful in that or not. And then you go home," Andrews said.

AIVANTA plans connections year-round instead, starting with sponsors. "For us, it's about understanding what our brand partners want, especially our sponsors, who they need to be talking to, what's going to make their business successful," Andrews explained. The company does the same work with creators.

The scoring system measures the introduction itself — the step before any signed deal. For a first edition, introductions are the earliest point at which AIVANTA can test its claim that the summit is where brand-creator partnerships are made.

The tracker is one of several systems AIVANTA built itself. The others include a CRM running on its own AI technology in place of Salesforce or monday.com, plus the registration system Authentic attendees use. The tools cut costs and add features without adding headcount. "People always think that we are much larger as an organization than we actually are," Andrews said. He rejects the practice at some organizations of barring staff from using AI, and the same logic drove the FPT Media deal, which he describes as bringing AI into a company with little technology to deliver more yield, scale and margin.

Why does Andrews expect hundreds of creators per brand?

"Quite often the perception with some brands is that if they're not spending hundreds of millions of dollars, they won't have the ability to scale a campaign," Andrews said. The answer, in his view: "You just have to use the right partners to get you the right creators."

Some brands already work with 25,000 to 30,000 creators, according to Andrews. "It is inevitable that you're going to be working with hundreds of creators," he said. That means deciding now who the partners will be, which technology partners will handle deployment, and how the program will scale.

He frames delay as a competitive risk. "If you kick this down the road as a strategy, eventually someone is going to come in with that knowledge and probably displace you," Andrews said. And he warns budget defenders: "If you don't agree with that, you are absolutely whistling past the graveyard."

How should campaigns be judged?

"We're so early in all of this that we still need to put a lot of dollars to play for experimentation," Andrews said. He supports standardized measurement but wants brands to work with creators without demanding conversion on every page view. "This is not a 25-year-old medium that has been perfected and measured to the tenth of a penny," he noted.

U.S. creator advertising spend is projected to reach $44 billion in 2026, a figure Andrews reads as "no longer experimental." For creators, his advice centers on pitching within brand parameters — learning to budget, propose and present — while protecting audience trust. "You're giving them content, but they're giving you their time and their trust," he said of audiences. "So you have to remain authentic."

The agenda mixes brand executives from Mastercard, Oatly and eos Products with creators and artist Shantell Martin, whose collaborators include Tiffany & Co., Puma, Kendrick Lamar and the New York City Ballet. Mastercard's Jay Altschuler sits on the panel about building creator programs that scale.

Authentic has a multiyear plan. Andrews expects next year's edition to run multiple days, probably with another Authentic before the one-year mark, and AIVANTA plans more events in New York and elsewhere. The single room may not last: if attendees and topics grow varied enough, a two- or three-track program would make sense. Whether the scored-introduction model proves that partnerships form at the summit will be testable from the first event onward.