Hi, I’m Jim Louderback and this is my weekly creator economy newsletter. If you’re reading this then you are either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you (or you are reading it on the website).
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How The New Paramount Can Become More Creator Friendly: New Paramount owner David Ellison (of Skydance) claims he wants to make Paramount a “creator friendly” environment. It’s going to be a tough slog for a company that has flip-flopped many times. From 2007 to 2014 Viacom (now Paramount) sued YouTube for copyright infringement, thus losing a whole generation of teens. They flirted with Musical.ly before Bytedance snapped it up – and then purchased VidCon, Awesomeness and Whosay in 2017 and 2018, along with hiring visionary exec Kelly Day to build Viacom Digital Studios. But they abandoned that strategy in early 2020, increasingly neglecting those acquisitions in the Pluto/Paramount+ era. And according to Passionfruit, VidCon is now being actively shopped by an investment banker.
There are still some talented creator executives at Viacom, either tucked away inside Nickelodeon (looking at you, RJ, Alex and Ashley) or in the LatAm and VidCon teams (but for how long). Most have jumped ship for friendlier pastures (myself included).
Step one? Realizing that the creator-friendly playbook has inverted over the last five years. Creators today don’t need Paramount. But Paramount really needs creators. It’s not about lavishing big contracts and red-carpet access on influencers repped by CAA, UTA and WME. It’s about truly embracing creators as savvy DTC businesses and creative savants – and partnering as equals. I
t’s also about a global vision, not one rooted just in LA and NY. You can still buy your way in, but that window is closing. Only by establishing an autonomous and truly creator-first division – with a mandate to infect the rest of the old-school org – will Paramount have a chance of success.
And then move beyond the mountain to integrate with Redbird’s other creator-first companies, including All3’s Little Dot Studios and Hidden Pigeon. Build on Paramount’s internal Roblox expertise with Build a Rocket Boy and Skydance Games to create experiences in virtual environments that creators want to embrace. And integrate with the Fenway Sports Group and the UFL as sport transitions from league and team to the player-creator. Maybe you could even entice Kelly Day to come back as Chief Creator Officer.
RELATED – New Research Proves Why TV isn’t the Answer: Kaya Yurieff, writing about the dearth of creators successfully moving to TV ($) ended on a hopeful note (for Hollywood), “Too many viewers are glued to YouTube and TikTok to drop the idea of featuring creators (on streaming services) altogether.” But new research from Variety VIP ($) seems to prove the opposite. Hollywood hoped that as the YouTube generation aged, it would eventually abandon social video and develop a TV habit. That’s not happening – with two thirds still using social video daily (compared to 4 out of 5 GenZ), but only 44% leaning into TV. Also Millennials cancel paid SVOD more than any other demographic, while nearly half prefer the algorithmic videos served by social platforms over streamers and broadcast channels. It’s hard to break media habits formed in your childhood.
Creator Economy Investing Turns Up – Exits Still Flat: Funding for creator economy startups is turning up, according to The Information’s Creator Economy Database – over $600M in Q2, which doubles Q1s amount. But according to Luma Partners quarterly digital media and ad tech report, exits remain flat for digital media (notably led by BeReal, Refinery29 and the Onion). Luma also sees a 25% QoQ increase in venture funding but cautions that it’s still down from 2022’s average. That could be a problem in a few years if exits don’t budge and startup funding continues to grow. Also worrying – they see AI driving the VC increase, rather than digital media.
No More Anonymous Messaging for Kids: The US FTC agency just permanently banned companies from marketing anonymous messaging apps to kids and teens. The broad ban was an outgrowth of a $5M fine leveled against NGL Labs for targeting kids with a supposedly safe messaging app that was anything but. NGL violated a variety of laws protecting kids, including COPPA. Even though COPPA focuses on kids under 13, the FTC clearly is now focusing on protecting teens too. In addition, this case signals that the FTC is serious about prosecuting companies making false claims about AI in their products too (see Humane, Rabbit and scores of other products). My analysis and comments here.
- Related: 36% of 2-5 year olds watched TikTok “recently” based on a deeper look at the PreciseTV / PARK research we explored last week. And it’s even higher for older kids – 37% for 6-9, and 49% for 10-12 year olds. A quarter of even those youngest kids watched Instagram – and around 80% across the board watched YouTube recently. I get YouTube, but in no way should kids under 13 be poking around TikTok or Instagram.
- Related: TikTok reduces ad targeting to teens – why didn’t this happen sooner, and why not just go all the way.
TikTok’s Sales Event Falls Flat: It looks like TikTok’s four-day Deals for You stunt was a non-starter. Extended to the 17th (so it now overlaps Amazon’s July 16-17 prime Day), there’s very little discussion on TikTok, Google News or Reddit. A random walk through the Deals For You store shows the usual mix of low-cost crap, brand rip offs and stuff designed to lure the unwary ($7,600 for an AI generated monkey, but with $40 off – or perhaps $7,500 for cow slippers, but with free shipping). Let me know if you discovered any bargains, but from what I can see this wasn’t a success. But because everyone gets their own TikTok, YMMV. Let me know if you bought anything and why, and I’ll be back next week with an update.
SPONSOR – Creators Do Punch Well Above Their Weight!
Nielsen reported that Whalar campaigns had an ROI of $2.41, surpassing all other media channels. More importantly, creators are efficient – while making up less than 1% of total media, they contribute 3x the impact. Check out the full Media Mix Model (MMM) study here to learn more about how creators are media investments.
QUIBIS:
YOUTUBE
- Check out all the new stuff coming to Shorts from Creator Liaison Rene Ritchie, and then watch a video about it with Rene and YouTube CPO Johanna Voolich. Shorts continues to copy TikTok – and vice versa, as the carcinization of social video platforms continues apace.
- YouTube is now the most popular podcast platform in the US, according to new research (there’s more podcast insights in their freely downloadable research).
- Don’t freak out if your revenue numbers are wrong or missing in YouTube analytics. It’s a bug and they’re fixing it.
META
- DECISION 2036: Jimmy Donaldson and Mark Zuckerberg run for president.
- Matthew Ball interviews Meta VR head Andrew Bosworth talking about the future of the Quest and VR – and how we get there from here.
TIKTOK
- Interesting new weekly newsletter tracks data from “The TikTok Election”.
- TikTok’s web / desktop app now lets you sort a creator’s videos by “latest” and “popular (which you could do on the mobile app a year ago). I still can’t see an “Oldest” option, although @matt Navarra does – perhaps it’s on the Mac only.
OTHER CREATOR ECONOMY
- Guess “fast fashion” should really mean “rapid rip-offs”. Cassey Ho calls out Shein with A/B comparison videos proving their despicable business model.
- Theorist media launches new animated narrative channel merging Lore and LoFi music together.
- Creator Hooks launches a chrome extension to help you make better YouTube titles. I love their newsletter, and am going to try it out here too.
- Interesting database of tools for creators, organized into 40 categories – from Audiograms to YouTube Tools.
- Why we’ll never have another Instagram egg – according to Wired.
- Looks like Spotify wants to be a social network too as they add comments to podcasts. They also released an app to help podcasters manage it all – because they must approve each comment before it goes live.
- If you create on LinkedIn, you should subscribe to the “Create Possibilities” newsletter from LinkedIn. This month’s issue has a rudimentary list of tips, but also highlights a monthly challenge (if that’s your thing).
- The next generation of media companies (and creators, I would add) will look different.
- LinkedIn’s newsletter strategy baffles me. On one hand they seem to be taking the “email” out of their newsletter product, but on the other hand they will soon allow brands to promote their newsletters through LinkedIn ads.
- Could the future of B2B marketing be found in humorous videos from Chinese factory execs?
CREATOR TECH – AI, WEB3, VR, MORE
- Net neutrality laws in the US on hold as the courts give broadband providers more time to respond (like giving the fox more time to break into the henhouse).
- Interesting profile of a Chilean creator building AI music with voices from popular stars – including a viral duet between “Bad Bunny” and Justin Bieber”. This is the future, like it or not.
- LinkedIn rolling out its own AI advertising optimization solution.
RESEARCH
- Here’s why I’m very suspicious of most “opt-in” polls – and you should be too. Read the methodology before trusting the results.
- Nothing earth-shattering in YouGov’s latest analysis of US social use patterns – but worth a look.
- 100% written by me – no human or AI ghostwriters were involved in the production (except for the cover art!).
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I’ve built and sold multiple creator economy startups to top media companies – including Discovery and Paramount. Subscribe here on LinkedIn to get this newsletter every Monday.
Let me know what you think – email me at jim@louderback.com. Thanks for reading and see you around the internet.