Hi, I’m Jim Louderback and this is my weekly newsletter focused on the business, technology and buzz in the creator economy. If you like this – then subscribe to get it weekly for free!
MR BEAST IN THE CROSSHAIRS
When you’re the biggest YouTuber in the world, you’ve got a big fat target on your back. And many daggers have been tossed over the past few weeks. Most recently the initial vetting for Beast’s Amazon reality show got dissected by The Grey Lady for poor treatment of contestants and general lack of empathy and organization. That follows on the heels of inappropriate remarks that surfaced from Jimmy Donaldson’s early creator days, a sudden forced separation with a long-time collaborator (a story still developing with new Discord server logs posted and then taken down), and a worrying AMA on Reddit featuring an ex-employee. And now lawsuits alleging NDA violations, private investigations and intimidations have reportedly begun as well.
Much of the above is he-said she-said – layered on top of the risks of having your life documented online as a teen creator who rose to stardom. Initially I brushed these off as a result of being #1 – but the steady drumbeats give me pause. My internal sources say it’s a collection of minor things blown out of proportion, aka nothing to see here, move along. But fans are getting restless – as Beast’s latest video garnered a million dislikes after just four hours, and some claim their comments have been censored. I will be keeping an eye on this, and you should too.
LOOKS LIKE I WON’T HAVE BRU TO KICK AROUND ANYMORE
Meta just mercifully pulled the plug on avatars based on Mr Beast, Tom Brady, Paris Hilton, Charli D’Amelio and 24 others (aka Zach, Bru, Coco Amber, etc.). I’ve been critical about these fake celebrity chatbots since they were announced last fall. At launch I wrote that “I was shocked about how clueless this was – but then remembered Meta laid off much of its senior creator team earlier this year.” No one wants to chat with a made-up character voiced by a top athlete, actor or creator. They want the real thing. And that’s what Meta just announced – sort of, with an update to AI Studio. Meta also thinks AI versions of celebrity voices could be a better experience, as they prep for a September product announcement.
- Related: Not that I can do that much better. I created “It’s ICE” – my very own “Inside the Creator Economy” mascot chatbot, your friend answering any questions about the creator economy. Have at it!
- Related: New “Friend” gadget is a Tamagotchi paired with AI. Imagine private labelled versions featuring your favorite creators as your “Friend”. Or maybe even Bru and Zach. Or maybe not. (by the way, their brand imagery totally rips off Apple and their original five-color iMac launch). And the developer paid 1.8M for the URL. Sign of the impending AI apocalypse (see below)?
PERFORMANCE MARKETING TANKS NIKE – USE CREATORS INSTEAD!
Fascinating post from a CMO about how Nike destroyed significant brand and shareholder value by moving to a DTC model fueled by programmatic marketing to existing customers and eschewing brand storytelling and inspiration. Particularly timely with Publics’ acquisition of Influential, and the rise of performance-based creator marketing at scale. Focusing on search, performance and attribution seems to be waning according to marketing experts, while storytelling and creators seem likely to get an even bigger piece of the pie.
SENATE PASSES KIDS’ SAFETY BILL – BIG CHANGES COMING IF IT BECOMES LAW
The US Senate passed KOSPA (formerly KOSA and COPPA 2.0) with overwhelming support. The Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act – which still needs to be passed by the House and signed by the President – will seriously curtail how social platforms collect data from, and market to kids. Both are long overdue and significantly positive developments. @Phil Ranta thinks that if it becomes law it’ll signal the end of short-form content, as one of the provisions would ban auto-play. The big platforms are fighting back, and the knives are out. Other organizations are critical too, including the EFF and The Center for Democracy and Technology (although much of the latter’s funding comes from Meta, TikTok, Microsoft and Apple). I have little sympathy for the platforms, as they could have forestalled this by doing the right thing over the past 15 years. Hopefully election year politics won’t get in the way, as the House returns in early September and could vote on it before the new year.
- Related: The feds aren’t waiting, as the US DOJ and FTC sued TikTok, claiming “TikTok knowingly and repeatedly violated kids’ privacy, threatening the safety of millions of children across the country”.
- Related: Adam Clark Estes from Vox argues that KOSPA’s mandated changes could help all of us – not just kids – escape the unhealthy and addictive features of today’s social platforms.
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
- YouTube ratchets up the war on ad-blockers, delivering a “Black Screen of Death” for the length of skipped ad-units.
- You’ll now get a week to spam all your friends to see if they know anyone at YouTube! New updates to the partner program suspension policy lets creators appeal a week before a ban takes effect. I hope they hire more staff at Big Red, my inbox is groaning.
- Case study from YouTube on 3 channels that used multi-language audio to go global.
META
- Zuckerberg sees a world where advertisers can “tell us a business objective and a budget, and we’re going to go do the rest for them”, including creative, targeting and more.
- Meta releases a new GenAI “Segment Anything Model 2” that can identify key pixels for an object and move it consistently across a video in real time, potentially improving video editing, self-driving cars and much more.
TIKTOK
- TikTok spending $20m a month to access OpenAI – via Microsoft. Their goal? Develop their own internal models at Bytedance in China.
- Sad to see Kudzi Chikumbu leave TikTok. The 8-year vet ran global creator marketing and was always a steady hand on the tiller and a great partner to VidCon. Can’t wait to see what he does next.
OTHER CREATOR ECONOMY
- Twitch at risk of becoming a “zombie brand” inside Amazon, according to a WSJ story ($).
- Ludwig launches “Streamer Games”, a live intersection of creators and sport happening August 17-18 in LA.
- Highflying Cameo seems to be running out of cash.
- Ridge (the MK3HD tech company) goes to war against Amazon’s cavalier attitude towards knock-offs.
- The TikTok to <elsewhere> transition continues for top creators. Nice piece on Alyssa McKay’s transition to Snap – although her follower count there is still just 20% of TikTok. Her manager and business partner Brian Mandler explained that it’s apples to oranges. TikTok is great for laughs, but on Snap “they connect with her on a deep personal level… in real-time.”
- The US copyright office finally released guidelines on digital replicas, expanding it to private citizens. They are asking Congress to act, and I hope it happens.
- Rhett and Link release the first trailer for their new “TV Show” that debuts August 23rd on YouTube for free. But is Wonderhole a TV Show – even if much of the viewing will be on YouTube TV?
- A look at how creators are taking over the Olympics.
- Related: PGA will launch a “Creator Classic” 9-hole competition the day before its championship match in late August. The “Classic” features 16 YouTubers including creators from Good Good Golf and Dude Perfect. Another sign of creators shaking up sports.
- How creators are disrupting the world of travel and hospitality marketing.
- Snap’s subscription service Snapchat+ passes the 11 million subscriber mark.
- LinkedIn announces “record engagement” for the 25th quarter in a row (give or take one or two), along with a big increase in video views and more.
CREATOR TECH – AI, WEB3, VR, MORE
- Many signs that the GenAI bubble is bursting – which will lead to lots of “AI is Dead” noise. Regular readers will recognize the pattern. A year ago, Gartner’s hype cycle pegged AI at the top of the “peak of inflated expectations, so our slide into the trough of disillusionment is right on time. It’s going to be bad. But we WILL head towards a plateau of enlightenment later this decade.
- Suno goes on offense, claiming its AI music generator does not violate copyrights – and that its model learns just like human musicians. Some eerie similarities to last week’s creator vs. creator suit alleging a vibe rip-off.
- More on how AI will disrupt search amidst Google showing signs of being a hide-bound late-stage empire.
RESEARCH
- The New Consumer anoints YouTube the winner in the TV game, based on personal experience and recent research results.
- CreatorIQ evaluated TikTok advertisers based on Earned Market Value to come up with a top 100 report. You can see it online – but despite what they claim, you can’t download it.
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.
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Let me know what you think – email me at jim@louderback.com. Thanks for reading and see you around the internet.