Hi, I’m Jim Louderback and this is my weekly creator economy newsletter. If you’ve received it, then you are either subscribed, or someone forwarded it to you. If the latter – and you want to subscribe, get it here!
This Week: The IAB releases a study – and details on a new effort – to fix the glaring problems holding creator marketing back. New research shows TikTok continues to grow, and let’s welcome Slow Creation and Slow Social to the Slow Media Trend we explored two weeks ago.
TOP STORIES
CREATOR MARKETING IS MESSED UP
When it comes to brand deals, the system is fundamentally broken. Too many middlemen wedge themselves between the brand and the creator, each taking a cut and adding friction. The result is bad for everyone. Creators don’t get paid what they’re worth, and brands miss the chance to actually collaborate, build community and create culture.
Much of the industry still treats creators like a line item on a media buy, not a creative partner. It’s the same transactional thinking that hollowed out programmatic ads. The IAB is trying to fix this by pushing for real transparency around fees and helping rebalance the creator–brand relationship. The risk? With fewer intermediaries, some brands might squeeze creators even harder instead of treating them as co-builders. Full disclosure, I’m helping the IAB with this work. (Digiday)
AND IT’S HELD TOGETHER WITH DUCT TAPE
The IAB’s new Creator Ad Spend & Strategy report makes one thing painfully clear: the money is real, and the system is a mess. Brands in the US will pour $37B into creator marketing next year, growing four times faster than the rest of media, yet the system still runs on duct tape: fragmented tools, inconsistent reporting, and endless friction between brands, agencies, and creators. That mess creates a huge advantage for creators who look “easy to work with” and can prove performance without the platform doing all the heavy lifting.
The report is also painfully honest about the pain. Brands can’t find the right creators, measurement is a disaster, and most campaigns get stuck at the top of the funnel even though ROI is the #1 KPI. And with 75% of deals still flat-fee – mostly because no one can agree on how to track conversions – creators who offer even basic measurement clarity across tracking, attribution, dashboards, and post-campaign reporting move from “supplier” to “strategic partner” fast.
The upside is enormous. The money is flowing to mid-tier and micro creators. AI is simultaneously accelerating production and elevating the value of authentic creative voice. And influencer marketing has officially graduated from “experimental” to “core media line item.” Treat your business like a business and the next phase of growth is yours to own. (Full IAB Study Download)
MORE ON THE CREATOR MBA
Speaking of business, last week we talked about why a creator MBA can’t be crammed into a few hours of instruction. It takes years of reps to build a business leader. On balance, though, many of these creator bootcamps deliver real value. They give creators a framework for thinking about how to build a company, not just a channel. And yes, some creators are natural operators too.
So let’s keep teaching business skills to creative minds, but stay honest about the gap between running a sub-$1M ARR operation and building a billion-dollar dream. For most rising DTC creators, the smartest move is finding a great operating partner early.
SLOW CREATION
It’s usually lazy, and often wrong, to split the world into two neat buckets. @Scott Belsky does it anyway, arguing that creators will satisfice while artists won’t. The distinction is simplistic, but the implications are worth exploring. TLDR: in the age of AI, we’ll crave more craftsmanship and intentionality. Or put another way, Slow Creation will rise alongside Slow Media, a trend we dug into here two weeks ago. (Implications, Slow Media)
Related: @Lia Haberman leans into slow with her exploration of Slow Social (thanks for the callout!) (ICYMI)
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PLATFORMS
YOUTUBE
Mo Money: Creator Liaison @Rene Ritchie explores Big Red’s new dynamically inserted brand segments, creator recommendations and Shorts brand links (Creator Insider)
Kiss and Make Up: Disney and YouTube stop bickering over TV carriage. No winners, but lots of losers here. (CNBC)
Come Back! YouTube offers some ex TV subs $60 to come back to Big Red (9to5 Google)
Surprise! @Josh Kaplan helps Ad Week discover YouTube. (On Background)
META
Track Anything: Meta debuts new AI model that lets you ISO characters, objects and more. It’ll be coming to Instagram and elsewhere soon. (Meta)
No Problem: Meta is NOT a monopoly, rules a US Federal judge. That means an increase in startup M&A activity. (CNBC, NYT $)
Why Can’t I Quit You? Instagram tops the list of platforms most users want to delete. (GetResponse)
TIKTOK
AI Filters: TikTok is testing a new feature that lets you limit AI-generated content in your FYP, along with adding invisible watermarks to AI video. I doubt most people will bother turning off AI, because one person’s slop is another person’s rabbit hole. It feels a lot like early YouTube, when creator videos were dismissed as “UGC” and written off as amateur. AI content occupies that same time-out jail right now. (TikTok)
QUIBIS
OTHER CREATOR ECONOMY
Recursive Me: More on 67, clip-farming, and how we’re all just preening for the algorithm – from @Adam Aleksic. (The Etymology Nerd)
Stop the Rot: In a New York Times “Opinion Video”, Jack Conte wants the internet to stop rotting our brains and instead deliver great creativity while compensating the best creators for their work. Love the message, but the video feels overlong and overproduced. Interestingly he calls out Meta and TikTok but not YouTube. (NYT, Simon Owens)
Social Media Ban: Australia’s social media ban for kids under 16 becomes law in a week. Denmark will do the same soon. I expect more countries to follow, although the law is imperfect at best. (Scalable)
Eliminate Friction: Programmatic ad-insertion for creators takes a step forward as Agentio raises $40M. Hear from Agentio CEO @Arthur Leopold at 1 Billion Followers Summit in January. (TC, 1BFS)
Bias? LinkedIn under fire for favoring posts from men over women. LinkedIn engineer says it’s not true. (Incomes & Outcomes, LinkedIn Engineering Blog)
What about Business? Radisson launched a creator program for anyone with 1k–30k followers on IG or TikTok, offering free nights and other perks. The odd part? LinkedIn creators are nowhere to be found, even though nearly 60% of Radisson’s stays are business-related. (Radisson)
From USA Today to YouTube: Nice piece on my friend @Jefferson Graham’s move from big media to travel vlogger (Simon Owens)
Great Run: @Lucas Kollman steps back from CEO at Lunar-X, taking on non-exec chairman. Can’t wait to see what he does next. He’ll be speaking at 1 Billion Followers Summit too, hope to see you there! (LinkedIn, 1BFS)
CREATOR TECH – AI, AR, VR, MORE
Uh-Oh: AI is becoming a commodity product, says @Dan Ackerman, as Gemini “beats” ChatGPT and others (Tech Support)
Tables Rule: Optimizing for AI Search? Use a table of structured data. (Nectiv)
90 Pages of Insight: @Benedict Evans rolled out his bi-annual tech trends deck last week. This is the third one with the title “AI eats the world”. It’s worth a looksee. TLDR: it’s big, going to get bigger, and we don’t know what’s next. (Benedict Evans)
Fidji Speaks: Good interview with ex Facebook product czar Fidji Simo, now doing same for OpenAI. (Wired)
RESEARCH
US Social Media Usage Mostly Unchanged
New Pew study shows that US social media usage has remained relatively flat by platform (given the 2% margin of error), except for TikTok, Reddit and Whatsapp. But still, only a quarter of US adults visit TikTok daily. Oh, and Snap’s down. (Pew)
Streaming Is Morphing into the Creator Economy
Cable keeps dropping and streaming has flatlined, according to a new Parks Associates report. Why does this matter for creators? Because streaming is drifting toward the formats creators already own: ad-heavy, interactive, mobile-first, sports-adjacent, and bundled into everything. That opens the door for multi-format creators to build FAST-native shows, shoppable CTV experiences, bundled distribution for existing content, sports companion series, and whatever else fits on the world’s biggest screen. (Parks Associates – download link at the bottom of the screen)
Where’s Jim? It’s Thanksgiving week here in the US. Back home and wrapping up 1 Billion Follower Summit planning – and then off to Dubai in late December!
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100% written by me. AI used very sparingly for edits.
I’ve built and sold multiple creator economy startups to top media companies – including an MCN to Discovery and VidCon to 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.
