This Week: Two new studies – one bullish, one bleak – clash over the power of engagement. But both agree on one thing: small, trusted creators are outperforming the big names as brands search for signal in the AI slop.
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.
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TOP STORIES
SOCIAL SHOPPING DISCOVERS TRUST
Two social commerce powerhouses announced new creator-first shopping features last week, and both focus on trust. First, ShopMy launched curated “circles” of creators to help buyers discover vetted products. The goal? Make trust a key new shopping filter. Then LTK rolled out new to bring creators and shoppers closer to each other, including public profiles to help users share their favorite creators, and two-way messaging features that let creators jump into threads. Both moves highlight how trust has quickly become the litmus tests for utility and factual creators. Feels a lot like the special interest magazines era, when trusted reviewers (myself included) built loyalty with a one-way megaphone instead of a message thread. (ShopMy, LTK)
Related: Hear all about the return of trust, along with how AI can accelerate social-commerce focused creators along with other strategies for success at the second annual SoCom social commerce event in LA in Feburary. (SoCom)
CREATORS RULE
Looking for more proof that creators have arrived, and brands know it? A new Dash Social study found that creator content outperforms brands and it’s not even close. Creators see 6x more engagement on Instagram and 3x more views on TikTok. The study also found that follower growth has stalled, making engagement metrics the new currency.
DM’s have also become super important, emerging as a new path to building and nurturing superfans and solidifying trust. One reason why creators win so hard? Entertainment beats polish all day long. And creators know how to entertain in ways brands can’t even touch. Dash analyzed 500k+ TikToks and Reels posted between June 2024 and June 2025 but that’s hardly a drop in the overall bucket. Treat the report as directional not predictive. (Dash Social)
Related: The PR Industry is slowly waking up to the power of creators. (PR Week)
ENGAGEMENT IS DOWN BUT NOT OUT
While Dash Social’s latest report celebrates engagement as the new social currency, Favikon’s 2025 benchmark report paints a more dismal picture. Why? Synthetic engagement and AI brand ambassadors have poisoned the well. Favikon isn’t anti-engagement, it’s just harder to tell what’s real. Their overall conclusion? Across YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn and Instagram the biggest creators are struggling to connect while smaller creators break through. Here’s the platform breakdown:
- TikTok: Ugh. As slop pervades the feed, the biggest creators are the biggest losers.
- Instagram: A middle ground, but nano-creators still deliver outsized results.
- For B2B creators LinkedIn was a surprising winner.
- YouTube’s watch time and retention focus penalizes the platform.
Overall they found that nano creators drive real value with up to 2.4% across all platforms. Bigger creators, alas, often fall below 1%. It’s part of a fundamental shift in audience behavior, where authentic, intimate and trusted connections between smaller creators and their fans offer outsized results. As expected, they position their tools as a way to separate the wheat from the slop. Still data is compelling. (Favikon)
TEAR DOWN THAT WALL MR GORBACHEV
The IAB’s Zoe Soon writes about how despite brand-direct deals still making up the biggest piece of creators’ income, the lack of universal industry standards adds unnecessary friction to the brand/creator relationship. Soon calls for a professionalization of creator media buying and collaboration between creators and brands, ideally with the IAB mediating. They’re working on a measurement framework for creator activations and transparency around the creator brief to media process. I’m a fan of what the IAB is trying to do, so much so that I’m part of their steering committee here. More as it develops. (The Drum)
Related: 18 Industry experts share how the industry can move beyond views and likes (Net Influencer)
SOUND AND FURY
TikTok added a slew of new features to help protect creators, teens, families and more. But honestly? It’s hard for me to get excited. In the US TikTok feels like a walking shadow, strutting, fretting and waiting for either a new owner or the final curtain. Until there’s clarity on its future, all this activity mostly signifies nothing. (TikTok)
Related: My TikTok countdown clock continues to countdown tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow – until TikTok’s last syllable. (TikTokCountdownClock)
SPONSOR
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PLATFORMS
YOUTUBE
- Collabs Coming? New Instagram-like feature being tested with “a small group of creators”. (Google)
- YouToo: YouTube gets added to Australia’s upcoming teen social media ban. (Tubefilter)
- Strange Bedfellows: TikTok adds YouTube Music to its “Add to Music” app. (TikTok)
- Act Your Age: Otherwise, YouTube’s new AI age verification tools will treat you like a kid. (YouTube)
META
- Whattah Quahtah: Meta continues to print money – and spend it on AI (Jasmine Enberg).
- Count to 1K: If you can’t do that, you can’t go live on Instagram anymore. Users aren’t happy. (TechCrunch)
- Independent Ad Study Results: New research finds that Meta’s Advantage+ delivers for some brands – but underdelivers for others. Also creative still matters, and multi-touch attribution is still broken, so stop chasing clicks. (Haus)
QUIBIS
OTHER CREATOR ECONOMY
- YouTube to Netflix: The Sidemen moved their reality show to Netflix. It appears to have paid off (Deadline)
- Podcast Hype Train Falters: Amazon breaks Wondery podcast studio, lays off over 100 employees. (THR)
- Epic Roadtrip: Ryan Trahan wraps up his 50 states in 50 days and creates the format for engaging, movement-style videos with smart brand integration and over $11M raised for charity. (Ryan Trahan)
- SoCom Returns: Looking forward to the second edition of this social-commerce based event, focused on how AI will help creators expand their shopping footprint and strategies for success. (SoCom)
- Putting the Trust Back into Shopping: ShopMy launches a curated group of creators to help buyers discover vetted products. (ShopMy)
- Divorce Finalized: UTA and Michael Kassan quietly settle their break-up litigation. I would say that this means Kassan is back, but as he said to me at VivaTech, “I never left”. (Variety)
- Clean Water: MrBeast and Mark Rober team up again to raise money for clean water projects. (Variety)
- Vines Return: Grok restores Vine archives that were previously thought lost. (Dexerto)
- Winner Take All? @Doug Shapiro revisits the power-law in the light of today’s media and tech world. (The Mediator)
- How High Is Up? LinkedIn looks to address bots and AI pods – and sees engagement rise again. (SocialMediaToday)
- From Emergence to Death: Fun chart helps you visualize the life-cycle of a trend. (Carmen Vicente)
- Big Screen Dudes: The Regal theater chain will release a new Dude Perfect doc on more than 800 screens globally in September (Lucas Shaw)
CREATOR TECH – AI, AR, VR, MORE
- Search Me: Reddit wants to be a search engine too – along with being an arms dealer to GenAI. Also, in a blow to creators, its subreddit paywall plan is now on hold. (Reddit)
- The Case for GEO: SEO Agency Single Grain lays out the case for focusing on Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and lays out some optimization techniques. Subscribe to the Beehiiv version of this newsletter and get my 40-page GEO for creators report for free! (Single Grain)
- The Future Internet: Private spaces, trusted humans and paygates for bots. (Pao Ramen)
RANDOM
I invented a new word in a conversation last week: Jellysmacked.
It’s what happens when you work at a company that’s raised too much money and can’t grow into its valuation, or gets overextended beyond what the market can support.
Used in a sentence: “Yeah, I used to work there but we got Jellysmacked.”
Too soon?
Where’s Jim? Home for two weeks, then off to Sweden for a super-cool event – my first time there! Send me Gothenburg recommendations! Then off to Dubai for One Billion Followers Summit planning. Summer – at least for me – is officially over!
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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.
