Creator economy: Fight or flight?
Posted on Apr 22, 2025 by FEED Staff
Digital content platforms have enabled a multi-billion-dollar creator economy, with the more traditional options left to compete with YouTube and TikTok megastars. But the world of social video can be hard labour
Words by Neal Romanek
We are in the age of the influencer, where an individual can command truly gigantic audiences. It’s an opportunity for unknown talent to achieve a reach their parents’ generation couldn’t have dreamed of – and for narcissists and con artists to do some real damage.
The creator economy, powered by social media platforms, has left traditional broadcast scratching its head trying to find ways of catching up. This head-scratching has been going on for a long time.
As early as 2010, the BBC was experimenting with what was called ‘second-screen’ content. With the iPhone only having been out for three years, broadcasters were already aware of mobile as a competing technology. Second-screen content – also dubbed ‘orchestrated content’ at the time – attempted to offer laptop- or phone-based content that would run in parallel with a live TV programme. Shows would regularly refer you to a URL, taking you to a page of related web-based content.
This is what a reasonable broadcaster would do if they assumed mobile and internet content were a neutral force – like a digital library or just another form of TV.
Online talent capable of reaching international audiences had been a thing for a few years already. Some bloggers from the early 2000s were already big stars. Ain’t It Cool News (AICN) started on early internet newsgroups in the mid-nineties and, within just a few years, became one of the most important movie fan sites in the world. It offered insider leaks, no-holds-barred reviews and piping-hot takes on the latest in geek culture, with a special focus on sci-fi, fantasy and action.
Studios, filmmakers and stars began courting AICN and its founder Harry Knowles, knowing that the site had the power to make or break a movie release. By 2012, when the BBC and other broadcasters were wrestling with how to deal with the second screen, AICN finally launched a YouTube channel. YouTube had been up and running for seven years by that time. Instead of moving on to greater success, the brand was already on the decline. Video didn’t add anything to the brand that it didn’t already have as a blog.
At that same time, YouTube started to become the content colossus we know today. Its revenue jumped from $1.7 billion in 2012 to $3.1 billion the following year. A company that created no content – and in fact got others to provide it with content for free – could make a fortune simply by providing the platform. It was becoming clear that the real money to be made wasn’t in selling content, but in selling the advertising that would sit alongside it. Thus the creator economy was born.
The rise of the algorithm
A recap of the history of internet video is helpful in framing where we have arrived at today. The advertising foundation of the creator economy – free content, paid for by advertising – completely revolutionised how we think about content. While it might seem at first glance that the internet is a way to serve more content to more people, the business model is actually the reverse.
The internet allows a content platform to get more ads in front of people for a longer period. This is done by extracting the maximum amount of data possible – or at least as much as is necessary – from the viewer and using this data to find out what will make them spend the longest amount of time in front of the ads you’ve sold.
Most creators understand the bargain they’ve made. Whether on YouTube, TikTok or Instagram, they will always be aware of the algorithms – invisible forces that are appealed to religiously.
While it appears that this is a battle between broadcasters and social creators, the only winner is the platform itself. Platforms don’t distinguish between content published by a well-funded broadcaster or a one-person influencer business. We must keep reminding ourselves that the platform’s primary purpose isn’t to show video, but to keep users engaged with their eyes open in order to display advertising – all while extracting information on behaviour to refine the process further. It doesn’t matter whether the content is video, still images, 280-character text messages or a bunch of AI-generated random patterns.
A content arms race
Broadcasters are trying to compete with this super-juiced content by increasing their output. Automation and AI are being added to workflows to publish clips and content to multiple social platforms faster and faster.
Scale is the name of the game when it comes to digital content platforms. This has taken its toll on social media creators who have to keep churning out a constant stream of content, lest they lose the favour of the algorithms. But broadcasters face a more challenging task. Still largely built around the model of distributing discrete, high-end programmes that demand tens of minutes of watching time, they are competing with a device available 24/7 that can offer virtually limitless alternatives across multiple outlets.
At this year’s IBC Accelerator Kickstart Day – where broadcast technology experiments pitch for support to be trialled in the following months – no fewer than three proposals explored how AI can be used to shorten turnaround times and make content publishing more efficient.
The big streamers have been able to finance and produce content at a much higher frequency than traditional broadcasters. But even the streamers are burning out in that race, with top performers like Netflix and Amazon having to up their subscription rates and introduce ads.
“Now they have to compete with the creator content market,” explains Benjamin Shirley, project manager for broadcast at Main Concept, a software company whose video codecs operate at every level of the media industry. “You’ve got huge volumes of people globally, each of whom might be supplying hours’ worth of content daily with free, easy access. And that’s a hard consumption platform to compete with when you’re behind a paywall or a broadcaster having to rely on advertising.”
If you can’t beat them, pay them
While publishing more content faster is one tactic broadcasters are using to compete, another has been to bring social influencers into the broadcast realm – sometimes paying through the nose for it.
Alex Cooper, whose podcast Call Her Daddy is one of the most successful in the world, was paid $125 million to end her deal with Spotify and move to radio network SiriusXM. YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson – aka Mr Beast – boasts the highest number of subscribers on YouTube (368 million at the time of writing) and is the third-most-followed creator on TikTok (115 million). In 2023, Time magazine listed him among the world’s 100 most influential people. Amazon’s Prime Video enlisted him to create Beast Games, a reality competition series based on his YouTube channel.
These creators have a reach beyond the dreams of even the biggest studios and broadcasters. But they can still be brought into partnership with known broadcast brands, often getting deals very much in their favour, with broadcasters hoping to catch just a bit of that reflected glory.
“The question is how to define these creators now,” describes Shirley. “Do we treat them like a broadcast brand – like Game of Thrones – or should we start thinking of them as more along the lines of Endemol, where they are production companies? The answer is a bit of both. They are going to have their own brand, but they can also be empowered to create new genres or content under that brand. However, I do think their longevity on a traditional broadcast platform – where it might be one series or a single show – is going to be shorter compared to social platforms, where they can fully exist as that brand.”
Netflix is now looking at bringing video podcasts onto its platform, aiming to compete with YouTube and Spotify for a slice of the podcast pie. The company’s goal is to offer better monetisation for creators, which is infamously stingy on the two incumbent platforms.
Alex Cooper’s hit content – along with most other podcasts – is really a talk show. Meanwhile, Mr Beast’s crazy contest for huge sums of money is really a game show. These are formats that have been perfected by broadcast TV. So, what is the difference between this influencer and broadcast versions of the same genre?
Shirley thinks the differentiator is the brand of the influencer and the multiplatform following they foster. While broadcast focuses on a format then brings in talent, the social video world relies on personality first, and the content that personality engages in comes second.
The types of content that work well on social platforms bear that out. Talk shows and game shows, for example, are clearly delineated forms, accompanied by the rituals inherent in social video – such as likes, comments and reposts. The creator economy needs to clear the space of complication so that the focus can remain on the creator, and that’s an aspect that broadcasters might find very hard to copy.
The best social platform is one you need
Social platforms have become an essential part of people’s livelihoods across the spectrum. Whether you’re a fashion influencer, a vet, running a gardening business or operating a speciality news outlet, businesses depend upon these platforms. Not for direct monetisation – very few can sustain themselves through social platform revenue sharing – but for marketing, brand-building and sharing information. Unfortunately, these platforms are not designed to be public services, and it’s naive to expect them to provide stability.
One of the basic rules of running an online business is that you should always own your own data and audience – which is why the good old-fashioned newsletter remains popular. However, this adds extra work that many small businesses might not have the time or resources to take on. Plus, like traditional broadcasters, you won’t experience the algorithmically driven spikes in engagement that social platforms promise.
Social platforms are well aware of how they make creators dependent. Meta has tried to fully dominate the conversation with its ecosystem of Facebook, Instagram and now Threads – plus, of course, WhatsApp. Its business tools allow easy integration across these different outlets, making it hard to disengage should you want to move to another platform.
A platform changing its algorithm can potentially have a big impact on a creator’s business. Usually, these changes happen without notification, and creators are left guessing how they displeased the algorithm or how they can regain its blessing.
But when a platform becomes fully upended, creators can really start to panic. With no way to shift content to another platform, they are forced to go down with the ship if it goes offline.
Last year, the US government passed legislation effectively banning TikTok in the US. The site shut down on 19 January to much dismay. Two days later, the new US president signed an executive order that, in essence, said the ban would not be enforced. Additionally, he suggested the US government might acquire a 50% stake in the platform – a shocking proposition from someone
who openly despises publicly owned media.
But social platforms – and the powerful algorithms that determine what content is seen – are the nuclear weapons of information warfare. They can put presidents in office, swing referendums and whitewash major international crimes. Again, creators are merely clinging to a
ship that will chart its own independent course.
Many TikTok creators threatened to leave the platform for the social media alternative RedNote (named in the original Mandarin after Mao’s Little Red Book of essential Communist quotations). Angry creators said in a BBC report they felt ‘left out and powerless’ over the changes. But in the world of the social creator, it’s always the platform that has the power. It’s easy to forget you’re just a tenant.
Social media impacts every aspect of life, even playing a part in today’s politics – for better or worse.
This feature was first published in the Spring 2025 issue of FEED.
