In case you missed it, here are the 10 most important news items you missed from the Creator Economy in January 2022:
#1 TikTok underpaying creators from it’s Creator Fund
- In a nutshell: Unlike YouTube, Tiktok runs ads in between creator videos, not on top of them. This means creators don’t earn revenue from ad views.
- Instead TikTok has a Creator Fund of $200 million a year. Hank Green in his video, “So… TikTok Sucks” believes they allocate funds according to watch time.
- The fund remains static at 200 million. The more creators join TikTok, the less each creator gets.
TikTok has two options:
1. Increase the Creator Fund proportionally to the amount of creators who have joined the platform.
2. Paying creators like YouTube does. This is unlikely because an ad on TikTok could be as long as the video you’re trying to watch. If so, digital advertising will have to adapt to convey enough information in a fraction of the time.
#2 Instagram is testing a Subscriptions feature, TikTok is catching up
- Creators can choose their own price point for access to their exclusive content, indicated by a purple ring.
- Subscriber badges, also purple, will help fans stand out in the comments of public content, and will help them to be identified in creators’ message requests.
- A TikTok spokesperson said they were testing out a subscriptions feature but declined to give a timeline.
The kind of content that audiences expect on Insta is more casual – a simple story, a live. But the sheer content density of videos on TikTok – full-on edited skits with storylines – would mean that creators need to double down on output or resort to an Instagram-like casual form of content for subscribers.
#3 KSI and Logan Paul launch Prime Hydration, a Gatorade competitor?
A new trend has been cooking in the Creator Economy. Mr Beast with Feastables and Mr Beast Burger, Nelk with Happy Dad hard seltzer and Mythical with their MSCHF collaboration on illegal chips.
More creators are diving into the food and beverage industry.
Gatorade has seen great success in the US, but less so across the pond with Lucozade already targeting the same market in the UK. With KSI and Logan Pauls combined following, Prime Hydration is primed (ba dum ts) for acquisition. Whether the duelling duo have built the new drinks brand to sell or built to sustain as yet another revenue stream remains to be seen.
More top headlines from January:
- ▶️YouTube shuts down original content
- 🍫 More on Mr. Beast’s Feastables
- 🎙 Rhett and Link launch new podcast: Trevor Talks Too Much
- 🩳 YouTube Hits 5 Trillion Views on Shorts
- 🐥 Twitter Teases a Close Friends Feature
- 🏠 Hype House, the reality show about TikTokers living together, is out on Netflix.
- 🦈 Baby Shark is most viewed video, hits 10 billion views
For more quick updates on the Creator Economy, go to buzz.creatorstack.com
