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Creator economy scoop: Pay transparency and brand trip controversy

Here's this week's roundup of industry news
Olivia Harris
&
March 4, 2024

The Creator Economy Scoop is a roundup of the weekly news, data and trends that are defining the industry. (graphic by Lindsay Hill)

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Digital TikTok communities are turning to offline events, creators are comparing their earnings and Tarte just dropped big bucks on another lavish influencer trip.  Here’s the rest of this week’s scoop:

Quick numbers 💯
  • $90,025 - the median AdSense income for creators with one million subscribers on YouTube is $90,025 per year [1]
  • $542,208 -  Twitch streamers with a million followers have a median income of $542,208 per year [2]
  • $473 - TikTokers with a million followers have median annual earnings of just $473 from TikTok’s Creator Fund [3]
  • $360 billion - Bloomberg cited data from Gen Z Planet estimating the cohort had $360 billion in buying/spending power [4]
  • 53% of US Gen Zers want brands they shop at to support mental health more than any other cause [5]
  • 1.3 seconds - The time it takes to lose active attention for Gen Z watching ads—less time than any other age group, according to OMD WorldWide [6]
What you should know  ☕

Karat’s new tool tells creators exactly how much their peers are earning

  • Its Insights tool is free, but creators who want to access it will have to connect their own financial information

Turning TikTok FYPs into IRL communities

  • TikToker Nikol Moses began an event series called Friends on Purpose and operates a variety of events including weekly trivia and walks free of charge
  • Isabel DiGiovanni, a 26-year-old video editor for HBO in New York City, started Slow Girl Run Club while training for the New York City Marathon

How creators are impacting shoppable TV

  • FAST channels, or free ad-supported TV channels, are appealing to younger consumers with creator-style content on streaming services like Roku and Amazon. As creators expand their reach to encompass connected TV, more opportunities for shoppable creator content will arise.

What matters to Gen Z

  • Bloomberg cited data from Gen Z Planet estimating the cohort had $360 billion in buying/spending power
  • 53% of US Gen Zers want brands they shop at to support mental health, more than any other cause
  • It takes just 1.3 seconds for Gen Z to lose active attention for ads—less time than any other age group, according to a global study by Yahoo and OMD Worldwide
Social platforms 📲

YouTube  📹

  • YouTube Create's beta rolled out to 13 additional countries
  • YouTube launched Collab on Android and iOS that allows users to record a Short in a side-by-side format

TikTok ⏰

Meta  📸

  • Instagram has officially announced Backdrop, an AI generative tool to change the background on images in Stories
  • Facebook announced creators can now earn unlimited monthly payouts from the Performance Bonus program

LinkedIn 🖇️

  • While the platform was once the antidote to creative social content, Linkedin is reinventing itself by embracing creators, welcoming short-form video content and facilitating brand deals.
Updates in tech 💻

Tumblr’s owner is striking deals with OpenAI and Midjourney for training data

  • Automattic, the owner of Tumblr and WordPress.com, is reportedly in talks with AI companies Midjourney and OpenAI to provide training data scraped from users’ posts, potentially leading to new revenue streams for the company
Notable partnerships 📓

TikTok comedian Sabrina Brier drove 20% of all influencer traffic to Nuuly’s website in 2023

  • “We like to give our creators a lot of freedom, especially people like Sabrina who have such a distinct point of view in their content,” said Morgan Rehbock, senior brand marketing manager at Nuuly

The Amazon influencer that made $14,000 filming 2,200 product review videos

  • “I took all lunch hours, all waking hours of my weekend, piling things up I had in the house, that was my life this last summer until there was nothing left,” said Heidi Leatherby

Tarte faces controversy for lavish Bora Bora trip

‍

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Home
Creator Marketing

Creator economy scoop: Pay transparency and brand trip controversy

Olivia Harris
March 2024

Digital TikTok communities are turning to offline events, creators are comparing their earnings and Tarte just dropped big bucks on another lavish influencer trip.  Here’s the rest of this week’s scoop:

Quick numbers 💯
  • $90,025 - the median AdSense income for creators with one million subscribers on YouTube is $90,025 per year [1]
  • $542,208 -  Twitch streamers with a million followers have a median income of $542,208 per year [2]
  • $473 - TikTokers with a million followers have median annual earnings of just $473 from TikTok’s Creator Fund [3]
  • $360 billion - Bloomberg cited data from Gen Z Planet estimating the cohort had $360 billion in buying/spending power [4]
  • 53% of US Gen Zers want brands they shop at to support mental health more than any other cause [5]
  • 1.3 seconds - The time it takes to lose active attention for Gen Z watching ads—less time than any other age group, according to OMD WorldWide [6]
What you should know  ☕

Karat’s new tool tells creators exactly how much their peers are earning

  • Its Insights tool is free, but creators who want to access it will have to connect their own financial information

Turning TikTok FYPs into IRL communities

  • TikToker Nikol Moses began an event series called Friends on Purpose and operates a variety of events including weekly trivia and walks free of charge
  • Isabel DiGiovanni, a 26-year-old video editor for HBO in New York City, started Slow Girl Run Club while training for the New York City Marathon

How creators are impacting shoppable TV

  • FAST channels, or free ad-supported TV channels, are appealing to younger consumers with creator-style content on streaming services like Roku and Amazon. As creators expand their reach to encompass connected TV, more opportunities for shoppable creator content will arise.

What matters to Gen Z

  • Bloomberg cited data from Gen Z Planet estimating the cohort had $360 billion in buying/spending power
  • 53% of US Gen Zers want brands they shop at to support mental health, more than any other cause
  • It takes just 1.3 seconds for Gen Z to lose active attention for ads—less time than any other age group, according to a global study by Yahoo and OMD Worldwide
Social platforms 📲

YouTube  📹

  • YouTube Create's beta rolled out to 13 additional countries
  • YouTube launched Collab on Android and iOS that allows users to record a Short in a side-by-side format

TikTok ⏰

Meta  📸

  • Instagram has officially announced Backdrop, an AI generative tool to change the background on images in Stories
  • Facebook announced creators can now earn unlimited monthly payouts from the Performance Bonus program

LinkedIn 🖇️

  • While the platform was once the antidote to creative social content, Linkedin is reinventing itself by embracing creators, welcoming short-form video content and facilitating brand deals.
Updates in tech 💻

Tumblr’s owner is striking deals with OpenAI and Midjourney for training data

  • Automattic, the owner of Tumblr and WordPress.com, is reportedly in talks with AI companies Midjourney and OpenAI to provide training data scraped from users’ posts, potentially leading to new revenue streams for the company
Notable partnerships 📓

TikTok comedian Sabrina Brier drove 20% of all influencer traffic to Nuuly’s website in 2023

  • “We like to give our creators a lot of freedom, especially people like Sabrina who have such a distinct point of view in their content,” said Morgan Rehbock, senior brand marketing manager at Nuuly

The Amazon influencer that made $14,000 filming 2,200 product review videos

  • “I took all lunch hours, all waking hours of my weekend, piling things up I had in the house, that was my life this last summer until there was nothing left,” said Heidi Leatherby

Tarte faces controversy for lavish Bora Bora trip

‍

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Think back to the first time you decided to take your creator career seriously. You face a sea of decisions that can feel paralyzing. It’s no surprise then that one question keeps getting brought up when I talk to creators: How do you break through in a sea of distractions, choices and competition?

Creator campaigns aren't just for apparel and CPG brands: INFINITI launches campaign driven by creators

Welcome to this week's BANKNOTES newsletter.Before you slip into a tryptophan-induced slumber, we wanted to stuff (see what we did there) your inbox with some insights from this week in eCommerce and creator marketing.

Erica Werber, CEO of Literie Candles, on the explosion of the candle industry

Literie was originally launched as a pandemic hobby and love letter to NYC. With help sampling scent profiles with her kids as they were learning remotely and with an order of 2000 candles, founder Erica Werber thought she would just sell the candles mostly to friends, and then return to her normal career.

INFINITI launches marketing campaign driven by creators

INFINITI, the luxury division of Nissan, has launched a new creator-powered campaign called Capture INFINITI. According to the agency leading the campaign, INFINITI is looking for ways to differentiate itself within the growing competitive luxury vehicle space, which is why it teamed up with seven creators to launch a one-of-a-kind creator-led campaign. The campaign showcases INFINITI’s QX series. 

Nibble brings an AI-powered negotiator bot to eCommerce

Nibble is a new eCommerce technology company that’s trying to disrupt eCommerce product pricing. The technology brings customer and merchant negotiation into the online shopping experience for Shopify stores. 

TikTok is paving a new path for online search: Are you ready?

Is TikTok going head-to-head with Google search? According to a recent writeup from Ashley Cummings for BANKNOTES this isn't too far fetched. 😲 In fact, 40% of young people say they go directly to TikTok or Instagram now instead of Google. 😲

Options for paying creators: Affiliate commissions vs. contracts vs. full-time

The question isn’t whether or not there’s value in hiring creators—even over celebrities—to promote your brand. There is. The question is: what’s the best way to compensate creators so you can secure more mutually-beneficial partnerships and grow your brand?

Tuft and Paw's Jackson Cunningham on developing thoughtful furniture for cats

From a cat tree that looks like it should be in a museum, to the perfect litter box: Tuft and Paw's Jackson Cunningham on developing thoughtful furniture for cats

Bolt one-click checkout sustains another round of layoffs

So-called one-click checkout company Bolt underwent another round of sweeping layoffs this week, according to posts from several former employees across Linkedin.

Death to DTC Twitter? Elon Musk’s direction causes fight or flight response amongst community

While it’s still early on in the acquisition, folks are complaining on Twitter about Musk, his “sh*tposting” (for a lack of a better term), and these new changes (mostly the pay-for-verification issue.) One community that’s specifically concerned is the Direct-to-Consumer one—a small subset of Twitter where founders, marketers, and operators of eCommerce technology and brands came together and built strong connections over the past several years.

Banknotes’ 2022 holiday DTC gift guide (and giveaway)

Check out the coolest DTC gifts and enter for a chance to win $500 to spend on yourself and some friends

Nisha Godfrey: The woman behind TikTok’s viral chicken salad sound

“It’s a chicken salad.”If this phrase sounds familiar, it’s likely because you’ve heard it used as a trending sound in thousands of videos on TikTok and Instagram over the past several weeks. The entire sound features an exchange between frequent deli goer Nisha Godfrey and owner Wael Herbawi at East 81st Street Deli in Cleveland, Ohio.

FlavorCloud's Mike Sanchez on the business of leading

As the Chief Revenue Officer at FlavorCloud, Mike Sanchez has had 17 years of experience driving partner, sales, and customer success.

Not all creators need to foster community

Building audiences has always been a lucrative endeavor. It’s the reason why the amount brands spend on influencer marketing keeps rising. Community is powerful on its own, too. Conferences and online memberships are thriving businesses. This begs the question, do all creators need to build community? 

Hollister uses Share2Pay to help young shoppers share their carts with guardians

After an internal study of sales data, executives at Hollister and Abercrombie & Fitch found that brands targeted toward teens were losing sales. Part of this was due to inflation and the rising cost of living, but they found the key pain point was an age-old reality: most teens simply don’t have much purchasing power. After researching today’s Gen Alpha (teen) consumers, Hollister created the Share2Pay app to tackle this problem.

#paid named an official TikTok marketing partner

#paid, a multi-channel creator marketing platform that empowers creators to partner with brands and build their businesses, today announced that it has become an official TikTok Marketing Partner. As a badged partner, #paid will bring more great opportunities to their engaged network of content creators and marketers. 

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