Creator economy scoop: Pay transparency and brand trip controversy

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 ⏰

• TikTok launched the TikTok Trends Digest, a monthly guide to creating on-trend content
• TikTok ‘Identify similar products’ feature spotted, making every video shoppable

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

• In a repeat of last year’s Dubai excursion, the beauty brand is facing backlash from TikTok users for sending 25 influencers on a trip that included a private jet, a stay at the Four Seasons resort and pricey PR packages.

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