Creator Economy

Giving creators the power of content monetization and audience engagement.

Overview

Giving the power of content monetization and audience engagement to creators

From YouTube to TikTok to Clubhouse, digital content creators have developed into an animating force in the media, communications, and technology industries over the past decade. And over time, a growing network of tools, products, and services have developed around content and social media platforms to monetize opportunities for creators—influencers, celebrities, artists, etc.— to earn income outside of traditional and ad-supported distribution channels. The economic relationship between creators and their audience is, in turn, becoming more straightforward than ever as fans pay directly for exclusive content, interactions, and experiences; with creator platforms sitting in the middle, earning revenue through each transaction.

Alongside social platforms, creators are turning to platforms such as Patreon, Cameo, Substack, and Teachable that prioritize paid content over freemium offerings and provide the opportunity to maintain a continuous engaging relationship with their audience from production, to discovery, to monetization.

Industry Updates

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Market Sizing

The US Creator Economy market could reach USD 2.7 billion–6.1 billion by 2028

Conservative case

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Base case

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Expansion case

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Market Mapping


The creator economy largely revolves around videos, live streams, photos, and podcasts. Therefore the market segment covering these areas is more mature and therefore more highly populated with incumbents compared to the other segments. 

However, new concepts in creator-fan interaction—primarily facilitated by membership providers—can guarantee monetization for creators unlike more established freemium and ad-supported models. This segment includes established disruptors such as Patreon, escapex, and OnlyFans—providing an alternative to video content and blogs. Most of the disruptors in this segment are membership-based with creators and fans able to offer and purchase a range of interaction options at different price points.  

Amid a sustained interest in cryptocurrency, adoption of blockchain-related services including NFT (Non-Fungible Token) platforms have also gained traction as a new way of creator content monetization. This segment lacks incumbents and significant fundraising activity and therefore includes several minimum viable product and ideation level companies.    

Incumbents
Expansion
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Minimum Viable Product
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Videos/ live stream/ photography/ podcasts/ music
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Newsletters/ writing/ blogs
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Multiple facilities platform
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Membership providers
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Infrastructure providers
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NFT platforms
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StreamElements
StreamElements
StreamElements
StreamElements
StreamElements
StreamElements

The Disruptors


Disruptors offer a more personal mode of creator-fan engagement

The disruptors of the creator economy are bringing about more intimate channels for creator-fan interactions (such as Cameo, escapex, OnlyFans), in addition to platforms where individual creator monetization is guaranteed (such as Patreon, Substack). These disruptors enable creators to actively engage with their audience, predominantly via video or text, and have seen rapid growth, bringing fierce competition to existing incumbents.

Funding History

Competitive Analysis


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Incumbents


Acquisitions are the most common form of entry

Major social media platforms including Facebook, Google, Twitter, and ByteDance are all key incumbents in the creator economy as well as global internet companies Amazon, Spotify, and WordPress maker Automattic. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) is a common path into the creator economy, with Google and Amazon entering the space solely through their acquisitions of YouTube and Twitch, respectively. Facebook, on the other hand, maintains dominance by purchasing startups with developers building social products.

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Notable Investors


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Overview

Giving the power of content monetization and audience engagement to creators

The “creator economy” (also known as the “passion economy”) refers to content creators, such as celebrities, and creative artists earning income via marketing and digital distribution instead of relying on traditional distribution channels. The era of the internet and social media of the early 2000s segued to the era of the creator economy in the 2010s, with social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and and X (formerly Twitter) laying the foundation by providing creators with a platform to create and distribute their content. This is in contrast to times when “big media” were the only content generators for the masses. 
Creator tools, which are the platforms that provide monetization opportunities to the creators, became a key parameter of this new economy. It allowed individuals to monetize their content online through platforms such as Patreon, Cameo, Substack, and Medium, while the platform earns revenue being a middleman between content creator and audience. These platforms provide the opportunity to maintain a continuously engaging relationship with their audience from production to discovery to monetization. 
With the development of blockchain technology leading to the rise in popularity of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in 2021, creators were able to get in on the action by "minting" NFTs to establish ownership of their digital content, with notable high-value sales of popular NFT collections such as Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks. However, by 2023, the NFT market experienced a 62% decline in trading volume compared with the previous year's peak of USD 25 billion, totaling USD 10 billion. This downturn coincided with a shift toward more sustainable and utility-focused projects. The market landscape also evolved, with OpenSea losing dominance to competitors like Blur and Magic Eden, which offered innovative features and tools for professional traders. Meme-inspired collections such as Pepe and Milady gained traction, while major companies such as Amazon launched their own NFT marketplaces, attracting new consumers and potentially stabilizing the market in the long term.

Creators can independently produce, distribute, and monetize content, while engaging with the audience within the creator economy

042 creator economy overview image1
Source: SPEEDA Edge research

Platforms within the creator economy ecosystem cater to the demand for different types of content

The creator economy platforms can be broadly divided into the type of content they provide including videography, live streaming, photography, audio podcasts, and writing. In addition, there are platforms that support multiple types of content (e.g., Patreon). Another unique category is membership service providers, which provide a platform for direct communication between creators (often celebrities) and their audience. Separately, the creator economy ecosystem also includes infrastructure providers, who provide tools to create content and conduct analytics and other back-end processes. NFT platforms have emerged as platforms that allow creators to attach their digital content to NFTs, which can be sold to transfer ownership on primary and secondary markets. Usually, 10%–12.5% of secondary sale prices return to the original creator and 2.5%–20% are retained by the marketplace via smart contracts.     
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