#creator-economy

#creator-economy

Michela Allocca, founder of the personal finance brand Break Your Budget, got started with just her iPhone and an Instagram account. She had a friend take pictures of her around Boston, where she was living and working at the time, "and I would literally post a picture of myself and write a long caption about three steps to start investing," she told Business Insider.

In a Financial Times op-ed late last month, he pointed to a major milestone in the creator economy: an analysis from WPP Media indicated that creator-generated content would fetch the same share of global ad revenue as the radio and newspaper industries would in 2025. "Advertising revenues are not flowing to traditional platforms," Donovan wrote. "To get a message across in the modern world, you need to find a 15-year-old with a smartphone and a nice set of dance moves."

According to XCreators, the initiative is designed to encourage creators to produce high-quality, original content that sparks conversation, breaks news and shapes culture. The winning article must be original, a minimum of 1,000 words and will be primarily judged based on Verified Home Timeline impressions. The official announcement states that content that violates X's policies or is hateful, fraudulent, or manipulative will not be taken into consideration, and that only users in the United States are eligible.

The resolution, known as the Creator Bill of Rights, expresses the sense of the House of Representatives that creators and digital workers represent "a distinct and growing class of small businesses and independent economic contributors" who deserve fair treatment, transparency, and economic opportunity in a platform-driven economy. The creator economy is currently valued at $250 billion globally and is expected to reach $480 billion by 2027, according to figures cited in the press release announcing the resolution.

Wonder Project quietly enlisted a group of eight social media creators last year to help promote shows such as Amazon Prime Video's " House of David " and the upcoming family drama "It's Not Like That." The creators were given broad access to Wonder Project series, including early screeners, set visits, clips and other assets that are ready-made for creators to craft social media posts that help spread the word about the shows.

At $8 million for a 30-second Super Bowl spot, celebrities are expected to maintain their monopoly on Big Game commercials this year, keeping influencers and creators in the wing for social and experiential campaigns. "It's just viewership demographics. You cast a really wide net of people watching it, and you want as many people as possible to recognize the person you're putting on the screen," said Jerry Hoak, chief creative officer at The Martin Agency.

Even more influencers than usual are flocking to Dubai this weekend for the 1 Billion Followers Summit that will take over the city's financial district, the Museum of the Future, and government hub Emirates Towers. Touted as the world's largest gathering for content creators, the three-day event kicked off Friday with 30,000 attendees expected - including YouTuber MrBeast, Republican figurehead Lara Trump, and Dubai resident and former soccer star Rio Ferdinand.

At the start of the year, we asked 11 experts to share their social media predictions for 2025. They pointed to big shifts - world-building, private communities, AI in everything and everywhere, LinkedIn's rise, and a creator economy moving toward more sustainable businesses. Now that the year is behind us, it's a good moment to pause and check the tape. Some predictions held up almost perfectly. Others played out more slowly or looked different than expected.

The world's largest tech showcase does not come without theatrics. Innovations and gadgets like a lollipop that sings to you as you consume it, a laundry-folding robot, and a "smart" LEGO brick have stolen the spotlight so far at CES 2026. But underscoring this year's programming is a strong focus on an industry that relies on a similar theatrical flair: entertainment.

EXCLUSIVE: CAA has signed Scalable, a newly launched, female-led media company dedicated to covering one of the fastest-growing sectors in media and technology: the creator economy. The agency will work with Scalable across opportunities in media, partnerships, live events, and brand extensions as they continue to expand their footprint. Scalable is founded by longtime collaborators Kaya Yurieff and Jasmine Enberg, who have chronicled the creator economy, social media, and the broader tech landscape for more than a decade,

Across X and other social channels, creators have begun posting screenshots and testimonials about sharply higher payouts tied to the most recent revenue‑share distribution. Analyzing the screenshots and reports, it's evident that creators are seeing two to three times their previous checks, with some describing the new numbers as "the first time X feels like a real income stream" instead of pocket change.

At the time, I wrote that his reply to an X user, "Ok, let's do it," with a tag to X Head of Product Nikita Bier and a warning to "rigorously enforce no gaming of the system," felt like a line in the sand for how serious X was about paying people who keep its feeds alive. Now, early 2026 payout reports suggest that X is starting to follow through.

One of the biggest shifts in 2025 was how quickly everyday moments turned into shared cultural moments.

He argues that the algorithms have grown too sophisticated at sorting viewers into their own individual silos. If a viewer seeks out automotive content, they receive more automotive content. If they like health and beauty, their feed is largely restricted to health and beauty. The days of a single creator punching through to hundreds of millions of viewers are effectively over. Donaldson's rise required a specific historical moment, one where recommendation engines still permitted the emergence of mass figures. That window has closed.

Adler, who has also conducted research on the closely watched Otis Report on the Creative Economy, ranked metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) by creators in the top 10% in terms of Instagram followers, using data from an influencer marketing firm. The top two by total creator count were LA (over 12,000) and New York (nearly 11,000), followed by Miami (about 6,000).

The creator economy gives, and it can also take - suddenly. That's one lesson behind the abrupt exodus of talent from the esports and marketing company FaZe Clan last week. Building a business led by an influencer or celebrity can make you a boatload of money. Just ask the teams behind Kim Kardashian's Skims or George Clooney's Casamigos tequila, which both crossed $1 billion in value.

OpenAI's launch of Sora 2 sent shockwaves through the social media economy. AI slop was already rampant, and now there was a more realistic form of video with even narrower tailoring. Then came the lifelike images of Google's Nano Banana. How will creators fare in the age of AI? Lightspeed Ventures partner Michael Mignano takes a more extreme view: that it signals the "end of the creator." On "Sourcery," Mignano described a future of social media where content is generated instantaneously.

Don't get me wrong; the people who launched those 53 channels are surely talented creators who deliver clever or entertaining content-I subscribed for some reason, after all. But at this point, I couldn't tell you what most of them are truly about because there's nothing there to draw me back. I don't know who the creators are, and I don't return to their channels, because they're not building worlds I want to be part of. They're just...posting.