Creator Economy

Background

Put simply, the creator economy is a system powered by people creating online content for monetizable audiences. These “creators” and “influencers” make money off their digital audiences through brand deals or revenue shares with social media platforms (learn the difference between creators and influencers). 

A growing number of brands—from Coca-Cola to small businesses—pay influencers to promote their products or services on social media. Online platforms including YouTube, Substack, and Twitch also offer revenue shares for their top creators. 

History

The global creator economy’s estimated value is roughly $250B—but that wasn’t always the case. The industry’s origins can be traced back to 1994 when the first blog was created. By the early 2000s, bloggers began securing advertising deals—“mommy bloggers” were particularly popular. 

While YouTube first began using the word “creator” to describe its stars in 2011, the broader term’s origins are more nebulous. Stanford professor Paul Saffo is often credited with coining the term “creator economy” in 1997, but he’s not certain that he’s the originator.

In the late 1990s, Saffo began writing about the creator economy in research reports to develop an argument about how the economy was changing, he told 1440. While he couldn’t find any prior uses of the term, he “would never presume” he was “the first to put the two words together.”

The creator economy’s rapid growth over the past three decades can be largely attributed to increased digital and social media consumption and new technologies that make it easier to capture content.

Societal Impacts

In 2019, children were three times more likely to say they wanted to be a YouTuber when they grew up than an astronaut, according to a Lego study. And the creator economy has only grown since then—one Columbia Business School paper claims it doubled in size between 2019 and 2023. 

Many seem to think that being an influencer is today’s biggest get-rich-quick scheme. But the numbers tell a different story—only 12% of full-time creators make more than $50K a year, according to a recent survey.

A variety of creator economy scandals have hit the news over the past decade or so. Fyre Festival—the music-festival turned treacherous survival nightmare that spawned both a Netflix and a Hulu documentary—likely wouldn’t have happened without influencers promoting the festival, the documentaries point out. 

A disastrous music festival is far from the darkest thing to emerge from the creator economy. From the mental health issues creators face to the parenting influencers who have recently come under fire for child abuse allegations, it’s not all brand deals and free merch.

Future

The creator economy is expected to grow to roughly half a trillion dollars by 2027. Specifically, the industry’s primary growth drivers will stem from increased spending on influencer marketing and platform payouts fueled by the monetization of short-form video platforms. 

Tomorrow’s creator economy workers—from those working on tech platforms supporting influencers to the creators themselves—could enter the field with some help from their undergraduate institutions. Colleges and universities such as Duke University are increasingly offering courses about influencers and how they succeed in the creator economy.