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This week, I’ve been listening in on a few Clubhouse chats. When there is a good moderator, a clear topic and duration, the experience is pretty good. When there’s not, well, it feels like those panels you leave early. If you’re on there, give me a follow @bwagy, or if you need an invite, I think we have a couple more.
One big thing
There’s been a bit of discourse on the creator economy, what is it? Why is it now? I thought I’d have a crack.
The why now is clear to me. It’s the ease of earning money, the payment and platforms offering a revenue cut. In the early days, there were only a few social networks and you needed the distribution. And now there are many social networks and they need the best creators. Note the distinction, the incentives are for the best content.
This is key, you can’t have a market without supply and demand. The supply has always been there but now each network is differentiated enough to create demand.
And I think that’s neat. It’s what I’ve always loved about the internet, creating accessibility and lowering the barriers to entry. The last few years it hasn’t felt like that but it feels like we’re going through an unbundling. Which is only a good thing.
Notable stories this week
- Spotify announced an ad network, Anchor is helping turn written content into podcasts, will let creators add videos and other interactive features like Q&A, polls, coming. They paint a picture of the longer-term audio market, note their prediction of a $15b podcast market by 2030.
- Etsy launches a content marketing programme with Offsite Ads and Shopify partners with TikTok in the UK to help sellers advertise on the platform.
- Twitter is considering letting users pay accounts they like.
- Medium brings back custom domains.
- OldSpice to launch a barbershop.
- Disney+ launched its general entertainment Star brand.
- [Twitter thread] Commentary on all the press around the make of Tiger Woods car and their safety rating – coming across as sponsored content.
Deals/M&A
- VidMob raises $50m.
- RTB House has acquired WhitePress a content marketing platform.
- 11 Media-focused blank-check companies to watch.
- AdColony sold for $400 million to Digital Turbine, Inc.
Campaign of the week
- Public.com’s partnership with Michael Bolton, Break up with your brokerage.
Datapoints of note
See all our Covid-19 data here.
- Spotify estimates they could have 50m content creators on this platform in 2025.
- 75% of respondents believe that any mentions of a brand in a post mean it’s advertising.
- In 2020, Robinhood Learn articles were read by more than 3.2 million people. Their podcast was downloaded 40m times in 2020.
- Clubhouse has now surpassed 10m installs worldwide.
- Snap estimates it can keep growing self serve ad revenue 50% YOY for the next three years.
- Insider is doing $150m in revenue.
- Twitter had its first analyst day since 2014 and aims to double revenue to $7.5b and add 123m new users to reach 315m globally by end of 2023.
That’s it for this week.
Thanks,
Ben
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