Life Beyond YouTube - The Shift to Creator-Owned Platforms and What It Means for the Creator Economy
The creator economy is at a crossroads. While traditional platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, and YouTube still provide the best opportunities for aspiring creators to build their brand and get in front of potential fans, more established creators are finding it increasingly difficult to sustain their careers on social media alone. As a result, a number of popular creators are starting to invest in their own direct-to-consumer (D2C or DTC) subscription streaming platforms citing frustration with the YouTube algorithm and how difficult it is to sustain the level of success they’ve achieved on a single platform. However, feedback from fans on these endeavors hasbeen mixed. Accustomed to accessing their favorite creator’s content for free on social media, some fans have a difficult time seeing the value of these recently released platforms.
Despite these initial growing pains, a new content distribution strategy is beginning to take shape and a more sophisticated, windowed approach could be the future of the creator economy. This hybrid subscription/free-to-fan model means that initially content is released exclusively via the creator’s subscription service, potentially alongside bonus content live behind-the-scenes footage, old archived videos, and livestream events, to superfans who pay for the privilege of being the first users to see new videos. Content can then be released later to social media platforms, like YouTube, to take advantage of their existing social audience and discovery algorithms to generate ad revenue from more casual fans.
While it’s too early to say whether or not this nascent model will continue to exist in its current form, what’s clear is that creator-owned D2C platforms will continue to play an important role in the distribution strategies for the internet’s top creators as more of them look to diversify their revenue streams beyond YouTube and the other platforms.
The Cost of Social Media
For good reasons, YouTube remains the go-to platform for content creators. There are very few places left on the internet where a creator can start from scratch and quickly build their business through their own creativity. For those that can properly harness the YouTube algorithm, creators can get their work in front of millions of users on one of the largest social media platforms. Additionally, YouTube provides creators a built-in way to monetize this new found audience through their ads-based rev share program.
These benefits can become a double edged sword for creators after their initial growth starts to stagnate. First, creators quickly become beholden to the algorithm they once utilized to great effect to grow their audience. As growth starts to slow, creators can find themselves bending their creative vision to chase views as the algorithm continuously changes under their feet. This makes generating consistent revenue difficult, as ad revenue is calculated based on video views. The lack of predictable revenue makes it hard to run a business centered around churning out high quality content multiple times a week.
The ad based, rev share model treats the value of every fan equally. Every view is worth the same on YouTube. It doesn’t matter whether or not the view came from someone who follows a channel religiously and watches every video the second it comes out or a more casual viewer that happened to stumble on to a single video and never comes back. This leaves money on the table as creators are unable to extract the full value of their most active supporters.
Finally, creators do not own the relationship between themselves and their audience on social media. Despite the fact that fans subscribe and follow to get closer to their favorite creator, the reality is that it’s actually the platforms themselves that control those interactions. Communications between creators and their fans are still curated by an algorithm and oftentimes creators are required to pay in order to reach their entire fan base on those platforms in the form of targeted ad buys.
D2C First Movers
In response to these challenges, several high profile creators have launched new projects aimed at taking their content directly to their fan base. In the last 6 months, Watcher, Critical Role, and Try Guys have all launched their own branded, direct-to-consumer subscription platforms. While all three rollouts have been slightly different in form and function, all have recognized the benefits of adding D2C into their distribution strategies.
First, D2C platforms provide a way for creators to form a deeper connection with their fans. By removing third party social platforms from the relationship, creators now have the ability to reach their entire audience directly and to collect and utilize fan data to make more informed business decisions.
Second, creator-owned platforms will allow creators to have full creative control. With no algorithm to cater to and without the threat of arbitrary demonetization, creators will only need to answer to their audience leading to more creative freedom.
Lastly, creators will finally be able to properly monetize their superfans. Creators will be able to drive incremental revenue by giving their superfans an outlet within which they can express their fandom, while at the same time properly fully engage with this passionate subset of their larger audience.
A Windowed Opportunity
Despite the clear benefits of creator-owned platforms, creators have realized that replacing a single-threaded social media strategy with a single-threaded D2C approach is not the solution. Even though the D2C model does a good job at capturing the value of superfans, leaving YouTube completely removes all the growth benefits associated with the algorithm. While the revenue generated from ad revenue can be unpredictable, it can also be significant and the D2C model has yet to prove that it can completely replace this income. Moving exclusively to a gated distribution model could well alienate more casual fans who still want to access content but not enough to have to pay for it.
What life looks like after YouTube may still be unclear for most creators. But what these early experiments in creator-owned platforms demonstrate is that while YouTube is still crucial to building careers, direct-to-consumer distribution will help shape the future of the creator economy.
[Editor's note: This is a contributed article from Kiswe. Streaming Media accepts vendor bylines based solely on their value to our readers.]
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