The creator industry is worth anywhere from tens of billions of dollars to a hundred billion dollars, depending on who you ask.
Jellysmack - a global creator company that powers multi-platform social media growth for individual video creators, media companies and online communities – is one of the companies helping to power this industry forward.
AdNews spoke with Ezechiel Ritchie, country manager of ANZ & SEA for Jellysmack, about the growth of the creator industry, how brands and advertisers can utilise this emerging form of marketing and why video is still king – for now.
He said that the creator industry has exploded in growth in recent years because of the proliferation and growth of social media platforms.
“It started with YouTube as the main long-form content creator platform, then came the growth of Facebook and Snapchat and now, you have the short-form platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
“All of this is part of the fragmentation of audiences and proliferation of platforms that gives an opportunity to more and more people to become content creators.”
Ritchie says brands and advertisers looking to tap into this new ‘economy’ have to follow their audiences to wherever it is they are congregating.
“Gone are the days of TV being the only medium to communicate a message to the masses,” he says.
“I think brands need to adapt because there's a huge opportunity to utilise creators who have built communities that are so passionate about and engaged with the content.
“Digital enables you to do things that are a lot more engaging than a 30 second or 15 second TVC. It's very exciting days for advertisers and brands and I think it's still an untapped space for a lot of them.”
If content commerce partnerships are built on trust, isn’t it the same for brand partnerships with creators?
“Back in my digital and advertising days, [trust] is one of the things that brands struggled with, because they tend to want to dictate the creative strategy and how they want to portray the product or the service that they're trying to sell to the audience," Ritchie says.
“Creators want to make sure that there is a synergy between their audience and what they’re advertising, which is unlike traditional advertising, where it's the messages are kind of in your face whether you like it or not.
“Brands will probably need to give a bit more leeway to the creators because they know the audience better than anyone else, way better than the creative agency or the media agency.
“I think that's actually a really good opportunity though, because they can get the message on point, and they know what's going to resonate with the audience.”
Video is certainly on top at the moment – look at the success that TikTok has had over the past few years - but the industry is looking ahead to the next format.
When asked if there’s another medium that can challenge or even overtake it, Ritchie said that “nothing can really compete with video, due to it being the format with the most engagement and the strongest potential for monetisation.”
“Instagram started with images and then very quickly, they realised there’s not a lot of money to be made there, but video brands are willing to pay big money and big CPMs,” he says.
“Same for Spotify – what initially started as a music streaming service is now investing very heavily in content production with things like podcasts.
“In saying that, things emerge out of nowhere and maybe they don't make sense at the time but then two years later, you're like ‘Why didn't I think about this?’, so you never know.”
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