How AI and Video Are Fuelling a 1.1 Billion Creator Future with Ben Woods from MiDiA

0:00Ian Shepherd:In their new report, research firm Media announced their bold prediction that there will be 1.1 billion creators by 2032. I wanted to learn more about this and what's driving it from their creator economy analyst, Ben Woods. We talk about how the definition of a creator is expanding way beyond influencers. It's not just people posting videos anymore. It's everyone engaging in creative behavior online. We also dig into how the smartest creators are turning into full-blown studios and franchises. They're building media businesses with multiple channels, merchandise and live events, all feeding back into their community.

0:35Ian Shepherd:And Ben gives brilliant examples of how traditional entertainment companies are finally starting to think like creators. This is a future-focused episode packed with insights about where the creator economy is heading next.

0:54Ian Shepherd:Ben let's start with the headline 1.1 billion creators by 2032 what does that number really represent and who counts as a creator in media's view today? Yeah sure so it's a big number in our view there's different pockets within the creator economy different ways that we apportion creators I mean everyone will be sort of familiar with people that self-identify as creators, that's video creators, short form, long form, live streaming, and all the different iterations of those. However, what's going to be a big driver going forward and already is really key today is consumer creators. So it's those who are engaging in some creator type behaviors as part of how they engage with the entertainment that they love and how they consume entertainments that might be, for example, really good one actually is Netflix Netflix's sort of editing tool, which allows consumers to edit up short clips of their favorite Netflix content and share that across socials.

1:55Now, that's a creator type behavior. And we believe it's really important to include these types of people into the creator economy. And by doing so, it's going to play a really big part in growing that number.

2:08Ian Shepherd:Excellent. And I'm really excited to get into a bit more detail of it. I know the report talks about a 76 % growth. what's driving that growth yeah so at a sort of top level view it's video it's video uh creation really that's the big driver so we have sort of numbers for total creators and numbers for video creators but it's video that's really important and the reason is is it's become this kind of de facto mode of communication sorry for all creators it's the sort of lingua franca it's how all creators need to go out and engage with their communities. So if you're a music artist, you kind of have to be a video creator as well to reach your fans and reach new audiences and grow your fan base.

2:51Look at what it's doing to the world of podcasts. You know, podcasting now, video is just as important as audio is. So video is a big driver of that. And all the different ways in which you can engage through video are kind of key to how this growth is happening.

3:09Ian Shepherd:Makes absolute sense. And what about geographically? What does that look like? Are there certain regions that are growing quicker than others? Is the UK and US more mature and fascinated to learn more? Yeah, sure. So in terms of the different growth profiles, it's probably going to come as no real surprise that, you know, Western markets are kind of ahead of the curve with a lot of these types of creator behaviors. And when we look at how the growth is going to go up into 2032, where we're forecasting out, we're going to see that rate of growth. While it will continue, it will slow in Western markets as those likes of the US and the UK become a bit more mature, more people creating, more people familiar with those creation behaviors and able to afford, you know the type of kit you need to to be a creator which you know let's face it isn't isn't cheap but then there's also the global south you know the likes of the brazils the indias of this world where i think we're going to see a lot of the fresh growth and the strong growth coming from those areas as those markets really really kick into gear in terms of the adoption of new technology in those behaviors in fact already you know brazil which is um a very smartphone centric market really strong creator type behaviors already because a lot of the way people engage there is smartphone first.

4:31Ian Shepherd:Yeah, makes sense. And one thing we haven't spoken about yet, it's 2025, AI must be having a huge impact on the growth. How do you see that playing out? Yeah, I mean, it's already becoming really, really important. I mean, you've only got to look at any data out there on sort of chat, GPT, adoption rates, and you'll see just how AI is really capturing the public imagination and people are you know average consumers even across the age brackets actually even older consumers are really engaging with that we see ai being as you know which won't be a surprise really important to the growth of the creator economy going forward and the reason being is a lot of that's down to kind of workflows what it's going to do to the way that people create content going forward most obvious one being that it's going to make it a hell of a lot easier for people to start creating content.

5:23It really lowers that barrier to entry, which is going to bring a load more people into the funnel and be able to start creating content. The other side of that is for those creators who have been in the market for a while and are facing some challenges. Actually, AI offers some real solutions, whether that's around saving time, whether that's accessing new audiences, whether that's getting inspiration. AI is bringing in new solutions to those problems which i think is going to help drive growth going forward and in terms of the

5:52Ian Shepherd:sort of the value chain of creators are there any particular parts of the ecosystem you think are most profitable right now whether it's the platforms or the creators or the tools yeah sure well the platforms um were always the ones which do such a strong and and good job of monetizing the whole system as they sit in the middle of the process creator tools companies software is obviously going to draw the fruits of the AI boom and the bringing in of more people into the creator economy and monetizing those. You've only got to look at actually Adobe's recent results to see how their sort of AI Firefly product is bringing new users in that weren't perhaps coming and engaging with their tools, new users, new ways of monetizing, which is which is really good news.

6:39So that's certainly an area which is going to be, I think, really important going forward, AI playing that way and ways of monetizing. Of course, AI is super expensive. So what we're sort of seeing now is a lot of AI companies trying to figure out, well, how can we maximize that monetization? How can we make sure that we cover the big costs? And that's why we're seeing some of these kind of product innovations coming in you know the likes of pika the ai video generator is now monetizing features which is a real classic kind of creator tool play and then you've got open ai with zora which is putting itself out there as a social media platform it's really going after that sort of daily repeat engagement which social platforms are so brilliant at doing you know hoping to monetize that way so think i think you know So creative tools, social platforms, maybe obvious answer, but both are going to be really important.

7:35Ian Shepherd:There's been a lot of talk amongst top creators in the last couple of weeks, even around Sora and AI generated content. Do you have sort of a viewpoint on whether it's an opportunity or a threat to existing creators? Yeah, I think I think it is an opportunity. It certainly is an opportunity to explore. The interesting thing about Sora is that, you know, Jake Ball, massive, massive YouTube creator, partnered with OpenAI as part of their Cameo feature, obviously very early on in this project, and, you know, has been a big part of that story. Lots and lots and lots of people who are engaging with that platform are creating content with him in that kind of Cameo feature that they offer.

8:19And the question is, is that if you're a creator who's very comfortable with your IP and personality being used in order to get a lot of traction and engagement and attention, then I guess that's fine. But if being very protective and wanting to control the direction of your IP, which let's face it, I think a lot of entertainment companies just like creators want to do, then it does become, you know, a bit of a threat going forward. We know, you know, when we've looked at our own analysis of virtual influencers that actually consumers, as long as they're getting a clear showing of the fact that they're engaging with a virtual influencer rather than a normal human creator, then they're pretty comfortable, you know, with that engagement.

9:05So there are challenges posed by AI, threats to creator copyright as well as entertainment copyright, and actually the possibility of virtual influencers, you know, taking some of that engagement away and the ability for companies and brands to spin up these virtual influencers. But above all that, you know, actually what AI does do is also, I believe, make human creator content become a premium in its own right. You know, we actually saw some of that at the IBC conference this year, the likes of some of the Sony cameras who now have this feature in them around content credentials and showing that actually the content they're recording is legitimate, is not influenced by AI to actually provide that assurances to those audiences who value that.

9:51So I think that there's a bit of both going on.

9:53Ian Shepherd:Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, I'm a big advocate for creators and communities and the audience they've built. And that's something that is very hard for AI to replicate. But it's a brave new world out there. And I'm curious to see kind of how it plays out over the next few years. Now, in terms of your report, one of the things I noticed was around creator subscription and tipping revenues are projected to grow 20 % in the next year or two. What's driving that? Well, I believe that we're going to see social platforms get better at optimizing and enabling creators to earn money. You know, there is one of the things that we teased out a lot from this report is that there is frustration from creators when it comes to areas such as growing audiences, being able to new audiences, not just grow them, but reach the audiences they want to, algorithm changes, causing them frustration.

10:46And I think actually, you know, it's going to be in the social platforms interest to listen to this type of feedback and help those creators better optimize their content and monetize their content. So I think that's part of the story. Then you've got the likes of different creator roles coming into the mix that are all going to help grow the pie. So whether that's the traditional entertainment industry, big theme at the moment, wanting to access the creator economy and social platforms are going to be putting a lot more of their traditional TV and streaming content on social, looking to partner with creators to produce social first content.

11:23that's all going to play a part in them you know acting as creators and getting those revenues through as well and then you know the more established creators as well sort of evolving from just being the producers of video content on social platforms but becoming sort of studios and franchises in their own right having multiple channels having merchandise lines perhaps even toy lines or live event experiences, creating these different bubbles in which they can go out and engage with their fans and communities and audiences is all going to act as a bit of a virtuous circle, which is going to drive audiences back to their content on social and allow them to grow some subscription tipping revenues and advertising revenues.

12:10So we see different sorts of behaviors at play here, but all positive behaviors that are going to help grow the overall

12:17Ian Shepherd:pie we believe for creators that's great yeah i mean i definitely subscribe to the fact that creators becoming studios and franchises and and my core business we're investing into creators to build you know such things i'm curious what you think kind of like the biggest pain points are with creators at the moment in terms of scaling their business yeah so i think we sort of surveyed a there's actually a core part of this of this work was surveying creators to find out their sort of motivations, pain points, the things that they like, the things they don't like. And we surveyed 400 video creators for this work.

12:51And we asked them some quite specific, actually, sort of creator well-being questions as well. So from the likes of, you know, how much time are you spending creating? Are you spending less time creating? If so, what are the reasons for that? Have you even considered quitting creation in the past year? And if so, what is driving that? And, you know, we got a whole raft of different responses, you know, focused around things like create to burnout to simply, you know, work, you know, creators who perhaps do this as a part time profession and they've got to do have other work responsibilities that eating into their creation time.

13:30So there are core challenges out there. And I think just to just to sort of focus on two, the big one is time, you know, and actually what came out of this report was that the amount of time that creators are creating content is sort of plateaued now. Big boom, as one would expect after the pandemic, reason being because availability of time was benefiting all parts of the process, whether that's giving creators more time, whether that's consumers having more time to consume creative content. So that's why we saw that big, big pandemic boom for the creator economy. Since then, though, you know, there are stresses and strains, you know, things like the cost of living crisis have an impact on on creators.

14:13And they may may need to go out and get extra work, you know, to support that. So they spend less time creating. Consumers also are spending more time at work, perhaps as they're called back into the office rather than working at home. So that that really eats into it. And then also, I would say, is this whole creator burnout phenomenon, which is very real. And we're seeing it in our data, the creators having those problems with getting social platform cut through. And so a lot of the answer to that for them is to just create more content, spend more time producing, produce more, produce more.

14:46And of course, it doesn't always work and leads to just unsustainable workloads. So those are sort of the two areas which we believe are most problematic and need addressing, actually.

14:58Ian Shepherd:yeah one of the things you mentioned slightly earlier was around traditional entertainment companies kind of moving into a creative first or social first world i'm curious whether there are any great examples you've got where you're seeing traditional companies try that yeah sure i mean i always like to sort of champion uh our uk broadcasters over here and some of the really good work that they've done so bbc studios is a really good example and the work that's been done around bluey there's a children's sort of children's animation really interesting a lot of children's content obviously always already lives on on youtube youtube has captured that part of the market but what's what's really fascinating about bbc studios is the way that they've not only leaned into it but but pivoted their strategy and thought more like a creator and uh and thought more about fandom actually which i think is really key so the example i like to use is the team at that BBC Studios put lots of bluey content onto YouTube, they also then cut up and put lots of clips of bluey content onto TikTok.

15:57And when they were looking at the data of what they got back from the TikTok content, of course, analysing the data being a really key part of the creator mindset, they found that actually what they thought their audience was going to be was a bit different than what they got back. So not such a young audience, but more of a teen to young adult, to sort of early adult audience. And then once they got that data back, they then went and started creating content that was targeted directly at that audience. You know, they didn't just think, okay, well, that's great. You know, they actually went and created content specifically for that.

16:33And I think that's a really clever way and a real creator way of thinking about it. This idea that you create, you publish the content, you look at the data, you optimize and you use what the data is telling you to create differently next time. And I think that's actually a real creator mindset type behavior as opposed to perhaps a traditional broadcaster type behavior. The other one is Channel 4. Channel 4 has a whole welter of content on YouTube. It's worth going and checking out their channels. So many different channels as well. And the reason they have so many different channels is they're really leaning into niche.

17:05You know, the idea that actually niche is king on social platforms and reaching niche audiences is really important part of that. So they've really packaged up their content to lean into that. And they're also, you know, producing social first content now and working with creators through their channel for channel 4.0 YouTube channel. So those two are always examples that I like to use. I think that they're really blazing a trail.

17:29Ian Shepherd:Lovely. I like those examples. And what about long form versus short form? How do you see that playing out over the next few years? Yeah, sure. Do you know what? With long form and short form, I actually feel like that they're just going to both be just as important to the process going forward. It's interesting because we're seeing the emergence of micro dramas now, you know, in the Western markets, you know, a lot of these are obviously Chinese or Chinese backed companies and Hollywood is going to be leaning into that. And that's a big short form play. But actually, when we look at YouTube, you know, we look at the content that does well on YouTube.

18:08It isn't short form at the expense of long form. It actually comes down to what's best for the type of content and the type of community that you're looking to engage. So, you know, a good example would be I was looking at the BBC Earth YouTube channel at the end of last week. Another really good example of a broadcaster with a really successful YouTube channel. And one of the things they do on there is they take their really stunning nature photography videos and they put them in these back to back three hour segments, drop them onto YouTube. You know, you can imagine that people have just got these on their second screen at home to listen to and watch as they're working.

18:49And they're notching 20 million views on these on this type of content. I mean, that's the total opposite of what you would think about when you think of a short TikTok video. One of the things I would say, though, is that, you know, YouTube obviously pushing for TV advertising at the moment with this whole YouTube takeover of TV and the Nielsen data in the United States showing YouTube taking a greater share of that smart TV viewing. But they're not going to be alone in that going forwards. TikTok, I think, and we've already heard about Instagram of late, are going to be pushing for more to capture more attention from the TV going forward.

19:25so i believe and you know to do that that isn't going to be about short videos for them it's also going to be about longer videos so i think a blend of the two that doesn't seem like too much of a

19:35Ian Shepherd:of a fudge dancer i mean it makes absolute sense i again agree with that as well i'm curious looking forward again whether you think the future is about established creators on the platforms doing more or do you think that there's still room for a whole abundance of new creators to emerge yeah Yeah, it's certainly harder, I think, to do well, you know, and to come onto the platform and really cut through and build a really successful audience. And I think that's why the pandemic was such a moment, because actually, because there was more available time, there was this opportunity to come to break through and reach audiences.

20:11And we've got to remember that so many of those creators that really came in during that period of time, they haven't gone away. You know, they're all still there, you know, and all the superstar creators are all still there and continuing to make good money and advance. However, I would say that, you know, AI is going to change things. It is going to change things for a couple of reasons. One, as I've mentioned already, is this whole idea of it makes it makes the process a lot easier and a lot faster.

20:39Ian Shepherd:But also it's a whole different workflow mindset. You know, the way that AI only creators are working with these tools is very different to how traditional, you know, YouTube creators work with tools themselves. And of course, traditional video creators are going to be taking on a lot of these tools. But, you know, we do have examples now of AI only creators just using AI from start to finish. And I think they're going to become particularly adept at using AI to their advantage. are going to be able to do things that perhaps the average sort of video creator going on and writing a few prompts into an AI video generator is going to be able to do.

21:16I believe, you know, writing prompts is going to be a real skill and a real art form going forward, albeit, you know, you're going to need that video creation experience and that creative flair in order to do it really well. So that's where I see it coming from, I think. I think it's this, you know, albeit there's a lot of uncertainty and worry around what AI is going to do to creation. But I think it's one of those ones which you've got to get on board with it. You've got to try, you've got to see how it can be integrated into your workflow, because there are a whole bunch of new creators now coming right into the mix who won't even think about the workflows that came before.

21:55And they're going to be able to do things that perhaps could supplant and move ahead of traditional creators.

22:01Ian Shepherd:Yeah, I guess it's like legacy media and new media. Now we've got legacy creators and new creators almost. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I think so. I think technology always brings a different type of behavior into the mix. I mean, another one just to say would be VTubing, you know, people using digital avatars to represent themselves on live stream and online. That was a technological breakthrough, if that's what we can call it, the ability to sort of present yourself like that. But what it actually did was it just democratized creation even further because it enabled all those people who were really uncomfortable putting their face in front of the camera all wanted to tell stories with characters to suddenly be able to access the creator economy and provide a different form of storytelling.

22:48And that's why we see the likes of the Twitch streamer Iron Mouse, who was content creator of the year a few years ago and a huge creator now, becoming a really important part of that mix. So yeah, technology does make a difference.

23:01Ian Shepherd:One of the things I love about the creator economy is just how much traction it's getting, how broad that is. And I'm curious for somebody in the entertainment industry, an executive or maybe even investors reading your report, what are the key things that they should take away from it? Yeah, sure. I think the key thing should be thinking about how creator tools going forward are a really great way of getting engagement from consumers. I think if you're able to marry, for example, creation behaviors with fandom, I think that's a really powerful combination. I think a good example would be, albeit a slightly controversial one, is the sort of AI Darth Vader in Fortnite.