Future of TV Briefing: How the European creator economy compares to the U.S.

The so-called creator economy is global. A creator can post a video on YouTube or TikTok or Snapchat and have it watched all over the world. But there is at least one notable regional difference when it comes to the creator economy, specifically when it comes to opportunities for creators to work with brands.

“I think that creators are seen more as a legitimate media channel in the U.S. Certainly what we see in the U.K. and Europe is that there is still a lot of inertia from clients and brands to actually really invest in creator marketing,” Emma Harman, president of Europe, Middle East and Africa at creator management agency Whalar, said on stage during the Digiday Publishing Summit Europe in Barcelona, Spain, last week.

What gives? For one thing, Harman cited brands in the U.K. and Europe lacking confidence in how to evaluate creator campaigns. “The approach to measurement probably needs to change,” she said.

Since creators are effectively their own media channels with large audiences, they lend themselves to being seen as reach vehicles and are thereby measured akin to traditional TV and other brand advertising channels. But given how audiences have fragmented across channels and how creators can be particularly strong with a niche audience subset, Harman argued for brands evaluating creators based on “resonance.”

That shift would seem to coincide with video viewership on social platforms becoming more search-driven. This has been the case for years on YouTube — which is often described as the second-biggest search engine on the internet — and over the past couple years TikTok and Pinterest have matured to mimic YouTube’s search-based viewership behavior. And creators are following suit.

“The creators that we’re working with that often produce a lot of entertainment content, they’re also now really switching into tutorials and how-tos and life hacks and things like that. To be searchable, to be discoverable,” said Harman.

Recognizing that creators are, in a way, just another media channel, Whalar is also trying to work out how creators can fit in the media mix models that brands use to assess their marketing spending overall.

“Making sure you’re addressing things like sales lift and working with leaders like Kantar and Nielsen and all of the traditional measurement providers in terms of how you can bring this into the frame of your other media or communications mix. That’s really, really important,” said Harman.

A challenge there, though, is that brands’ media mix models typically require “a few years of data,” said Harman. To address that potential gap for creators who may have a dearth of data, Whalar has developed an insights platform that aggregates creators’ accounts across various platforms to report on viewership and audience.

“We’ve got some work to do from an education perspective here in Europe to really see brands put creators at the heart of what they do,” Harman said.

What we’ve heard

“Even though, in theory, this process is very data-driven, but the market is not yet well regulated. You don’t necessarily get the same data from different partners. So the data has been very patchy.”

— BBC Studios’ Kasia Jablonska about the FAST ad market during Digiday Publishing Summit Europe

Numbers to know

$1 billion: How much ad revenue Fox expects its free, ad-supported streaming TV service Tubi to generate this year.

36 million: Number of paid subscribers that NBCUniversal’s Peacock had at the end of the third quarter of 2024.

85.5 million: Number of global households that actively used Roku’s connected TV platform in Q3 2024.

20%: The year-over-year increase in overall upfront ad spending that YouTube secured in this year’s marketplace.

443 million: Number of daily active users that Snapchat had at the end of Q3 2024.

1.99 million: Number of paid subscribers that Fubo had at the end of Q3 2024.

What we’ve covered

Marketing execs believe deeper relationships, understanding influencers can avoid potential backlash in politics:

• Influencer marketing execs believe brands can’t expect creators to be entirely apolitical.
• They advocated for better vetting of influencers by brands.

Read more about politics in influencer marketing here.

Inside the strategy that grew Cristiano Ronaldo’s YouTube account to 1M subscribers in 90 minutes:

• The soccer star has a creative agency and production company working on the channel.
• The channel now has more than 65.9 million subscribers.

Read more about Cristiano Ronaldo’s YouTube channel here.

Creators weigh content decisions and costs of election-driven marketing blackout:

• Creators are having to be mindful of scheduled posts going out as political events pop up.
• While some brands and creators are opting to not post for a time, others are simply cutting back.

Read more about creators’ election-related considerations here.

Why online organizers are pressuring advertisers to reconsider Twitch’s brand safety over antisemitism claims:

• The creators are taking aim at Twitch for disabling signups for users located in Israel and Palestine following the Gaza attack last year.
• Twitch has denied acting antisemitically.

Read more about Twitch here.

What we’re reading

Comcast the cord-cutter:

The pay-TV provider is considering getting rid of some of its NBCUniversal unit’s cable TV networks while retaining the NBC broadcast network, Peacock streaming service and Universal studio business, according to Business Insider.

Charter the streaming bundler:

The pay-TV provider plans to make a bundle of major ad-supported streamers, including Disney+, Peacock and Paramount+, available to pay-TV subscribers for no extra charge, according to The Wrap.

AI is the new CGI:

Generative AI is starting to do to computer-based visual effects what CGI had done to practical effects decades ago, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, according to The New York Times Magazine.

Netflix’s new ad sales exec:

The streamer has hired former agency and addressable TV exec Nicolle Pangis to replace Peter Naylor as its U.S. and Canada ad sales lead, according to Variety.

Nielsen’s stiffening competition:

Ad buyers are becoming more willing to transact against Nielsen’s rivals’ measurements despite this year’s upfront not seeing a major currency changeover and as Media Rating Council signs off on Nielsen’s streaming data and panel-based measurement tie-up, according to Ad Age.