One of the highlights in Central Hall at NAB Show is the Creator Lab, which gives attendees the chance to examine how new media styles are transforming the way content is created, produced and distributed.
Drew Baldwin, founder and CEO of Tubefilter, moderated Sunday morning’s “State of the Creator Economy” panel to kick off a myriad of insightful discussions to come over several days.
Baldwin was joined by Alessandro Bogliari, co-founder and CEO of The Influencer Marketing Factory; Natalie Jarvey, editor of Ankler Media’s Like & Subscribe newsletter; and Pierre-LoÏc Assayag, co-founder and CEO of Traackr to break down the now and the future of content creation, looking at both the brand and content creation sides of the mix.
The four dissected emerging trends like AI, new styles of content, the niche audience and opportunities that are coming to drive the creator economy of the future.
“Brands are all-in on everything AI these days,” Assayag said. “The good, the bad and the ugly.”
The real benefit of AI in the creator economy, he said, is the taking of datasets to connect facets that were once in silos into a unified stack where creators no longer have to fill any individual role.
Jarvey said that the perception of generative AI, once seen as an existential threat, has shifted as creators see the value in such tools. And while there are ways to make fun, creative content with it, AI still looks and feels different than real content with the human touch.
“The creator economy is a people business,” Bogliari said. “It’s a friend I’ve never met, and I follow them because you can see part of myself in them. AI simply cannot replace that.”
There has also been a shift in content from popular to compelling — from going bigger for wider appeal, to a period in which niche content creators may be at an advantage, Jarvey said.
The “Beastification” of content — a creator becoming as massively popular as YouTuber MrBeast — may never happen again, she said. Now most growth is from smaller, more niche creators who return higher engagement due to a more devoted community, allowing for higher conversion.
New types of content, such as clipping and microdramas, are leading to longer-term partnerships in branding and marketing. Microdrama platforms, for example, use short-form video to get people interested in stories, ultimately sending people back to an app where they pay to watch a series in full. Creators are the ones who are going to own the microdrama space, Jarvey said.
The panelists closed by discussing the state of live video and the creator studio of today and tomorrow.
Live video is in an ebb tide, said Baldwin, as creators realize the magnitude of roles that go into it — a subject matter expert who can answer questions on the fly, a moderator for real-time comments, or a production person behind the video. Creation factories, like Mr. Beast or sports-themed comedy troupe Dude Perfect, are becoming studios, not simply removing themselves from video but bringing in talent to expand their platforms further.
