When chess was invented the inventor presented it to the king. The king immediately fell in love with the game. 

He offered the inventor whatever he wished. 

The inventor asked that a grain of rice be set on the first square of the chess board then double on each subsequent square. He demonstrated it briefly – two grains on the second square, four on the third, and so on. 

The king agreed. He thought he’d gotten a bargain and ordered his treasurer to pay the inventor.

After a great deal of time passed the inventor returned. He complained to the king that he wasn’t given his reward.

The king called upon the treasurer. 

“Why has the inventor of this brilliant game of chess not been paid!?”

The treasurer explained it was impossible. 

By the time you were half way through the chessboard, the amount of rice required was more than the entire realm had or could even afford. The gift would empty the royal coffers and put the entire kingdom in debt.

What does this have to do with social media and advertising?

The entire industry tends to measure success in large numbers. We launch campaigns and watch to see how many views, comments, engagement, or impressions we generated. How did we do compared to our competitors? 

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach, but there is an unintended consequence. 

We never want to start small. We make the same mistake as the king – we can’t believe that starting with so little can lead to so much.

How many times have you heard (or asked for) this? 

“We want at least a million views!”

If an agency ended up getting 10 views on a YouTube video when the goal was a million, I think we all know what would subsequently happen. The agency would be viewed as failing to hit their KPIs and most likely let go.

While it’s counter-intuitive, starting small is the way to generate massive results in the long run. 

The formula is continued attempts + consistent refinement. 

Using the allegory of the king and the chess board, it’s how one grain of rice slowly grew to the net worth of the entire kingdom. 

A group of scrappy filmmakers, i.e. influencers (implicitly or explicitly) understand this. They’ve become one person media juggernauts by implementing it. One of them is ZHC (real name Zachary Hsieh). He’s a 21 year old YouTuber from San Jose, California who’s racked up a billion views and over 15 million subscribers. 

ZHC generates prime time TV level viewership. 

In the last month he’s reached 5x the audience of a typical ‘Monday Night Football’ viewing, 6X the audience of ‘The Masked Singer’ and more viewers than all episodes of ‘The Last Dance’. 

Think about that for a second. In the last month he garnered more views than all ten episodes of the ‘The Last Dance’. That was ESPN’s highest rated documentary of all time. It dominated news and social media for an entire month.

How the hell did ZHC become so huge? His viewership was not happenstance.

ZHC’s success seems deceptively obvious on the surface. His format is MrBeast meets Andy Warhol. Pop art with a stunt. 

ZHC takes high-end devices such as iphones, ipads, Tesla’s, and even a bus then paints them. He gifts these beautiful (and expensive) items to unwitting fans or other influencers. The reactions are always priceless.

There’s a formula. 

The gifts are expensive. The influencer guest appearances are top tier. He’s featured the single largest YouTube creator PewDiePie. Addison Rae who has the second largest following on TikTok. He’s collaborated with Marshmello, as well as, Charli D’Amelio who has over 70 million followers on TikTok. The reactions he captures create a halo-effect of elation.

It all seems very obvious – gather big stars and give them expensive gifts… However, unless you dig into his back catalogue, you won’t see his hundreds of videos that were the foundation for today’s “obvious” success. Like most ‘overnight’ successes ZHC has been grinding it out for years. He posted his first video 4 years ago. By the end of his first year on YouTube he’d posted 50 videos. 

Guess how many subscribers he had? 1,011.

Can you imagine working nights and evenings for a year and only have 1k subscribers to show for your efforts?

ZHC didn’t launch with his format fully defined and community in place. The process took time. Trial and error. We can learn a lot about the process from his work. Zach’s early videos were straightforward tutorials on how to draw various comic book characters. 

Over time Zach began experimenting. 

He slowly inserted more and more of his personality into videos. 

After 40 tutorial videos he finally did a video with himself as the focus (vs his art).  That first video was “3 tips for getting lots of instagram followers”. The video was one take. He was awkward and rambling at times. The backdrop was just his living room with Zach seated on the couch. That’s it. Watch the video. Could you ever imagine that awkward guy would one day have 15 million subscribers?

The experimentation continued. You see an evolution in slow motion. 

He methodically incorporated learnings into his videos. 

Zach’s 50th video was “My Inspirational Artists Journey Story”. It was his first attempt at inspirational content. He shared his struggles with school and how art became his salvation. It gave him confidence.

His 63rd video was a ‘challenge’ video – DRAWING 1000 FIGURES IN A DAY?!. It generated more views than his typical videos and he saw the power of integrating stunts.

A month later he did a reaction video. PewDiePie (who has over 100 million subscribers) had stumbled upon a piece of ZHC’s art. Zach filmed a reaction video to PewDiePie’s commentary. This was Zach’s first time featuring another influencer in his video and it got nearly 8 times the viewership he typically got.

He continued experimenting and applying learnings into his repertoire. It took three years before he’d refined the formula to what it is today. And his views have skyrocketed.

This was not slow linear growth – always a little up and to the right. This was the growth Buffett demonstrated in the allegory of the king and the chess board. 

Small at first, then massive.

ZHC’s efforts compounded. 

He went from averaging ten thousand monthly views in 2017, to one hundred thousand in 2018, to 5 million in 2019. Now ZHC averages 100 million views a month. 

So how does this apply to advertising?

As much as the ad industry is skeptical of influencers, there’s much to learn from them. 

While we want to create a perfect ad that enters into the pop-culture lexicon. The harsh truth is the world is not waiting for our perfectly produced vision. We must start by creating and then applying learnings to improve. 

Rumi, a 13th Century poet said it best “as you start to walk on the way, the way appears.” 

That’s the long-term solution.  Constant refinement and feedback. 

ZHC implemented this process. He consistently created videos. He’d implement small experiments, and apply the lessons learned. He slowly stacked incremental wins on top of wins. Inspiration. Storytelling. Collaboration. Challenges. Surprise and delight. ZHC worked to identify his personal approach.

The formula is continued attempts + consistent refinement. 

Quantity to lead to quality.

However, it has one major blindspot. 

The piece focuses solely on influencers suffering due to loss of advertising. This is true. Influencers are losing ad revenue. However, creators have been developing massive brands and monetizing their fans directly for years. For many creators advertising is the smallest source of revenue.

I find this ironic given Kylie Jenner is the featured influencer. Jenner is a billionaire after developing her own beauty brand, Kylie Cosmetics.

Merch has always been big amongst influencers. Influencers have been broadening into developing their own products. For example, Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star sold over a million of their Conspiracy Theory palettes. Countless creators have developed apps and games. Movies, music, and tours are common as well.

Services like Cameo and Patreon are allowing creators to monetize their fans directly. YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, and TikTok all have some form of digital gifting that allows fans to tip creators with real money. Fansa re more than willing to pay for content from their favorite creators. 

My assumption is that the Covid19 crisis will hasten influencers independence from brands. Creators who had previously avoided creating their own march or subscription products are likely to explore those opportunities now.

The author states, influencers who can’t “prove their value to brands may find that their place in the industry grows precarious.”

I disagree.

Influencers who can’t monetize their own fans themselves may find their place in the industry precarious. Those creators that can provide value to their fans will be just fine. They’ll be able to generate revenue independent of brands and advertisers.

Micro isn’t better. Better is better.

Touted as having higher engagement rates, lower pricing, and more credibility than their ‘macro’ counterparts micro influencers are the hottest category of creator to hire.

This is silly. 

Micro-influencers being better or more effective is not a universal marketing principle. Leveraging micro-influencers is a tactic, and one that is far from a silver bullet.  

The rise in popularity of micro-influencers coincides with the rise of influencer marketplaces. Influencer marketplaces are self-service platforms where brands share opportunities for creators to do paid endorsements.

Working with micro-influencers via marketplaces may seem to be a scalable way to do influencer marketing but it is wrought with issues.

First and foremost there is the common misconception that micro-influencers are more engaging. While that is often true that micro-influencers have higher engagement than macro influencers on a per capita basis, that doesn’t mean that engagement translates to a more efficient cost per engagement (CPE) for advertisers.

According to data compiled by Andrew Kamphey of Influencer’s Weekly, it is actually more efficient to work with larger influencers one a CPE basis.

As influencers get bigger their engagement generally declines a bit, but their costs don’t scale at the same rate.

One factor often overlooked in working with influencers is not just the hard costs, but the time spent to manage influencers. Working directly with an influencer that has 10 million subscribers is often just as much work as working with an influencer that has 10 thousand. 

Even if you work with influencers via influencer marketplaces, taking the time to review content and managing quality control becomes a huge issue.

Within these market places brands are asking creators to opt into campaigns based on a brief that has been posted. You are not spending time working closely with a creator via meetings and phone calls. Oftentimes a brief is the only thing the creator gets to their hands on to get to know the brand before going on to develop promotions even without the products themselves.

Credibility is a big issue as well (one that I imagine will become a bigger issue as time goes on). Creators looking to make money will need to go from brand to brand, oftentimes working with competitors in the same category. 

At the same time the inverse approach, of working exclusively with the top tier influencers isn’t a perfect solution either. Just because some has scale doesn’t mean they’re relevant to your audience.

Top tier creators are often bombarded with brand deals and opportunities. Their ability to invest in a partnership is constrained. You don’t want to work with someone that just won’t or can’t make the time for you. 

There is no easy solution and therein lies the opportunity.

Few brands and marketers are willing to put in the time and effort to focus on identifying creators that are truly relevant, then having conversations with them to gauge interest, and then work with them deeply and make them real partners. 

As the saying goes, the last mile is always the least crowded.

None of this is rocket science, but like most good things, it takes patience, focus, and a long-term outlook vs looking for quick fix solutions. 

The impact that the virus outbreak has had on digital and social media behavior in China, likely provides a look into the future of what we can expect here in the states.

People have changed their behaviors worldwide with more time being spent online as people are forced indoors.

Some trends that we’ve seen emerge in China include the following:

Audience Engagement & Viewership Growth:

Creators in China saw a surge in subscribers and viewership.

One top tier live streamer Austin Li drew a record breaking (for him) 16 million viewers on his first stream this February. He’s not alone in generating a spike in viewership.

A study of 574 accounts across popular video apps Douyin (TikTok in China) and Kuaishou showed creators accruing 100k – 500k followers from January 20th thru February 2nd. One food creator  @皮皮教做菜 noted that this time of year he generally sees some growth, but nothing like this. @皮皮教做菜 gained over 1 million followers from a single video.

With people eating out less, food and cooking content saw spikes in demand. People staying at home and wanting to learn to cook lead to Douyin (TikTok) supporting cooking-related content with a Tasty Food Challenge which generated over 10.3 billion views.

Comedic content also saw massive viewership increases. According to data released by Bilibili (a Chinese video sharing site), views of videos tagged with the word ‘funny’ grew by 905 percent between January 23rd to February 5th.

One beauty KOL (influencer) Melilim Fu saw a 10 percent increase in followers over a two week period. According to Jing Daily these aren’t isolated incidents, “those increases are across the board, including engagement and new private traffic followers. It’s very noticeable that people are spending more time bored at home.”

Beyond engaging with influencers, the Covid-19 quarantines resulted in a spike in app downloads. The first few weeks of February resulted in 40% more app downloads than the same time in 2019. Additionally, there were 222 million apps downloaded in China’s Apple app store from February 2nd – 24th. Games topped the list, but educational app downloads doubled as many schools closed down.

Offline Events Come Online

As in person events and social distancing became banned and/or discouraged China brought traditional offline events online.

In February there were at least seven movies slated for theatrical release. With theaters forced to close down due to the virus these releases were moved online. ByteDance, best known as the holding company of TikTok, paid 630m yuan (US$90.8m) for the rights to stream several films across their mobile apps.

Here in the states we haven’t seen the same thing occur yet, but Disney did just announce something similar. Disney is adding “Frozen 2” to Disney Plus three months ahead of schedule.

As people are forced to spend more time indoors they are spending more time online. However, production resources, shoots, some commerce, and brand deals have largely declined or postponed.

Challenges With Content Creation

Because meeting face to face is difficult due to quarantines and social distancing production has been hampered.

People often assume that influencers are one man bands – writing, filming, editing, and participating as talent all on their own. In reality established creators have large teams. 

Elijah Whaley, a manager of beauty KOL’s (influencers) in China recently stated that, “it will undoubtedly affect content creators that rely on teams and studios. The immediate effects are more felt with the planned campaigns, which have already been canceled or delayed, especially offline events.”

Here in the states we’ve already seen top tier creators share publicly the impact Covid-19 has had on their production process. The CEO of The Fine Brothers (of react fame) commented in a recent Digiday article that “Two weeks ago, FBE began actively planning for the possibility that coronavirus may force the entertainment company to temporarily close its 25,000-square-foot studio and have its 105 employees work from home.”

Sales & Brand Deals:

Although this may be a time of investment in community building it is likely that many creators will suffer from brand deals being cancelled and/or postponed. Additionally, with factories shut down getting products to consumers could prove to be difficult for some time.

According to Jing Daily:
“Several influencers have shared that their Q1 brand campaigns have all been postponed — many until as late as May. While this is a big blow to their earnings, they will likely make it all back later in the year if they can hold out until then. But the top influencers aren’t too concerned. The popular WeChat account “GQ实验室” says that there are even some positive aspects to this unfortunate moment. For instance, publishing fewer commercial articles gives influencers a much-needed opportunity to create more and better editorial content.”

Streamers in China with their own brands and products are facing a lack of stock and delivery delays. Many streamers are immediately selling out of what few products they have on hand. As a result, many influencers are selling items as ‘pre-sale’ with the promise that they’ll be shipped when manufacturing resumes. 

Here in the states we’re already starting to see similar effects. Brand deals are being postponed, and travel influencers in particular are the hardest hit. As BusinessInsider reported, “Travel influencer Lauren Bullen, known as @gypsea_lust on Instagram with 2.1 million followers, said all her paid trips had been canceled.”

While these may be difficult times, it will pass. If anything for those of us here in the states, we can look to China and the trends that emerged to help inform our own decisions and preparations.

Headlines like ‘The Dishonest and Wasteful Practice of Influencer Marketing’ paint influences with a broad brush as money grubbing and eager to take any brand deal coming their way and sell out their audiences along the way.

That’s just not true and doesn’t accurately reflect the majority of my experiences in nearly 15 years of influencer marketing.

Influencers say no and fight for work they believe in.

I personally have experienced influencers walk away from 6 figure brand deals because they didn’t feel it was a good fit, or they felt like they couldn’t do the campaign justice. Oftentimes they genuinely loved the brand, but simply couldn’t take on the workload or couldn’t quite wrap their head around a way to bring a campaign to life.

When working on branded content with influencers, they often say no to client requests and push back in order to fight for what they feel is going to work best. That’s their job. It can be frustrating, but ultimately, I’m incredibly grateful that they do it.

Ultimately, saying no to most opportunities makes sense for influencers.

The connection influencers have to their audience is the lifeblood of their business.

As tempting as it may be to take a nice paycheck in the short term, if it is going to compromise the relationship they have with their audience (real or perceived) they should say no. Brands come and go, but the audience is the renewable resource that keeps their business alive – brand deals or no brand deals.

This isn’t some deep insight, and I’m not saying that all influencers are saints. I have had some incredibly difficult experiences working with influencers. However, by and large, I’ve found my experiences in working with influencers to be extremely rewarding, informative, and effective for the brands.

The reality of influencer marketing is more complex than the knee jerk reaction being made by many marketers writing op-eds at the moment.

Some influencers are more talented or honest or hard working than others, and in many ways influencers have got more in common than a typical creative director than anyone else.

As a general rule they care about their reputation. They want to do work they’re proud of. They want to make work that is fulfilling and recognized by their peers.

For both groups this oftentimes means forgoing short term gains and carefully curating the opportunities they take on in order to create a career with longevity. For Creative Directors you see this reflected in the way many choose to work for more creative shops vs behemoths that pay well but churn out crap. Just like influencers, Creative Directors have a responsibility to push back on clients if that’s what it takes to get great work made.

Generally speaking, neither influencers nor creative directors wants to sell out their credibility for a quick pay day.

As frustrating as the creative process can be, I’d much rather have someone be honest with me about what they believe will work best, and is right than take the money and run.

Objectively, I think we can all appreciate the integrity it takes to say no and push back in the face of overwhelming pressure or walk away from the carrot in the form of a nice payday being waved in front of our face.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Collaboration is, and will always be, a tool to drive growth and build an audience online…  rising tides lifts all boats.

The Hype House is an LA mansion TikTok stars formed in December of last year to live and collaborate. 

These TikTokers are co-creating content, featuring and promoting one another in an effort to cross-promote one another and collectively grow their audiences. The ideal outcome is an ever expanding audience.

Influencer A has X audience and Influencer B has Y audience. The two promote one another to capture both X & Y audiences and (ideally) capture additional followers in the process.

If history is any indication, the Hype House could be the start of a massive business that may change the course of media.

This fundamental principle of collaboration has been key to influencer marketing, and social media marketing (and expanding ever outward, you could argue for a great deal of success in life in general), since the beginning.

You scratch my back I scratch yours.

Going back to the late 2000’s we first saw this tactic brought to life with the YouTube community in the form of The Station. The Station eventually morphed into Maker Studios, which went on to be acquired by Disney for nearly a billion dollars.

The Station started as a loose federation of YouTubers who came together in the summer of 2009 to share resources and collaborate on content creation in the form of a collective sketch comedy channel.

Working out of a few Venice Beach, CA homes, the groups was affectionately dubbed, A Modern Brat Pack of YouTubers, TheStation was comprised of Shane Dawson, Kassem G, Phil DeFranco, Dave Days, Shay Carl, Lisa Donovan, with cameos from other YouTubers like iJustine.

Before a video was ever launched, their collective YouTube channel, was among the 25 most subscribed channels across all of YouTube. By winter 2009, after only a handful videos had launched, The Station had become second most watched web series.

Eventually, several creators from the original crew parted ways, but LisaDonovan, ShayCarl, Kassem and a handful of others soldiered on. The team moved into crappy offices above a Taco Shop, rebranded into Maker Studios, raised money, became an MCN, began signing YouTube channels to power that MCN, and by 2012 were generating over a billion views a month.

In 2014 Disney came knocking and acquired Maker Studios for $550 million dollars, with benchmarks, that if hit could bring the total earn out to close to a billion dollars.

This isn’t to say that absolutely the Hype House of today will follow a similar path, but I certainly believe that it is possible.

In its infancy YouTube was filled with silly dance and lip sync videos, which made the whole phenomenon easy to discount. In many ways it mirrors the common perception of TikTok today.

However, as the saying goes, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

My thoughts boiled down to two key predictions, They were that creators would:
1) Invest far more in their own brands (beyond outside of ad revenue)
2) Look to build communities independent of social platforms (ie email, etc)

They weren’t incredibly bold predictions – I was assuming existing trends would continue to gain momentum. That said, looking back at 2019 these largely came to fruition.

2019 was a banner year for creators monetizing their audiences directly.

Cameo exploded last year and raised an additional $50 million based off its success (its predicted to be the next unicorn). Patreon added 1 million patrons (bringing its total number of patrons to just over 3 million). YouTube and Facebook rolled out features to allow creators to monetize their creators – both rolled out digital gifts, and YouTube launched additional paid subscription tiers (similar to Patreon).

Countless creators launched their own brands and products.

David Dobrik launched a Disposable Camera app which generated over a million downloads.

Jeffree Star and Shane Dawson launched a series of cosmetics which collectively sold over a million palettes within 30 minutes of launch (crashing Shopify in the process). Not all influencer product launches were a success, most notably Jaclyn Hill, who’s lipstick launch was met with criticism. Countless YouTubers claimed Hill’s products were shoddily made (and even dangerous) resulting in recalls and ridicule.

Creators did take strides to build communities and build a direct line of communication to their audience beyond YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, etc.

In 2019 we saw a number of top tier influencers adopting the text message based communication (driven largely by Ashton Kutcher funded startup Community). A quick scan of some of the top musicians, influencers, and celebrities and you’ll see many them inviting you to shoot them a text – everyone from Jake Paul, to Gary Vaynerchuck, and Phil Defranco are using the tactic.

Additionally, gaming streamers in particular, have adopted Discord, an app for video game communities that want a dedicated chat channel. The app now has more than 250 million users and handles 963,000,000 messages sent a day.

Of course, influencers working with brands wasn’t replaced and they haven’t abandoned social platforms in droves. However, these two trends show an evolution in how creators are approaching their businesses. Creators are looking to be less dependent upon third parties (ie the advertisers and platforms) and invest in themselves and their communities to create more sustainable businesses for the long term.

Brat creates original scripted programming catering to teenage girls. The company has shown explosive growth – in just over a year they’ve generated over 22 million views and three million subscribers. Brat has grown, at least in part, due to its regularly featuring popular influencers such as Anna Cathcart, Addison Riecke, Francesca Capaldi, and Emily Skinner.

What I find really interesting about Brat is their approach to working with influencers – they incorporate influencers to build audiences, but their IP doesn’t live or die based on any individual talent.  Instead, Brat has modeled itself after the Marvel Cinematic Universe where all characters and shows exist in a single universe of the same (fictional) county.

Brat gets to capitalize on influencer audiences – essentially building a market into the content/product itself. Most influencer content is lo-fi (when compared to traditional TV and films), as a result Brat is able to create more ‘native’ looking/lower cost content, which costs less. Rob Fishman, co-founder of Brat, said that they’re keeping costs very low/that they’re “spending in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for every season.” This budget conscious production is necessary given the YouTube environment where CPM’s are low (and at times disappear entirely).

In looking at Brat I see a lot of parallels to AwesomenessTV – they both cater to a younger, female demo, and produce content featuring influencers. Where they seem to differ is Brat is operating more lean and mean, and has a more straightforward path to becoming a profitable business.

In Digiday, Brat Co-Founder, Fishman stated that “If you’re spending any meaningful amount of money on production, there’s not yet a business model that’s totally supported by the platforms,” I agree with that. Ad revenue on YouTube isn’t as reliable as it used to be and even with ad integrations and sponsorships the ad model is very difficult.

That said, Brat is building massive audiences with their content, and doesn’t have to wait for advertisers to generate revenue. They’re vertically integrated, and are building up their own brand and selling their own products. If you visit the Brat website you’ll be able to by Brat branded merch, makeup, and jewelry. In looking at their site it looks as though their products must be selling well – several items are sold out.

Brat also seems to be laser focused on developing their own IP – I think that’s going to help them stay focused and not overextend themselves. Furthermore, it will allow them to be less solely reliant upon specific talent. Brat isn’t reliant upon one influencer to make or break their business. Now that they’ve created this brand and this audience they can test different stories and talent without it all hinging upon big influencers to make it a success.

It will be interesting to see how the company evolves and what role advertisers play in their business. At a glance, I certainly see more of an opportunity in selling products, paid subscriptions, and being more reliant upon their own IP vs outside advertisers.

The tenth, US based Vidcon, has come to its conclusion.

The conference has grown dramatically, from its humble beginnings – a few hundred people in LA – to tens of thousands of attendees filling the Anaheim Convention Center.

I’ve been to every Vidcon that’s been hosted in the US and its crazy to look back and see how much it has grown.  Brands now flock to Vidcon, and whole industries have been built upon the influencer economy.

This year I identified five overarching trends that really dominated Vidcon.

#1 CHINA, CHINA, CHINA

It’s been just under a year since China based ByteDance rebranded Musical.ly as TikTok, and in that short period of time they turned the platform into the most buzzed about social network.

While most big YouTubers were hidden away from throngs of fans at Vidcon, only coming out for meetups and panels, TikTokers were everywhere doing collaborations, and generally making their presence felt. It didn’t hurt that the platform also hosted the biggest bash of the event with a live performances from 2Chainz

TikTok wasn’t the only Chinese based platform with a presence at Vidcon. Haohao Xu, the Sr Director of Tencent hosted a fireside chat where he discussed Tencent’s push beyond China.

Seunghae Ahn, Product General Manager at Baidu also did a talk and highlighted Baidu’s video capabilities, and robust influencer ecosystem. The key takeaway being, that Chinese creators are expanding beyond their native platforms into YouTube (and beyond) and that there’s a massive MCN industry developing to help non-Chinese based creators develop audiences on Baidu properties.

#2 DIVERSIFYING REVENUE STREAMS

One of the hottest topics at Vidcon this year was how influencers can monetize their audiences beyond relying solely upon ad dollars.

For context, over the last few years the major platforms (YouTube, Facebook, etc) have applied more stringent rules for what content can and cannot be monetized, and CPM’s for most creators have declined. As a result, a whole ecosystem has emerged to help creators diversify revenue streams so that they’re not solely reliant upon advertising dollars.

At Vidcon, YouTube’s Chief Product Officer, Neal Mohan announced the launch of ‘Super Stickers’ which fans can purchase and deliver to their favorite creators (at a price), of which the creators get a significant percentage. They also announced additional tiers to their Channel Membership program, which acts similarly to Twitch’s subscription features and offeres varying degrees of exclusive content in exchange.

Just ahead of Vidcon, Facebook hosted a number of creators up in Malibu and announced a number of similar updates.

Facebook announced that Stars, a tipping feature currently being used exclusively in gaming streams, is going to be rolled out beyond gamers as part of an expanded beta to a small group of video creators. Additionally, Facebook like YouTube is going to begin testing, paid subscription features.

#3 WHERE WERE THE MCN’S?

One of the most noteworthy trends was a lack of (most) MCN presence.

First and foremost it is worth noting the exceptions – Collab, AwesomenessTV and Studio71 all had their presence felt. Studio71 hosted their annual bash, always the best party at Vidcon. Collab had an exclusive lounge and parties as well, and AwesomenessTV was plastered across Vidcon with advertising and booths.

However, in years past MCN’s dominated the conversation at Vidcon. They were a hot topic at most panels and keynotes, and for years were amongst the biggest sponsors. A lot has changed – Maker studios is non-existent, having been purchased and then shuttered by Disney, both Machinima and Stylehaul shut down. Countless other MCN’s have quietly shut down or are puttering along, but without the fanfare they once had.

The only reference to MCN’s that I noticed at any of the panels and talks I attended was in Baidu’s presentation in reference to the development of a Chinese MCN ecosystem.

There were rumblings of MCN’s having side meetings with YouTube about the fact that they feel as though they no longer feel supported by the platform.  Beyond that MCN’s were hardly mentioned and there were no panels or keynotes where they were the primary topic of conversation.

#4 VOLUME OF PLATFORMS

At the first Vidcon, 10 years ago, YouTube was the only viable social video platform. There was no Instagram, Facebook hadn’t launched video, and Vimeo, Dailymotion, etc were already left in the dust by YouTube’s sheer scale.

Fast-forward 10 years and there are over a half dozen major players in the social video space each vying for the attention of creators. Linkedin now has video, there’s YouNow and Twitch pushing to dominate livestreaming, Snap, Instagram, and TikTok are battling each other over short form content, and IGTV and Facebook Watch are making real attempts at chipping away at YouTube’s scale. Even Pinterest has a video offering it was touting to advertisers.

#5 DAMAGE CONTROL

Social media platforms have had a rough couple of years; at Vidcon it was clear YouTube wanted to take the opportunity to spruce up their image.

YouTube emphasized all the good they’re doing. During their keynote Neal Mohan, Chief Product Officer at YouTube went out of his way to highlight how diverse the platform is, and how they’re going to invest in education.  Hardly a word was mentioned about the recent controversies they’ve been embroiled in regarding censorship, de-platforming, radicalization, and demonetization. Other than a brief reference to updates to their terms of service coming out within the next six months you’d think everything was humming along smoothly.

I admire all the good that YouTube has done but the YouTube presentation felt like an attempt to white wash there image in front of an industry audience instead of addressing the real issues they’ve been facing over the last several years.

Regardless, as in years past Vidcon was a great way to get insight into what’s changing within the industry as well as connect with creators and other companies within the ecosystem. I’m also still shocked at how few brands and agencies invest in having a presence. Ten years in, I’d argue that Vidcon is the best, and most undervalued way to tap into the biggest influencers on the planet.

One traditional media company in particular stands out – Viacom. Viacom has a long, storied history with the space; they’d been suing Google over alleged copyright violations on YouTube from 2007-2014. As part of that suit Viacom had been seeking $1 billion dollars in damages, but was awarded no money as part of a settlement in 2014.

Now, four years later, Viacom seems to have done a 180 and fully embraces the digital video space (and YouTube in particular).

In the case of Viacom – waiting to make serious investments in the social video ecosystem seems to have allowed them to scoop up some serious deals.

Viacom acquired AwesomenessTV for a reported $50 million, a fraction of the company’s $650 million valuation back in 2016. This comes on the heels of Viacom having bought VidCon, the largest digital video conference/major influencer gathering.

And, at the very start of the year it was announced that Viacom had acquired WhoSay an influencer-marketing company that had raised $30 million and was incubated by CAA.

With these three acquisitions Viacom turned itself into a major player in the digital video ecosystem virtually overnight. They’ve got experiential, content, and marketing.

With VidCon they have the largest YouTube gathering. With Awesomeness they’ve got one of the largest MCN’s and production companies focused on the space, and with WhoSay they’ve got an established influencer marketing arm.

The timing of all this is interesting – YouTube is well over ten years old now, but I supposed it just goes to show that sometimes patience is a virtue.

It’s often easy to criticize the old guard for being slow, and lacking innovation (its something I’ve done constantly), but oftentimes methodical and deliberate can be mistaken for slow and out of touch.