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.

Where did things go wrong?

The role of MCN’s within the YouTube ecosystem has diminished, and many of them have disappeared altogether. Maker Studios, which was acquired by Disney for nearly a billion dollars has been shuttered. AwesomenessTV was sold for a fraction of its peak valuation and far less than the amount of money they raised.

While I’m not privy to the specifics of what happened at Defy, there are a few key factors that I think have contributed to MCN’s diminished role today.

LACK OF COMPETITIVE MOAT

MCN’s didn’t really have a huge competitive moat. At the end of the day MCN’s are basically ad networks rolled up into a central CMS. This allows the MCN’s to sell ads directly across channels. The issue here is that you can buy ads direct from YouTube in upfronts, and/or on auction. So, what’s the incentive to buy from a third party when you can go straight to the source for the same inventory? The reality is few MCN’s were able to sell their ad inventory to brands directly.

In a previous blog post, one talent manager was candid in saying that MCN’s didn’t really sell much ad inventory directly.

They rarely sell media, and there’s really no reason for a buyer to buy media from an MCN. Why should they when they can buy from Google directly. 

I feel like the MCNs are delivering value to a very, very small number of people in their network. And it doesn’t justify their business model. It would be a lot more honest if MCNs just called themselves what they were, which is a sales agency. The fact that MCNs have contracts that auto-renew without notifying the creative party is an indication of their awareness that they’re not delivering on their promise to creators.

In addition to selling ad inventory across channels most MCN’s also sold brand integrations within influencer content. The challenge here is that, for the most part, talent wasn’t exclusive to MCN’s on the branded content side of the business. Most top tier YouTube talent had managers, agents, and/or were signed with agencies (ie WME, UTA, or CAA) and countless others managed deals themselves.

OVERHEAD

A lot of MCN’s raised a lot of money. Awesomeness raised $162.5 million, Maker raised $65 million… the list goes on.

Although these companies were referred to as MCN’s in the marketplace many of them were expanding to countless other businesses and took on massive overhead in the process. Fullscreen launched a short-lived OTT platform. Awesomeness diversified beyond YouTube and expanded into music, movies, and even book publishing – they spread themselves very thin trying to do a lot of things that never panned out.

In addition to expanding beyond their core competency numerous MCN’s invested in signing the ‘top tier’ YouTube talent in upfront deals, which were not cheap. Then to recoup costs these MCN’s had to hire teams of sales people to sell brand deals for that talent (which oftentimes never came to fruition).

According to one talent manager the only reason top YouTubers join MCN’s is “because of minimum guarantee deals. That’s it… it’s free money. The MCN’s guarantees that the creator will make X amount in integration deals over the course of the term. And, if the MCN doesn’t deliver that amount in brand deals, then the MCN writes a check.”

Doling out ‘free money’ to talent that does nothing in return is hardly a sustainable business model.

RESENTMENT

Over the years there has been a lot of public backlash against MCN’s and this could not have helped when MCN’s go to sign on new creators. Also, smaller creators who were handing over a percentage of their revenue to MCN’s often felt taken advantage of. As a result, this new generation of creators seems far more cautious when it comes to joining MCN’s and are increasingly choosing to go it alone.

YouTube drama is commonplace these days, but in the early days of YouTube it was rare for YouTubers to air their grievances to the public. That all changed when in 2012 Ray William Johnson slammed Maker Studios claiming they were withholding money from him and holding his adsense account hostage. The drama went on for months between he and then Maker CEO Danny Diamond. Just over a year later when Maker was sold to Disney Danny ended up suing Disney as well as his former business partners. The whole ordeal painted MCN’s in a negative light and MCN’s were always looked at much more skeptically.

In the early days joining an MCN was a badge of having ‘made it’ in the YouTube world. Initially MCN’s where small and catered to the top talent. Over time this exclusivity gave way for a desire to scale and it was a landgrab to acquire talent. As a result you saw companies like Maker have 500 employees, but tens of thousands of channels, Awesomeness averaged 200+ channels for every employee. As a result, talent was largely left underserviced and many felt taken advantage of.

In one interview with an MCN executive, he confirmed that many YouTubers who joined MCN’s felt underwhelmed by their services, stating that:

“You see that same kind of conversations happening around MCNs. You have creators who say, “Hey, I’m giving you anywhere from 0-30% of my ad revenue, are you giving me that value in return?” A lot of creators don’t feel like they’re getting that value in return.”

As a result of so many creators complaining about wanting to get out of their MCN contracts YouTube rolled out a policy in 2013 making it much easier for YouTube Creators to get out of their MCN contracts.

To be clear, I’m not saying that all MCN’s don’t have viable business or that they’re all ripping off their talent. There are a lot of smart, talented, and moral people within the space. However, it does seem as though the heyday of MCN’s is largely passed.

So what does this mean for MCN’s?

As I outlined in a previous post, I think if MCN’s are to survive – the ones that will thrive and be successful are those that cater to specific niches and can actually sign enough of a small group of talent to own key verticals as well as properly service their talent.

 We covered a number of topics including:

• How Youtube’s relationship with creators has evolved
• The massive growth of the YouTube partner program
• YouTube’s relationship with MCN’s

The Confessional is a series of anonymous interview with influencers, brands, marketers, agencies and MCN executives to get honest, no-bullshit opinions on working in the space – the biggest gripes, the toughest lessons, the most valuable advice.

The following has been edited and condensed for clarity.

———

A lot of people are confused about how hands-on YouTube does and does not want to be with creators. How hands on are they?

There were three critical moments in YouTube’s approach to creator relationships. Pre-2010, there weren’t too many interactions with creators.

2012 was a pivotal time. It’s when brands started to seriously invest into digital media, MCNs started to gain legitimacy, and YouTube made a million different bets and hundreds of millions of dollars. It was like, “We want to enable these YouTube-enabled businesses, we are fine with people intermediating.”

2014 and 2015 was the most material shift, where YouTube was like: “Holy shit, we are losing the thing that made us special and we will put humans as well as dollars behind getting that relationship back.”

So that’s where they are now. YouTube is on the defensive because a) they’re saying that because of MCNs, agents and managers have been further intermediated, and b) they’re nervous because of competing platforms like Facebook Video.

Going to the MCNs, what sparked you guys jumping in to address the affiliate and the managed?

The origin of direct and manage came from naturally the evolution of the MCNs.

MCNs were born out of feature arbitration. The partner program was important at the time because not only could you monetize, but you would also agree on certain features like custom thumbnails and custom banners. In the early days if you weren’t one of the YouTubers hand selected by YouTube to be a part of the partner program then you had to join MCNs to get these things.

This is the house that divided YouTube, where half of us were pro-creator. The other half was like: “No, we actually need to enable these MCNs to continue to thrive.” But if you look at the numbers it wouldn’t have mattered. Maker Studios would love to believe that they hold 10 percent of traffic for YouTube globally. They don’t, it’s less than two percent. If they left, they wouldn’t do shit.

Was there pressure within YouTube to kind of prop up the MCNs to a certain extent?

In a way. We got rid of their ability to feature arbitrage and were forced to create real value-added services. This is when you start to see them invest in real sales team, production houses and so forth. It’s because we forced their hand. Because we took their dependency on shit they should have never depended on.

Do you think they’ve done enough to provide value to creators?

It depends. For the larger ones that are highly scaled, do they provide the value they should? No. They never have. Talk to any creator and you will get that response.

My thoughts on MCNs are generally negative. It’s a questionable value they provide across the board, certainly on ongoing basis. In my opinion, all of them were saved by the big media companies who needed a digital play and just don’t understand shit. But, am I happy, in hindsight, that they did exist in some fashion and that we are validated…yeah. It was worth it. But do I think they are useful, in reality? No.

Could you talk at all about the growth of the partner program?

Initially the partner program was small – an ever growing group of hand selected creators. In 2011, we took it from 33 thousand people to 4 million. Now, when you fast forward to today, the partner program doesn’t really exist. And that’s by design. We made a super-conscious decision to move away from the notion of partner because it was brand inconsistent with YouTube, and we didn’t philosophically like the idea of a non-democratic platform.

We wanted to enable anyone to turn creativity into a career. And what that practically meant is anyone can use certain features and programs, anyone can have a deep relationship with YouTube, depending on performance. It wasn’t demarcated by the relationship you have with your MCN or otherwise.

We did this to scale monetization and as a result brought in 50 percent more revenue. Even though most of the channels we enabled monetization for were tiny, it mattered because of how big the platform is.

When YouTube opened up the partner program to the masses did CPM’s lower?

The CPM’s did start lowering. However, around that time another factor came into the picture that had a way bigger impact on the creator’s bottom lines.

In 2012 we launched Watch Time as guiding algorithm of YouTube. As a result, a lot of people who did click-baity stuff suffered. I remember overnight a lot of channels lost 50% of their viewership.

What was the impact of the Partner Program to YouTube’s bottom line?

By opening up monetization to more and more people YouTube has generated billions in revenue. In 2011, after we began scaling the partner program, we grew revenue 50%. This was in spite of the fact that most of the channels we enabled monetization for were tiny. That’s how big the platform was (and is today).

The addition of monetization of more of the long-tail helped us generate $400 million dollars, which that year, in 2011, was a third of all of YouTube’s revenue.

We covered a number of topics including:
– YouTube’s $100 million channel initiative breathed life into MCN’s
– MCN’s making money off clueless talent
– That MCN’s exploited talent early on and have to evolve

The Confessional is a series of anonymous interview with influencers, brands, marketers, agencies and MCN executives to get honest, no-bullshit opinions on working in the space – the biggest gripes, the toughest lessons, the most valuable advice.

The following has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What was it like when you were starting out and finding new talent?

I started back in 2010 – I was working in network TV and producing some digital content. I had some insight to how powerful it could be, but it wasn’t something people took seriously yet. A friend had suggested that I would be good in the YouTube space. At the time it felt almost fake or scammy. I thought,  “What do you build with a YouTube star? How do you make money off that?” The partner program was super new and selective — it was invitation only.

“Viral videos” were still a real thing – it was a very different time then.

What was it like when you founded your MCN?

Originally, we were strictly a talent management company. Nine or ten months after launching our company, people were knocking on our door trying to figure out how to get in, either as executives or investors. Everything really started to take off when there was this $100 million original channel initiative – where YouTube funded original content. We saw this investment happen, people were approaching us, and we understood things were going to accelerate fast. We needed to figure out how to stay ahead, to scale our business and compete.

As MCN’s have scaled – how has the relationship with talent changed?

I’m not a fan of management companies being owned and operated by networks. It’s like the old Hollywood studio system, people are getting screwed. You get the talent young and put them in a crazy contract for two years, and if they explode, then you’re there for the ride. You didn’t have to do anything.

Some of the bigger MCNs have become so massive there’s no way they are properly servicing their signed creators.  In early 2012, most of the networks were super focused and creators were looking for a place to call home  YouTube did not yet have a YouTube Space or really any formal creators team or production team, at that time networks swooped in and started signing up talent.  Back then, creators were just looking for basic things like management and advice.  So when these networks reached out and offered some service (even with no proof or credibility) many creators flattered and excited signed up without understanding what they were really signing up for.

There are creators who signed up for an MCN several years ago, but didn’t know what they signed up for..  It’s almost the same as how AOL will make millions of dollars off of people who are still signed to AOL dial up, even though there are clearly much better options out there and they have become pretty much irrelevant in that regard.

What does the industry need?

Some creators get big so fast while they’re still young. When you are just starting off, that’s when you come across scammy companies that screw you over. If you are coming up and that’s your first experience it’s going to make you paranoid. All because some email came in your inbox like, “This seems credible.” There are 16 year old kids who have never even had a summer job before… They likely do not have the knowledge or guidance to figure out who to partner with or when to say no.

We need conversations like: What resources do creators have to protect themselves? Who do they trust? Who is a credible source? The industry needs that credible, completely independent resource for creators. It would be helpful to come up with, like, the five things MCNs need to do. Number one is transparency with their earnings and where that money is coming from.  So many networks add no value to pre-roll. Creators need to know how the money is being generated.

I think Hank and John Green’s The Guild may help with a lot of this.

Is it harder for creators to make money on YouTube?

It’s more competitive, and it’s a more saturated market. There used to be creators who could work the system, to get to the front page — boom, they made their $5,000. Not anymore. It’s much harder to game the system, but YouTube has gamed it for themselves. There are a few creators that they heavily promote, maybe with commercials or recommended tabs, just these five people Youtube wants you to watch and make into stars.

There are definitely creators who are YouTube darlings – they aren’t that relevant anymore (they don’t have big audiences like they used to) but YouTube still always hast them at the events, on panels, getting write ups. I think that it’s a little bit of legacy thing. They’re pushing the idea that the darlings are still relevant, but really, they’re not.

I will say there are a lot more ad dollars being shifted into the eco-system which is a great.  But, we need to continue as an industry to question what is valuable and the market value.  Is it views?  What if they are not organic?  Is it content quality? Is it access to eyeballs that will convert to purchases?  Not every view is created equal… we need to continue to push to the forefront the most valuable assets in our industry so that we can continue to evolve.

What’s the role of MCN’s now and in the future?

MCNs have done a really good job of creating and pushing this idea that they are needed in the space — that’s literally what they do. They’re marketing themselves to the brands and ad agencies and as a result they’re generating deals.

In five years, many MCNs will still be around, but it’s going to continue to become far more competitive. We’re seeing more focused networks pop up, and established companies come into the space. MCNs might transform to become focused businesses. Maybe you’ll have companies that become agencies, then become production companies, then become… whatever.

I never would have thought we’d be where we are today. I genuinely thought that there was  going be a revolt against MCN’s by the top creators. Most networks built their brands on the backs of creators – and many exploited some people early on.  That being said, YouTube has stepped up to created some systems to flag exploitation.

The short term goal for many of the MCNs was to aggregate as many views as possible and sell.  Now that the excitement and novelty is starting to ware off, many of the independent (and even acquired) MCNs are forced to figure out a sustainable business.  

We covered a number of topics including:
– The early days of YouTube MCN’s and signing creators
– How the relationship with MCN’s and creators has evolved
– How Hollywood’s influence is killing creativity on YouTube
– How money and success can negatively impact on creators

The Confessional is a series of anonymous interview with influencers, brands, marketers, agencies and MCN executives to get honest, no-bullshit opinions on working in the space – the biggest gripes, the toughest lessons, the most valuable advice.

The following has been edited and condensed for clarity.

———-
What were the early days of MCN’s like when you were starting out?

Acquisition and signing was always my thing. But when I joined an MCN, there was really no book for it. We figured it all out by diving into the [Youtube] CMS.

We started scaling like crazy when we realized there was a very profitable segment of the business nobody was going after. There was this mid and long tail group of creators that were largely neglected – there was no clear pathway to monetization. It left us open to pick who we wanted and say: we want to work with you.

How have things at MCN’s changed?

After monetization opened up for everybody and our whole business shifted — we realized we had to start figuring out real value. At that time, it was all about digital growth. We were interested in social media economics, what makes a YouTuber grow, and a lot of it was education. We weren’t burdened by transactions.

Transactions make you a little dumb with digital. It’s a narrow focus: the brand is asking for this. You don’t really learn anything. But when all you have is, “I need to turn this person’s 10,000 subscribers into 500,000 subscribers,” — then every trick in the book that you learn, you’re going to a partner like, “Let’s try it.” It was a scrappy time, but I think there’s a need for it to come back. Transactional doesn’t grow you on that level — when it’s just money, it distracts and detracts from innovative growth.

What’s the focus for most creators today?

Most creators joining MCNs will say, “I just want sales deals,” when they have less than 100,000 subscribers. At that point you should be focused on digital growth, sales isn’t going to do much for you. You spend your time trying to figure out how to get that thousand-dollar deal or you spend your time growing, so you can have a ten-thousand-dollar deal.

Frankly, the best kind of development you can do is developing your own brand — that’s where the real money is. How do you have a fanbase that’s meaningful and will follow you, so you can move around? How do you build content that people care about? The smart creators are the ones that are able to develop their IP in such a way that it’s something that can extend beyond themselves.

What’s your perspective on the explosion of MCNs signing creators?

I can track it back to one YouTube launch of a feature in the CMS. Before, the way you invited channels was super manual. It was an incredible burden to get a single channel in and half the time they’d be rejected, for God-knows-what reason. In 2013 YouTube started the roll up tool, so you can invite dozens of channels at once. Things just exploded.

How did things evolve after that, with you and your competition?

It quickly became clear who was winning, and who the targets were. Every second that people on channel partnership teams were working meant big money. We knew the land grab was going to be over quickly. Creators started taking notice, and signing bonuses and minimum sales guarantees came into play. MCNs took deals they knew would lose money just to build their profile and value. In this second wave, MCNs became focused on revenue, not “This person’s cool, I want to work with him. Maybe he’ll be the next big star.”

The third wave of MCNs is when acquisitions started: Maker got bought for a billion dollars. You started juicing up your enterprise value to sell for as much as possible. Digital people got a crash course in the corporate world — it was an interesting time. We had already recognized the market opportunity, now we had to identify what the next evolution of MCNs would be.

What’s the thing you want people to be talking about, but they aren’t talking about?

The one thing that keeps me up at night is Hollywood influence coming into digital. It’s killing creativity on the platform — since it started, content has gotten worse. For creators who’ve gone to premium platforms, there’s this reaction from fans: “We liked you for what you were doing, why are you trying to do this other thing?” The idea of making fans pay for that, when the best version of you is free? When people talk about premium digital content, my stomach hurts.

The reason I started in digital is this: I believe in the democratization of media and in building an entertainment middle class. I hate gatekeepers, I like creators having control. People have the idea that if something has more money and people behind it, it’ll be better. I inherently disagree.

I’m interested in the weirdos creating stuff that revolutionizes audiovisual art and makes us think a different way, not the people who are playing the game, working the system, being super brand-friendly. It makes me sad that content is losing out in the algorithm. YouTube used to be for the outcasts, and I want it to be punk again.

What’s the next evolution of MCNs and creators?

There’s three different groups. First, the people building their own platforms, using the influence of their creators. Second, there’s some positioning themselves as digital marketing agencies with media sales, influencer stuff. They recognize that the most important value is in access to creators. And there’s MCNs building out other types of businesses—TV shows, movies, games—which they co-own with creators.

One type of MCN is not being addressed as much—this goes back to the idea of building the entertainment middle class—it’s the one reinforcing education on digital platforms. It’s finding new, interesting opportunities for YouTubers making $10,000 a year to go full time. Nobody’s focusing there, and there’s a lot of room for MCNs to fit into that market and add a lot of value. The original vision was figuring out how you grow talent in your network. Even though every major MCN has lost that vision, it’s still valid. I hope to see a lot more of it.

What’s your perception of creators these days?

I’ve worked with multimillionaires from YouTube, and they’ve earned every penny of it. To get that audience behind you is winning the lottery. When you post that first video, you don’t know if it’s going to get ten views or a million. Every time you do that, you buy a lottery ticket. But once Youtubers go from making nothing to making millions… once all the money’s at play, it adds a lot of pressure to something that was fun. Money doesn’t make people happier — fIfty percent of the time, I’d say it makes them sadder.

We covered a number of topics including:
-How the platform & money has changed the ecosystem
-What it was like working with MCN’s
-Why he left YouTube and got burnt out on the platform

The Confessional is a series of anonymous interview with influencers, brands, marketers, agencies and MCN executives to get honest, no-bullshit opinions on working in the space – the biggest gripes, the toughest lessons, the most valuable advice.

The following has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What got you into YouTube?

I started my channel after getting absorbed by the first Call of Duty scene for sniping videos on YouTube. Highlight reels of playing CoD and using sniper rifles and stumbling upon the commentary scene which only had three big YouTubers in it.

I remember at the time the largest CoD YouTuber in the world who had 25,000 followers and thinking to myself: “Wow, this is the best guy on YouTube, the biggest guy on YouTube,” and also thinking “This guy talks a lot about his life.” It really seemed that everybody was going to these videos to learn, not for the personalities. It was on that premise that I started my channel and ran it for about two and a half years.

What was it like when you first got momentum? What was your reaction?

It was a cool experience for me because my fellow CoD YouTubers became my best friends, literally. For two years, my best friends were all other CoD YouTubers who I would Skype with and play with, occasionally. And the feeling was very much being a part of this giant Internet community where people listened to what you were saying and viewed you as a leader. That just felt really great to be recognized for.

What was your experience like joining [Redacted – Name of MCN]?

At the time, the coolest thing that I felt had ever happened to me was being contacted by them. I was excited to make money from it because I started thinking, “Wow, this could be a job,” and knowing that I get about 60,000 views a day that’d be a hundred dollars a day. And I was in eleventh grade at the time.

The money was cool, but it was also so cool to have that recognition because of what that MCN was at the time. It was like a badge of honor. Then it all changed. All MCN models, or at least that MCN’s model moved to quantity over quality.

Why did you leave that network?

I wanted to speak with the ad sales team and work with them one-on-one. I thought that would be the best way to make brand partnerships — the creators recommending types of brands and types of branded content they wanted to do to the ad sales team, who would create decks around that and sell them. They got me in a meeting with the head of ad sales. I pitched to him for 30 minutes and the look on his face was like, “Why am I talking to this guy?”

They just didn’t seem to respect what we were doing that much or treat us like we were what made them big. It really came down to me wanting more brand deals than anything else. And from brands I cared about. I was one of the biggest gaming channels at the time, I was a top 100 YouTuber, and I barely saw any brand deals or any cool opportunities.

Do you feel like your experiences and the way you got into the community is similar to a lot of others? As an introvert using the platform to express yourself?

I would actually hypothesize that being an introvert leads you to be more interested in gaming and more engaged in those communities rather than it being a casual thing.

How do you feel the YouTube and gaming community as a whole has evolved over the years?

The gaming scene started out being a little personality-based…when YouTubers were doing half advice, half talking about their lives. Then YouTubers like myself shifted the community to be all about learning, whether it was advice about multiplayer, zombies or tricks, Easter eggs, those sort of things.

Soon around the time that I left, a lot of things shifted over to being more personality-based as YouTubers got so big that people wanted to see more of the behind-the-scenes stuff. You see this with the Let’s Play community, which quickly became the dominant category on YouTube. I remember the interest in my channnel and a lot of other gamers clearly dropped when people started getting 10 to 70 million views a month on videos of them playing little internet games that were really quirky, not really great mechanics or long-term appeal, but reacting to the game made for super entertaining content.

What about the injection of all the money? What do you think the impact of that has been?

It changed how a lot of brands are constructed to be businesses as much as they are brands. I respect it and I think the viewer ends up winning most of the time, because that person can put so much more time into making awesome content.

Anything else you want to say?

I was talking to my friend who leads a lot of influencer stuff about how incredibly powerful some partnerships between brands and influencers can be. And I think his point speaks to the creativity and deep understanding that YouTubers have of the YouTube content space that I think is underappreciated.

I think a lot of YouTubers have really, really cool ideas that they can act on, ranging from games to short films to businesses that would work. A lot of brands that don’t know what to do with creators could benefit from starting conversations with them.

We covered a lot of ground and dove into some juicy topics, including:
-The process of working with brands and creators
-The role MCN’s currently play with his talent
-Media sales
-The future of MCN’s

The Confessional is a series of anonymous interview with influencers, brands, marketers, agencies and MCN executives to get honest, no-bullshit opinions on working in the space – the biggest gripes, the toughest lessons, the most valuable advice.

The following has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What’s it like working with brands and creators?
I think that it’s fun because people are getting a bit more used to what a YouTube integration campaign looks like. There’s not as many questions as there used to be.

That being said, there is still is a lot of education that’s occurring on a daily basis and sometimes we as managers are educating the people who are bringing us the deals, because all they want are the impressions and the views and they don’t understand that it’s a fine line that needs to be walked. If they are too heavy-handed, they’re going to defeat the purpose that they’re trying to achieve.

Where are most of your brand deals being sourced from?
I get deals from all over- MCNS, PR companies, ad agencies, and brand direct. What role do the MCNs play in the ecosystem for you with your talent?

They’re just a sales agency at this point. They definitely don’t manage any talent, nor should they because there’s an obvious conflict of interest. MCNs will always do what’s best for them not what’s best for the talent. They’re not trying to nurture careers and look at long-term effects of what actions will have on creators, because their end game is squeezing out as much profit as possible.

The talent is a commodity to MCNs.

Do the MCN’s sell the media for any of for your talent?
They rarely sell media, and there’s really no reason for a buyer to buy media from an MCN. Why should they when they can buy from Google directly.

I feel like the MCNs are delivering value to a very, very small number of people in their network. And it doesn’t justify their business model. It would be a lot more honest if MCNs just called themselves what they were, which is a sales agency. The fact that MCNs have contracts that auto-renew without notifying the creative party is an indication of their awareness that they’re not delivering on their promise to creators.

Why else would they be reluctant to notify the party that their contract’s up for renewal?
If you’re confident in the service you’re providing, you’re never hesitant to let the other party know that it’s up for renewal. Why would you be? It’s professional courtesy.

How does your talent feel about being in an MCN?
Most are indifferent. Some want out of their contracts and be independent.

So, where do you think the MCNs are headed?
MCNs are waging a propaganda campaign where they’re telling all these ad agencies that they have relationships with creators that are exclusive, when they’re not. They’re not even remotely exclusive.

They say that they alone know how to handle campaigns with creators, when they could just go directly to the talent handlers. If an MCN brings me a deal for my clients, I’ll definitely do it if it’s right. But I think it would just be better for everybody if they were more honest about the role they play.

What role is YouTube playing these days in terms of the relationships of talent?
They’re trying to increase their role. YouTube’s so big, YouTube’s so vast, and the fact that it’s so vast affects how it interacts with talent.

If you’re a network, a television network, and you’ve got basically half-hour slots, Monday through Sunday, 24 hours a day, there’s only so many people that can be on air. But if you’re a website, and anyone who can upload anything can be successful, anytime, it just creates this very unwieldy landscape. It’s hard to manage and have impactful relationships.

Why do you think they bother trying to cultivate real relationships?
Most likely because of YouTube Red. Google’s always thinking a few steps ahead.

YouTube Red is going to be a challenge for them. It’s a bit nebulous what it is at the moment and paywalls are so fucking weird. If you set one up you better give me a solid reason that I can remember as to why you did it. But if it’s just so I can download content, I’m not sure that it’s worth it.

What do you think I haven’t covered off on that people should know about? What’s the juicy topic you want to talk about?
I would say it’s really that MCNs are really exploitative and don’t deliver on their value promise. And that people should know that, creators should stop joining and stop renewing their contracts.

Why do you think they are joining?
The top ones are joining just because of minimum guarantee deals. That’s it… it’s free money.

The MCN’s guarantees that the creator will make X amount in integration deals over the course of the term. And, if the MCN doesn’t deliver that amount in brand deals, then the MCN writes a check.

Thanks you for your time!

He helped demystified a lot my preconceived notions on the state of MCN’s, their businesses, intents and roles. Some of the big takeaways/highlights of our conversation include:

•       The difference between working with agencies versus brands
•       Why MCN’s Are Like Record Labels
•       Common misconceptions around MCN’s
•       The perception of MCN’s as gatekeepers

The Confessional is a series of anonymous interview with influencers, brands, marketers, agencies and MCN executives to get honest, no-bullshit opinions on working in the space – the biggest gripes, the toughest lessons, the most valuable advice.

The following has been edited and condensed for clarity.

In your experience, you being on the MCN inside, what’s it like working with brands, creators, and agencies?

Oddly enough, brands out of that group are the easiest to work with. I feel like if you’re in a position where you’re lucky enough to work with someone at a brand directly, that’s usually a pretty intelligent person at the brand.

In most cases, the brand people trust a little more. Maybe that’s because, unlike an agency, they’re not a middle man and they don’t have people pressuring them from both sides. So the brand sometimes is better about trusting the process.

Agencies, because of the fact they’re in this proxy position, are generally more concerned about the financials of everything. They care about the eCPM, they care about building up the media plan. And, more than anything they care about positioning the influencer marketing campaign within the narrative of the campaign direction they sold through to the brand.

As a result, you have agencies that really put the screws to the publishers and to the talent. I think this is because agencies pitch themselves to brands as the experts. They want to always be the strategic engine behind a campaign.

I worked at an agency before. It’s a pretty entitled position to be in. You have the checkbook, so you think that you can boss these publishers around, and in a big way, you can.

You’ve mostly been talking about media agencies. What is the distinction you would make between creative and media agencies?

When working with creative agencies, it can potentially be more combative and there can be more friction.

The logical conclusion of working with influencers is that they’re creating the content. That is what the creative agencies have been doing for years and years. Now obviously, the content that a YouTuber is creating doesn’t necessarily have the same production value of something produced by a big agency, but as technology gets better, the equipment that creators are using as they are maturing is getting better, their storytelling is maturing, that delta is closing.

The MCNs are saying that brands should be using influencers for their branded content, as opposed to the well-produced content that’s historically been created. So I could see why creative agencies would be a little scared or protective of their role.

Can you talk a bit about the layers involved in deals? What’s the role of the MCN’s and where you see them fitting in?

To be clear, I don’t think all the layers are unnecessary. I think managers offer a real value to creators. A lot of these creators, they are creative. They are filmmakers. they’re not business people, they’re not salespeople. They’re not super organized.

They need the support of accounting, and legal, and all that managers and lawyers and agents can offer. I think MCNs can offer a valuable layer in acting as a middle-man between the creators and brands.

In an ideal world, brands would know who they want to work with. They would go to the creator or creator’s management directly. The creator would get their shit done on time and to the brand’s specifications and timelines, but you and I have worked in this business long enough to know that that almost never happens.

The MCNs are a nice operational layer in the middle to help facilitate work. Maybe, as the industries get more mature, the need for that operational layer will be diminished, as creators start thinking more like business people and they understand that if they continually miss deadlines, brands aren’t going to want to work with them anymore. A lot of them understand that, but a lot of them don’t.

As more creators start thinking like businesses, and maybe even building teams around themselves, they’ll realize that an MCN might not be necessary. On the other hand, as brands and agencies start knowing more about the industry and who they want to work with, they have a better understanding of the nuances.

I’ve always liked the comparison that MCNs are a lot like record companies, or at least what record companies used to be.

You may get to a point where you have some MCNs who have such a strong or specific point of view and taste to be able to have the caché of something like a Sub Pop Records or Matador– these labels that have done such a good job curating stuff that fans trust them. It’s like, “Yo, I’ve never heard of this new band, but they’re on Sub Pop, and I love everything that Sub Pop does, therefore I’m gonna explore and experiment with this band.”

I think Tastemade and Whistle Sports are like that because they’re just so specific and have a defined point of view.

I see companies like Fullscreen and Maker almost like the EMI or the Universal Music Group of the world, where nobody really knows or cares who’s on Atlantic versus Elektra versus Columbia. These are like big, faceless, holding companies.

You said MCNs are currently acting like a middleman between creators and brands, but oftentimes creators work with brands directly or their managers do the deals. In those scenarios, what role is the MCN playing?

I imagine more of that is going to happen, as I said, as the two sides of the equation — brands and creators — start maturing and learning more about each other. To go along with the record label analogy, I think you’re going to see a lot more creators hiring their own small teams run their businesses instead of going with a label. You saw the same thing with the music business.

PewDiePie doesn’t need an MCN. He’s got enough money to hire his own social media person, his own licensing person, his own distribution person. Obviously not everyone can do that. It goes to the idea like when Radiohead put out their album for free, people were like, “Yeah, that’s great for Radiohead,” but there’s some things that an MCN still can do that individual creators don’t have the power or connections or money to do.

But, I bet PewDiePie can get a much better social media person by hiring them directly than by paying his MCN providing one. So, really, the top-tier creators are going to be more laser-focused in hiring their own staff.

Creators don’t need an MCN when they have smart people working for them.

There’s a lot of misconceptions around what people perceive the MCNs do and what they actually do. What do you think is the biggest misperception?

I think it’s a lot like record labels again, where you have the creators, who are similar to bands, and they’re like, “This label is doing nothing for me. They’re taking my money. They’re not giving me an advance and then I’m never going to recoup the costs. I’m never going to see a dime.”

You see that same kind of conversations happening around MCNs. You have creators who say, “Hey, I’m giving you anywhere from 0-30% of my ad revenue, are you giving me that value in return?” A lot of creators don’t feel like they’re getting that value in return,

But I also think that creators often don’t understand the challenges that MCNs go through. When you’re a creator of 5,000 subscribers, it’s not realistic to expect that you’re going to get a two hundred thousand dollar Ford deal.

In my experience working at two MCNs, everyone that I run into generally wants to do right by creators and make that value proposition worth it to the creators. I think when creators don’t feel like they’re getting enough value, it’s a result of a lack of execution, not necessarily a lack of empathy or a lack of interest.

So we’ve talked about the perceived misconceptions between creators and MCN’s. What about the perceived misconceptions of MCN’s buy brands and agencies?

As I alluded to earlier, I think brands sometimes see MCNs as a necessary evil, a one-stop-shop for building a large program with multiple pieces of talent. You get media thrown in, you get social support thrown in, and I think that makes a lot of sense for brands and agencies that don’t necessarily understand the space very well. They want to just write one check and have the MCN take care of the rest.

Maybe the brand or agency doesn’t have the appetite — sort of going back again to risk tolerance — they don’t have the appetite or the desire to go to three or four different managers and negotiate with each one and do all of that.

But, for really savvy brands and agencies, I don’t really see a need to go to an MCN if you know exactly what you want and you understand that working with talent can be a laborious process and you’re a cool hip brand that gets the space. Because, if a brand knows exactly who they want to work with, they understand what it’s like to work with that creator, there’s no need to pay the MCN Margins.

On the creator side of things, they have come to think MCN’s are the way to get brand deals. Not many creators have sales teams and they aren’t doing outbound outreach to brands and agencies.

The only people that the agencies generally hear from are MCNs. You can sort of understand on both sides (brands and agencies) why they would think they need MCN’s. They’re both getting pitched by the MCNs.

I’d imagine that some brands or agencies think that MCNs are a necessary evil to work with creators – that they wish they could work with creators directly, either to get a better deal or to push the creators to do more work. MCNs often act as a gatekeeper in a sense, where it’s like, “You sign this IO, we’re delivering to the IO, and you’re not getting anything more than that,” and maybe brands and agencies think that if they went to the creators directly, they’d have more leverage or negotiating power. At the end of the day, a lot of brands and agencies aren’t yet sophisticated enough to work with creators or their management teams directly.

My latest interviewee for The Confessional is a manager of top YouTube talent. Several of the creator’s in this individuals roster regularly receive tens of millions of YouTube views per month and hundreds of millions per year. In this extensive interview, we discussed the business of YouTube, the goals of this individual’s talent (both on and off YouTube), and the how much money top online video creators are really making. Some of the major points we covered include:

• SVOD and YouTube competitors
• YouTubers ‘making it’ on televisions
• YouTuber revenue streams
• How much money his top creators are making in a year
• How creators can better work with brands and vice versa

(Editor’s Note: The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.)

All the big platforms are going to continue to grow as marketplaces, both for integrations and for original content. I foresee Facebook developing its own YouTube Red, and Facebook developing content that they own. Netflix is going to open its doors to YouTube creators because these people are proven at driving digital audiences. People with a track record of driving digital audiences are going to have more and more opportunities, on platforms such as Amazon, Hulu, Go90, and Netflix. That’s where I see big opportunities in the near future.

You’re in a unique position in that you’re seeing both brand deals and entertainment deals. Do you want to talk a little bit about the SVOD deals that you’re seeing?

YouTube Red budgets are very legitimate. And they’re going to be producing really great content. They’re enabling people with creative visions who started out on YouTube to do what they want to do. I think they’ve got a strong chance of succeeding. However, Google is a search company at its core, not an entertainment company, and they’ve stumbled so many times when they’ve tried to dabble in content and entertainment. Like when they gave $100 million out to all those different players, they told them to create YouTube channels and they all kind of fizzled. I feel like that might happen again. If they really want to spend the money then they might as well do it right and buy a proven player like Netflix to be their equivalent of YouTube red. Then they could integrate Netflix into the Google ecosystem.

We got offers from Vessel, but I brought those offers to YouTube and got YouTube to pay us to keep uploading on YouTube first. Facebook has been reaching out and having soft conversations – but they’re not shelling out money for content the way Vessel and YouTube are. At least not yet.

Is the talent you manage interested in making the leap from digital to traditional media? Do they want a TV deal?

Yeah, several of the talent I work with want a TV show. They came out here to be in traditional entertainment and that’s their end game. However, that’s really not the case for everyone I work with. Some of them want to focus exclusively on YouTube. Several of them think YouTube is the holy grail. It’s a platform that’s internationally accessible and free and reaches a massive audience, and you can shop on it. You can talk about a product, put the link in the description, and somebody can click on that link and buy it. There is so little friction between consumer and the product via YouTube.

How are the conversations with TV networks being received so far?

We haven’t sold a show yet, but there are a lot of conversations. The fact that these creators have this loyal and engaged audience, that’s very appealing to the network executives. Broad City started as a YouTube show, Justin Bieber started on YouTube, Workaholics started on YouTube, and Garfunkel and Oates started on YouTube. There are enough case studies at this point of individuals and shows that have moved from the web to TV. But even people who’ve been in the TV game a long time and are really great at it, it’s still like a tough game.

Kurt Sutter, who Sons of Anarchy, just got his show cancelled. He worked on The Sopranos, then The Shield, then Sons of Anarchy. He just started a new show. It was called The Executioner’s Son and it was cancelled after a few months. TV is a tough, tough business. And so, yes my creators have big audiences, but like it’s still a business that you have to try your ass off to get into.

Do your talent want to maintain a YouTube presence even if they get a TV show?

Definitely. They never want to totally abandon YouTube. That is like the kiss of death, if you just abandon your YouTube channel. You’ve got to nourish that audience.

What do you think went wrong with Grace Helbig’s show? That was so short-lived.

If you’re taking somebody from YouTube, where a big portion of the audience may be international or not even have a cable subscription, and then you’re expecting all that audience to magically appear on an antiquated delivery system, then you might be left disappointed.

What kind of revenue are your creators generating in a year?

Maybe like $500,000 to $1 million per creator. My top 5 are generating that much revenue. Of the ten talent I work closely with, I’d say the average is probably $400,000 per year.

Where are your creators generating their revenue? Are there any revenue streams that are working well that you think most people don’t know about?

Merchandise. If you broke down most of my talent’s revenue it’s probably a third adsense, a third brand integrations, and a third merchandise.

What you do think about people who hate on the YouTube stars and say they don’t deserve all the money they’re making?

I look at television at something like Real Housewives. To buy airtime on Real Housewives you’re going to be spending $300,000 for 30 seconds. Is that highly crafted, premium content? Did those people go to acting school or do they have years of theater experience before they were on camera? No. They’re just shows where you just have random people doing their thing. Duck Dynasty has probably one of the most expensive ad blocks on television for years, and this is a random hillbilly family in Louisiana. What do they do that’s so special? So, all of a sudden because somebody’s on a smaller screen and not backed by a TV network they’re not worth those same financial and brand opportunities?

One of the things I’ve heard a lot from creators is “Brands don’t get it!” Often times I agree, but not always. But, on the flipside, do the YouTube creators “Get it”?

Creators have to understand that the moment they take money from somebody you’re going to have to make some compromises. They have to be respectful of what the objectives of the campaign are and how they’re going to achieve them. If you want to play at a higher level, then you have to elevate your game entirely. And that means how you listen to people. You have to be mindful of how you speak to people, how you execute on things. You’ve gotten to a certain point, but if you want to continue then you’re going to need to adapt. A perspective shift is healthy. If you are comfortable with complacency, then you’re not the creator you think you are and you’re not going to be the creator you want to be.

The major points of our interview transcript include:

•           – Why YouTube created MCN’s and how they’ve evolved
•           – Why creators often sign with MCN’s
•           – How brands should work with creators

The Confessional is a series of anonymous interview with influencers, brands, marketers, agencies and MCN executives to get honest, no-bullshit opinions on working in the space – the biggest gripes, the toughest lessons, the most valuable advice.

The following has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Coming from the MCN side of the equation – what was it like working with the brands, the creators, the agencies? What worked and what didn’t?

My understanding of the MCN industry is that Google created it as a way to help produce better quality content and help support creators. It’s largely populated with people who are coming from the talent side of the equation versus the advertising agency side or the technology side.

The biggest challenge is that the industry is new, so the norms have not been defined clearly. You have the MCNs, you have the agencies, and I’m saying “talent agencies,” like WME and CAA. You have the advertising agencies. You have managers. You have creators.

You have a lot more inputs to that equation than what you had back in the old television days. All those inputs and all these people who think that they have a role in the equation make it complicated to establish any real norms, or rules of engagement, metrics, and ways of doing business.

The players have not clearly defined their roles, and because of this everybody is running towards every opportunity. And that causes murkiness. That causes aggravation. It causes the true value of influencer to be masked because of the immense amount of waste of people’s time to get to the bottom line.

So, depending on your entry point you could end up with a very different deal?

Right, and just to focus on the MCN part of it, one of the big problems with MCNs is that they don’t harken back to their mission. Basically their mission was not defined by themselves.

Their mission was defined by Google and it is to add value. That’s ambiguous, but you could say there’s three places that MCNs could add value.Very few are doing this. You could say ad agencies and talent agencies could do two out of three of these easily. 

•       – By growing views & subscribers
•       – Providing business and/or production support
•       – Growing revenue

So, it’s important for MCN’s to be doing something different – creating technology, interesting integrations with available APIs etc.  Because you want to differentiate yourself and if you want an acquisition it’s good to own IP or unique processes .

Even if a creator is signed to an agreement, then at some point that creator’s going to want to get out of that agreement or that agreement’s going to expire. That’s not something other companies really want to invest in because you can go and hire talent.  This is the secret many in Hollywood do not want you to know, talent will “go” with almost anyone who is creating interesting stories, product, services.  The challenge is managing the workflow.  A lot of brands have success working directly with talent.

Anybody can hire your talent. That’s something people forget.

So, what’s the future of MCN’s?

It’s hard to build a product in technology that is actually going to be used by creators, but that’s the need.

We should be more focused on technology to help channels grow.

My classic example is Brendan’s Omelet Channel and my Crêpe Channel, and your handler at the MCN says, “Hey, Brendan. There’s this guy who’s making omelets and you’re making crêpes and you basically have the same audience and you’re both releasing videos on Tuesday. Why don’t you switch to Wednesday and point people there to Interviewee’s channel on Tuesday? And he’ll reciprocate and then down the line, let’s see if there’s a collaboration we could do.”

So, that is a perfect example of not only adding value, but growing the network because traffic goes back and forth.  A couple of MCNs have automated this process again points to the power of making great product and/or using technology to add value. More monetization opportunities. That’s an example of a great way an MCN could add value.

What actually happens is that everybody goes running into the space and the investors who put money in go, “Hey, wait a minute. You guys aren’t making any money. You’ve got lots of expenses, but you’re not selling enough.”

So, the MCN’s try and sell more media (not just brand integrations). The problem with that is that that media is already being sold by a person who has a Google business card OR it’s being sold in real time via an exchange.

The largest ad exchange called ADEX, which is part of DoubleClick, which is owned by Google.

By definition, if you have a seat on the exchange, you can buy and sell YouTube inventory. So, you can just go bid on channels in the exchange because there’s not an exclusive. You can get that inventory if you want it and probably pay less than what the Google salesperson is selling it for if you buy it via the exchange.

So that’s a challenge for MCN’s. Any savvy media agency is going to know that they can buy inventory via an exchange. They have a trading desk.

That is a perfect example of how an MCN fails because an MCN goes to try and sell more media, which isn’t really working because of the exchanges. And, as a result, helping to grow their audiences is falling by the wayside.

Why would the MCN’s sell media? Forget about that the exchange even exists – there are hundreds of Google salespeople crawling over every agency with piles of data. You can’t compete with that nor should you.

They [MCN’s] are just not going to sell the media. They’re not going to get the price that they want. And, the customers don’t want to buy their media because they’re able to get it already and from a cheaper source.

So, how were you guys actually adding value to creators?

Every channel, as part of our agreement would get optimized. We were trying to create technology to solve this, so that it wouldn’t become such a manual process.

You really need a technical understanding of what the Internet and in particular YouTube is…how it works. If you don’t understand the technical intricacies or the map of how to navigate this web, you basically won’t get the views that you need for free via SEO. And that is, once again, a point where MCNs have failed, where they don’t offer leadership. They don’t offer enough of those services.

I’m proud that we offered that. I think most MCN’s just made a lot of promises, and were just casting a wide net and pulling channels in as fast as they could without actually delivering much value.

There’s a lot of name dropping and that’s like heroine to a lot of young creators. They want to work with the big names or go to Hollywood and that’s what sucks them in. They have a little success and they think they’re going to be on CSI. That’s it. They’re just like, “Oh, my God, Hollywood. I’m doing this. Yeah.”

Let’s transition to the advertising side of things. Do you feel brands are doing enough to capitalize on this space?

What’s happening now is that MCNs, advertising agencies, talent agencies, and creators themselves are making it very difficult for a brand to figure out how to get from A to B.

I think that brands over a certain size…let’s say, if you have over $50 million in gross sales per year, they should be interacting with influencers and creating content directly.

And when I say “directly,” I meant they shouldn’t be going down the chain, the digital agency goes to MCN, who goes to the manager, who goes to so and so and then finally goes to the creator who comes up with the idea. That needs to stop.

There’s no reason to have that kind of expense. The whole thing about the Internet is that it removes layers, so you can have more direct control and access and that usually means you save money and you can do things quicker. And that’s what should be happening in 2015.

It should be, “Decide, create, deploy, measure.” And then you just keep doing it.

In terms of execution, there’s always tension between the creator and the brand. What do you think is the best way to navigate that?

Well, that’s called “creative tension” and that’s something that has existed since day one. And it exists in the writers’ room. It exists on the set.

When Martin Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola is yelling at you and Marlon Brando in “Apocalypse Now” to act a certain way.  It exists everywhere. So, I think people are just basically fucking idiots if they don’t understand that.

But you have to set and control expectations. My rule is early, loud and often. You over-communicate to ensure everyone’s on the same page throughout the process.

What advice do you have for those working in the space?

I don’t care what anybody says. This is goddamn 2016.

There is so much talent, out there.  If someone’s an asshole and difficult to work with.  Guess what. You can find somebody else just as good. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, but you can find somebody.