YouTube vs the Super Bowl, TikTok is still losing the revenue-generating battle, and why BeReal grew fast and fell even faster

Lots of things happened so let's jump into it.

YouTube vs the Super Bowl

This is too good not to put in here. The $7M cost of a 30-second Super Bowl ad is jaw-dropping, but the viewer stats are gagworthy. Last year’s Super Bowl got 99.2M viewers and the most-watched one got 114.4M. But you know who has more views? MrBeast , with 99.3M views on his latest video and 361.3M on his most-watched one (thanks Brett Dashevsky for the stats). Now, not every YouTuber has these views. In fact, most don’t but it opens the conversation about whether traditional marketing will stand a chance against creators in the future. 

TikTok is still losing the revenue-generating battle with creators

Hashtag Pay Me CEO Cynthia Ruff shared a Creator Pricing guide, highlighting the new low-mid tier of creators and the impact of the company size on creator budgets (spoiler: bigger isn’t always better). IMO, the best insight from the report is that the average increase an Instagram creator charges for cross-posting content on TikTok is 236% compared to TikTok’s average increase of cross-posting of only 40%. Instagram still reigns supreme for brand deals and ad dollars, and TikTok has a looooong way to go. 

Why BeReal grew fast and fell even faster

Everyone knew that BeReal. was gonna fall the same way it rose to the top but when I saw this chart Amy Lewin shared, it all became very clear. As much as users, creators, and even investors loved the app its growth wasn’t sustainable for multiple reasons. 1) The app was more of a trending feature than a full-fledged app, leading to an extremely-high churn rate of 20.7%. 2) They still haven’t figured out monetization, something that many creators and companies have been asking for. And 3) Keeping too quiet in the app's rapid growth state. Will they recover? Honestly, I don’t know. No one knows what they have in store for the future. We’ll have to wait and see. 

Longer videos are coming to Pinterest

With a 30% increase in video content, Pinterest bumped their video length from 1 to 5 minutes. This is nothing groundbreaking but Lindsey Gamble pointed out something very interesting. Pinterest now has the opportunity to launch new ad offerings, like mid-roll ads, which could help the platform increase its ad revenue and share it with creators, YouTube-style. Smart move and a win for both creators and the platform, if it comes to fruition. 

TikTok’s desperate attempt to promote audience growth

It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of TikTok and I’m not a fan of this series of new monetization features either. I agree that they should work on attracting an older audience since not everyone on there is a dancing teenager but their Creator Fund 2.0 doesn’t sound right. They promise a higher payout, except that only creators with 100K followers and above can apply. Huge difference from the previous 10K requirement. Their paywalled video feature is nice in theory but we’ll have to see it in action first. Curious to see if these features actually work but right now I’m not wowed.

This week, 8 creator startups raised a total of $59.5M, ranging from Pre-seed to Series B rounds! Ange Michael AHYI covered it all.

And just like that, you're done in a flash ⚡

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