I am Matthew Gielen, former CEO & Co-Founder of Electric Monster. Electric Monster was created to acquire and scale digital media assets (YouTube). In total, we completed seven acquisitions, the largest of which was React Media (formerly Fine Brothers Entertainment/FBE) in late 2021. In December 2024, I sold Electric to Brat TV (now ZATV).
My entire career has been spent building media companies in the digital video space, concentrating primarily on YouTube, and this is how I see the future of our industry:
The digital media industry (aka “The Creator Economy”) will not be dominated by “Creators” or “Influencers” or “Celebrities,” but instead by creators and companies that become Digital Media Studios that make long-form, YouTube-first content. These companies will be the leaders for the next twenty years, and ultimately rival traditional media studios for market share, attention, and revenue.
This is true because of the current nature of Creators, audiences, video platforms, and the mature revenue models of today.
This outcome is inevitable, despite potential threats, and there are already many companies heading down this path.
To understand why this will be, we must first understand the context of where we are.
YouTube Rewind 2012
By way of a brief summary, there were 3 main eras of the “creator economy”:
1st Era: Experimentation Era where everything was new and people were kicking the tires
2nd Era: MCN Era where VC dollars flowed into fundamentally fiscally unsound companies
3rd Era: Creator Era where creators rose from the ashes of the MCNs to build sustainable small businesses.
We have not fully exited Part 3, but we’re seeing more and more creators pave the way into the Fourth Era.
The Fourth Era of the digital media industry will be dominated by Digital Media Studios, not “creators.”
As it pertains to creators, we can largely bucket them into three groups:
Influencers:
Small to medium-sized creators focused on building businesses around themselves to provide income. (i.e. Haul Video creators, How To creators, etc.)
Celebrities:
Influencers who have built a massive cross-platform following and largely generate revenue from their celebrity. (e.g. Logan Paul / Tana Mongeau)
Entrepreneurs:
These influencers have expanded beyond their celebrity to build IP-based businesses with varied revenue streams. (e.g. Mythical / Alex Cooper / MKBHD)
These definitions are simplified, there is plenty of overlap, and it’s more of a spectrum, but for now, these definitions will suffice.
There will always be influencers and celebrities, and businesses like talent management firms, agencies, marketplaces, and service providers that build and grow around creators. This path is well-worn and the line between traditional media celebrity and creator celebrity is getting blurrier every day (e.g. Ronaldo on YouTube). Many people will come and go, rise and fall, have great success, or never quite get there. They will explore their hobby, connect with others, make close friends, build small businesses, and a lucky few will get that golden ticket and retire early.
To be clear, digital media companies need to nurture, support, and build with influencers and, celebrities. They must provide them vehicles (shows) that allow their talents to flourish, and they must incentivize them to stick with the brands and the company as their popularity grows.
This is because, in the entire history of entertainment, every single major media brand has been built on the backs of characters or personalities.
However, when the talent is the entirety of the brand (ie – the ONLY reason someone is a fan) there is a ceiling. This is not a critique of these businesses or types of creators. It’s just the reality of the success of a business being tied solely to an individual. There are very few creators or influencers that can carry an audience for many years on their personality alone as the value proposition to the audience.
This is why the influencer or celebrity route is not where the Digital Media Industry grows from but alongside and in concert with.
Colin & Samir, MKBHD
Entrepreneurial creators, those building digital media studios, are different from Influencers or Celebrities. This is because their value proposition to the audience goes beyond their popularity. Audiences watch them for their shows (formats), interest alignment (topics), and how their videos look (style). Their businesses can bust through the ceiling an influencer or celebrity cannot because their popularity alone does not limit their success.
There is a growing list of examples of Entrepreneurial Creators. For example, Spy Ninjas (Chad Wild Clay & Vy Qwaint), Mythical (Rhett & Link, Good Mythical Morning), Blogilates (Casey Ho), Theorist Inc., MKBHD, Michelle Khare, Smosh, Huda Beauty, Alex Cooper/Trending, Dhar Mann, Dude Perfect, Linus, Babish Culinary Universe, Critical Role, and others. (I am deliberately leaving MrBeast off this list as he is a singular case, and the Kids space (e.g. Moonbug, Ryan Toys Review) is a different animal altogether.)
While not every creator will want to pursue becoming a digital media studio, the eye-popping numbers (again, for our industry) like Dude Perfect’s reportedly $100mm raise, will be hard to resist.
Tyler Toney from Dude Perfect and Tom Brady
The creators mentioned have professionalized their operations and some have scaled them to millions of dollars in relatively stable recurring revenue.
They all also share, for the most part, these traits:
Going deeper into each of these traits:
1. Significantly higher quality content than your average creator.
The steady march upward of advertising & marketing dollars flowing into the space, combined with the very real capabilities of generating revenue from things like subscriptions, memberships, merch, licensing, live events, etc. has allowed creators to invest more and more into their product (the videos). Many companies are leading the way here like Nick DiGiovanni, MKBHD, Jubilee, and Michelle Khare. They, and others like them, have raised the bar year after year to the point where many videos being released on YouTube rival the production value of cable TV shows. As time passes, audiences will be accustomed to this level of production value to the point where it will become a prerequisite for success on digital platforms. In turn, this rapid growth in quality will accelerate the flow of ad dollars, attention, etc.
Additionally, it’s worth noting that consumers’ definition of “quality” has changed over the last 10 years, where audiences have embraced Creators that are relatable, aspirational, immediately relevant to them, and/or unfiltered. Massive TV production spends ($1,000,000+ per hour) are not required to reach massive audiences, keep their attention, or attract advertising dollars. If we define “quality” in those three buckets, then Entrepreneur Creators have a distinct advantage over both your average creator and traditional media in the long run.
Michelle Khare
2. A repeatable format
It’s no coincidence that the creators on this list have all created a repeatable format (aka a “show”) and honed their storytelling abilities. A repeatable format creates an environment suitable for predictable results, easier brand integrations, and licensing opportunities. Most importantly, this is how a brand is created.
The repeatable format is the backbone upon which a video brand is built. It gives the video portion of the brand its structure. The repeatable format establishes in the viewer an expectation as to what they are going to see in each video. When this expectation is met, and ideally exceeded, it produces feelings of satisfaction in the audience (it’s no coincidence that is exactly what YouTube optimizes for), which is how brands are built: You make an implicit or explicit promise to your audience, and then (over) deliver upon that promise.
A format or a show also has the benefit of creating the opportunity to replace the main talent if/when that is needed, like late-night talk shows or game shows (RIP Bob Barker), and even sitcoms (Two and a Half Men).
That said, rarely has there been a successful main talent swap in the digital space. This is due to the heightened importance of the parasocial relationship, the lack of time given to a new host to create that relationship, and the general lowering of the talent from the initial key talent to their successors. In traditional, swapping one legendary talent (Dave Letterman) with another (Steven Colbert) you see no real drop off in skill and craft. In the digital space, that same level of like-for-like switch has not yet been seen. If you’re an incredibly talented creator in the digital space, you’ve built your own following and platforms, and don’t need a vehicle (late-night show) to thrive. Most importantly, there are few digital shows that have a significant support staff (100+ people) that help make the show what it is. Often, it’s just a handful of folks making 1+1 = 3. These are all solvable issues, however, and we will see more and more hand-offs in the coming years.
A fourth benefit of a repeatable format is that it creates the opportunity to sell more ad inventory (both integrations and pre- & mid- rolls), sell ad inventory in advance, and have a predictable outcome by way of viewership, which in turn leads to more sales and so on. The predictability allows advertisers & brands to feel safe in what their ads will appear on, the reach that content will achieve, and is more familiar for advertisers and marketers that are shifting spend from TV. On the flip side of this coin, it also creates predictable costs. In combination, this creates stable business models.
Smosh Pit
3. Multiple channels
Almost all of these creators have multiple IPs under their banner, usually on separate channels. For example, Mythical has at least 5 different channels for their various shows:
These multiple channels and multiple IPs increase revenue with the various revenue streams that go with them, but they also present additional data points, programming insights, and give downside protection.
Most importantly though, to build a large-scale digital media studio, a company must be able to develop and grow new original IP. This ensures that the company can continue to evolve and grow with the audience, whose tastes will evolve and grow over time. Jubilee’s Nectar and Smosh’s Smosh Pit are also great examples of this.
Terry Crews & Josh Sherer on Mythical’s Mythical Kitchen
4. Diversified revenue streams
These Creators have diversified their revenue streams beyond ads and brand deals/integrations. These streams include:
Few, if any, brands currently operating on YouTube have all of these, and not every revenue stream will be right for every IP.
Blogilates merch tab on YouTube
5. Specialized Employees
All of these entrepreneurs have teams of people around them with specialized skill sets. Some of the first hires a creator makes are mid-level roles like a producer, editor, thumbnail designer, etc. As their organization grows they begin to hire for roles like production executives, sales, and administrative support. However, the most important hire they tend to make is a COO or CEO.
Not all Creators are entrepreneurs or even want to be entrepreneurs. Similarly, not all Entrepreneurs (creator or not) make great COOs or CEOs and/or have the experience or know-how to scale a company from 1 employee to 5, 5 to 15, or 15 to 100+. This is not meant to besmirch creators, entrepreneurs, or Entrepreneur Creators. It’s simply a statement of fact that it takes a different skill set and set of experiences at different times to scale any company, let alone a media company. Many Digital Media Companies have made this important hire, for example, Andrew Yaffe at Dude Perfect, Alessandra Catanese at Smosh, and Dhar Mann’s hiring of Sean Atkins.
6. Programming
When we first acquired the React family of properties (formerly FBE) at Electric Monster I showed the team a slide that had a picture of a graveyard. On the headstones were the logos of the countless digital media studios (and MCNs that tried to become studios) that had come and gone over the years. My thesis was (and still is) that many of the programming decisions were being made by producers and/or creatives, not creators and/or programmers and this is why those companies failed.
One of the most important aspects of the Entrepeneur Creators who are building digital media studios is that they are run by creators. Creators who have succeeded to this level have the ability, either through intuition or an intentionally developed skill, to know what their audience wants to watch.
Does this all sound familiar? It should. It’s the exact model Hollywood and traditional media use. This is why I would classify Entrepreneurial Creators as Digital Media Studios (or at least aspiring).
It can look a bit different than traditional at times though. The greatest example of this is Epic Gardening. According to Kevin Espirito, the founder and main talent of Epic Gardening, over 50% of Epic Gardening’s revenue in 2019 came from selling a single product on its website. In 2021 he secured $17.5mm in financing from The Chernin Group and in 2023 they acquired a seed manufacturer and distributor. Essentially, Epic Gardening grew a reality entertainment show and then built out products to sell alongside. As a father of two boys who own about 20 toy lightsabers, this feels incredibly familiar.
Epic Gardening on YouTube
Some companies are attempting to build Digital Media Studios that are not organically grown out of a Creator / Influencer business. There are a few flavors of this type of Digital Media Studio currently:
There are pros and cons to each form of Studio, and all of them can be (or already are) successful. The biggest difference between these four different studio models is in acquiring assets and building them from scratch, which is the Home Grown model.
For a new home-grown digital media company to arise they will have to get over the Cold Start Problem. That is, it is ridiculously hard and expensive to rapidly build and scale a new media brand on any platform, and most platforms do not provide the revenue models needed to support such an endeavor. Even if the content is great, it can still take a platform a very long time to begin surfacing that content to an audience large enough even to be at a place where just breaking even is possible. I don’t see this being a model where there is a lot of investment in the near future, though there may be some small-scale bets made that pay off well.
The other three models (Investors, Roll-Ups, and Operators) are all different flavors of the same thing: They acquire (or invest in) digital video companies and attempt to scale their revenue, reach, etc. However, in the NON-Kids space, there is limited investment in Digital Media Studios through VC, family offices, or private equity.
That is not to say there has not been investment in this space. There have been many deals recently for talent management companies like Night acquiring Bottle Rocket, and shopping / affiliate platforms like Later buying Mavely for $250 million. I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention Softbank’s huge investments in Spotter & Jellysmack. These investments are not content or IP plays, however.
For Digital Media Companies, there have also been some significant one-off deals such as Donut’s sale to Recurrent Ventures, Trusted Media Brands’ acquisition of Jukin, Dude Perfect’s investment from Highmount, and most recently First We Feast’s buyout from Buzzfeed, which included Soro’s Fund, Mythical, and others.
However, in each case, the main thesis for the acquisition or investment appears to be more strategic, and there does not appear to be significant interest in or appetite for acquiring additional Digital Media Companies.
This means there is a gap in the market for a company that can acquire multiple Digital Media Assets at scale.
There are currently three companies, that I am aware of, that are pursuing a roll-up strategy in the general entertainment space: Electric Monster (now ZATV), Electrify, and LunarX. I have connections to all of these companies in one way or another, so I won’t go into detail about them. What is clear, though, is that none of these companies have registered headlines or scale like Moonbug.
Moonbug started in 2018 when it acquired Little Baby Bum. By late 2020 they had acquired Cocomelon and Blippi as well. They would exit to Candle by the end of 2021 for a staggering $3 billion.
Comparing general entertainment roll-ups to Moonbug is not an apples-to-apples comparison. However, the lack of significant acquisitions in general entertainment has less to do with the target audience. Relative to kids’ content, general entertainment properties have historically had:
More and more these 4 limitations are being addressed by Digital Media Companies as cited in the section above. Therefore, the main limiting factor here is time and it appears as though the right time to enter is now.
The first successful Digital Media Studio, NOT in the kids’ space, will combine the roll-up and homegrown models. This is EXACTLY how traditional studios operate and have stayed in business for decades. Additionally, this is in part how Moonbug was able to rapidly scale. They bought incredible IP and characters, layered in sophisticated and profitable business lines on top, and developed new IP & characters. A successful Digital Media Studio will take this playbook, which has worked time and time again, and run with it in general entertainment.
Creators, influencers, celebrities, and companies that become Digital Media Studios will dominate the next 20 years.
To dominate means to be the premier brands and shows that celebrities make appearances on, that get invited on late-night shows, and the New York Times covers. They will be the brands that vacuum up the most ad spend, sell out Wembley for live shows, build entertainment complexes, and most importantly, command the most attention from audiences.
Within this context, I’m also defining “success” or “significance” as brands and companies that have or could have an exit valuation north of $100 million. Fair or not, at this moment in time, this is where we are.
As I see it, there are six primary reasons why Digital Media Studios will dominate:
1. Impossible to scale an individual’s time
This is well-worn territory and there’s no reason to relitigate it here. I would simply add that there are only a handful of celebrities who have successfully built a media company on the back of their celebrity that have stood for significant (20+ years) lengths of time. For example, Oprah, Ellen, Ryan Seacrest, and Martha Stewart.
2. Resources
A Digital Media Studio with multiple IPs and revenue streams can take bigger swings, have more resources to put towards “better” content, and can take risks on innovation that a single individual can not. If you’re a creator on the rise, and starting to scale, you are likely not going to risk stepping outside of your lane and jeopardizing your business. I mean this in the context of losing audience because that’s the bet you make when you try something new as a creator.
A Digital Media Studio can also hire the best in class at narrower and narrower job definitions. Whereas a smaller Creator company or an Influencer can not afford to staff for each individual task at that same level. Additionally, higher caliber people with more experience are not likely to want to step into roles with fewer resources and a higher risk profile.
3. Amortization & reduction of costs
Digital Media Studios will also have a competitive advantage with reduced costs. This will most likely come in the form of overhead, real estate, and production. Again, this well-trodden territory that requires no further explanation.
4. Centralized knowledge base
Another significant advantage Digital Media Studios will have is a centralized knowledgebase of how each platform works, what audiences are gravitating towards, and what is simmering under the surface. Your average creator or influencer just does not have the time or the bandwidth to stay on top of every little thing happening on the internet, whereas there is a greater probability that a well-staffed Studio, with many different sources of data in different verticals, will.
5. Varied skillsets to provide rapid exploration of revenue models on a given IP
While not every brand is right for every potential revenue stream, having the skillsets and experience to exploit a brand in any potential revenue stream is vital. Ad-supported content alone is incredibly difficult if not impossible to build a Digital Media Studio on. Having multiple brands with varied business lines allows for revenue streams to be added rapidly into newly developed or acquired IP.
6. Professionalization, standardization, stability, and sustainability
The best things that Digital Media Studios sprouting up will bring with them are professionalization, standardization, stability, and sustainability to the “Creator Economy”. As it stands, our industry is incredibly fragmented with limited regulations and standards, which leads to a lack of professionalization and instability. In turn, this makes the current state of our industry less sustainable. Furthermore, it cedes so much power and influence to the platforms and advertisers. Digital Media Studios will help equalize this imbalance.
Additionally, advertisers face a dearth of opportunities to work with professionally run organizations. Digital Media Studios will help accelerate the transition of ad dollars from traditional forms of advertising to digital video by offering a safe set of brands for their advertisements.
These are the main reasons that creators and influencers that grow into Digital Media Stuidos will dominate.
However, Digital Media Studios will outgrow traditional studios (unless they are acquired by them) over the next 10 – 20 years and will compete with traditional Hollywood for the same scale of dollars, mindshare, screen time, and valuations. I believe this because I am an eternal dreamer and optimist, but also because:
1. Limited Innovator’s Dilemma
Traditional studios are always butting into the Innovator’s Dilemma in the form of protecting their current business models. The DNA of a Digital Media Company is one of constant innovation. The Creator DNA is forged in the always-on, always-changing ecosystem of the internet. Yes, a Digital Media Studio will have business lines to protect, however, the cost to try something new is minimal relative to a traditional media company that will have to spend millions.
2. Gatekeepers
Similarly to the innovator’s dilemma, Gatekeepers in traditional media will allow for Digital Media Companies to flourish. For a traditional media company to make something the buy-in has to go through countless layers of red tape including executives, 3rd party agreements, regulations, internal opportunity costs, agents, lawyers, and prohibitive costs. Digital Media does not have these same problems, or at least nowhere near the same scale if they do.
Additionally, anyone can create an account on the main platforms, make a video, and post it. This allows for massive amounts of innovation and experimentation from individuals. In turn, Digital Media Studios can take these learnings and apply them to their properties rapidly. This can not happen in movies & TV at anywhere near the same pace and the risk is much greater on the downside.
Another area where gatekeepers restrict Traditional is in the discovery of new talent. In traditional, there are agents, managers, casting directors, directors, networks, studios, and a limited amount of IP. However, social platforms enable and facilitate the discovery of new talent and personalities rapidly.
3. Digital stigma
Until the last few years, there was a definite stigma associated with “working in digital.” Regardless of the reasons, and there are many, this stigma is wearing off. This means more and more talented storytellers will enter the digital space, whether from the get-go or after a career in traditional media. Digital Media Companies will have a larger pool of top talent to pull from, which means better content, more views, more revenue, and so on.
4. Cost Per Hour
Digital Media Studios have a competitive advantage over traditional when it comes to costs. Whether creators and talent are owners in the IP (or at least equitably involved) or not, talent costs tend to be much lower. Add to this the (generally) much lower production and overhead costs, and it’s clear that Digital Media Studios have a significant competitive advantage over traditional on a cost-per-hour basis.
The main thrust (and yes, it is incredibly self-serving) hypothesis I have though is that it will be those who make long-form YouTube content specifically.
Media Brands are built when people choose to spend their time and attention with them. This time and attention leads to love and identity, which ultimately leads to generating revenue for the brand. Nowadays, the #1 place where people spend time with media brands is YouTube.
eMarketer Graph Showing YouTube & Social vs. Television
More specifically, they spend it watching YouTube on television.
Nielsen Streaming Stats Feb ’25
To be fair, this is streaming only. But this also looks a lot like 15 years ago, when YouTube was competing with sites like Blip.TV and Dailymotion. We all know how that turned out. Furthermore, anyone below the age of 20 or 25 does not watch “TV”. They stream. What do they stream? YouTube.
Large swaths of demographics do still consume other content on TV screens, however. Do you know what is relatively easy to repackage into 22-minute blocks and syndicate onto other platforms like Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, FAST, OTT, and regular TV channels? Long-form YouTube.
YouTube is TV
Additionally, YouTube is by far the most mature and stable platform, which also exclusively focuses on video. I mean this primarily from a content-serving perspective in the sense that while the recommendation system is constantly being tested and tweaked, there are few if any wholesale changes to how YouTube serves out content. This means that viewership and revenue are largely predictable over time, which is as firm of a foundation as a company can get on the internet.
By way of revenue models, YouTube is just now getting to a place where real revenues can be made in long-form content. The YouTube partner program launched EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO. Regardless, at the upper end of the RPM spectrum, we’re still only seeing $20 per 1k views. That’s basically the equivalent of one TV commercial. Not one commercial break, literally a single television commercial. As YouTube’s presence grows on TV, so should the volume of commercials, further increasing YouTube’s ability to support creators and content.
eMarketer Graph Showing Social Video Ad Spending Overtaking Television
In contrast, the RPMs for short-form content continue to hover around $.10. That is a 99.5% gap. Short-form monetization has been around for 3 – 4 years and it has made zero progress. None.
Don’t get me wrong, short-form is great for a lot of things like discovery, awareness, and experimentation, but building a significant media business is not one of them… unless you’re the “platform” (and whatever you do, don’t call them media companies).
===
There are 5 main threats to this coming true. These threats include, but are not limited to:
1. YouTube’s competitors and revenue model
Competitors
YouTube has plenty of competitors at this point, though they all threaten different parts of YouTube’s business. For example, Tubi, FAST providers, Netflix, and every other streaming service are all vying for dominance over the TV screen. On mobile, they face competition from TikTok, Meta, and Snap. In regards to audio, Spotify just put a big effort into courting video podcasts and regular video. For the share of digital video ad dollars, YouTube lags behind Meta according to eMarketer, and now faces more and more competition every day from the likes of Disney, Netflix, Amazon, and more.
The reverse also happens to be true though, as YouTube seems determined to become the everything platform. Shorts was a response to TikTok eating their mobile viewership for lunch. YouTube’s recent changes to the community tab make it a weird combination of Discord and Instagram. They built and sunsetted a Stories feature in about 3 years. Their efforts in affiliate and shopping lag behind TikTok by about 2 years at this point.
Will these distractions and defensive moves erode their ability to dominate the TV screen or be enough to maintain their share of people’s time so that YouTube will be able to stay on its most valuable trajectory? A mentor of mine frequently said, “If you’re everything to everybody, you’re nothing to nobody”. I guess no one told Walmart or Amazon.
The main differentiator, by way of value proposition to the audience, is that YouTube is not a walled garden. Literally, anyone can upload videos to YouTube. There’s only one other place on the internet where this is possible and the platform’s main purpose is for people to watch video content and that’s TikTok. TikTok, in my view, is the only real competitor and no one wants to watch TikTok on TV… for now.
Revenue model
There’s always the threat of YouTube changing its revenue model in some way that harms creators, that YouTube / Google will not sell enough ads, or that ad agencies will limit their spend on YouTube in favor of other platforms. This is a low probability as it gives them a big competitive advantage in courting creators over TikTok and Meta. The latter of which is known for tanking much of the digital journalism industry in the fabled “pivot to video”, and also changing its revenue-sharing model in ‘24 to a much more Meta-friendly share.
2. Regulatory hurdles/government interference
There is a very real threat in the form of government interference and/or hurdles to not just YouTube, but all of social media and digital video in general. This could come in many forms including censorship, favoritism, anti-monopoly policy, etc.
3. Traditional media
Acquiring and/or killing Digital Media Studios
Many of us applauded Disney when it acquired Maker Studios in 2014. Within 3 years there had been substantial downsizing, and by the 4th year Maker was essentially done. In the same way, traditional studios could see Digital Media Studios as a threat, acquire them, and either fold them into existing operations or shut them down altogether.
By way of scale, this isn’t far-fetched. The market caps of the big traditional studios is massive relative to even the largest Digital Media Studios:
Lightshield Infographic Showing Market Caps of Traditional Studios
Traditional evolving and/or overpowering
This seems unlikely given Traditional’s need to protect its current business lines and the lack of scale in digital video relative to the king’s ransom they make in film, TV, and their streaming platforms, but it’s still a threat.
Box Office
Digital video properties and creators have not cracked the creation and distribution of films and movies. There has not been a successful movie born out of the digital space to date, though there have been numerous attempts and models tried out. While not imperative to the success of a Digital Media Studio, unlocking this aspect of the entertainment business will be key to our industry’s growth in the long run.
4. AI content & Content saturation
It’s not impossible, but the argument that AI content is going to lead to content saturation is silly. We are already saturated with content. 30,000 hours (that is 1,250 DAYS) of content is uploaded to YouTube EVERY DAY. This is just one platform. Somehow AI is going to make this worse? That’s laughable.
The other AI argument is that it’s going to improve content so much that everything will become far more competitive. First, have you ever tried to watch AI content for more than 60 seconds? It’s awful. Can AI even make content longer than 60 seconds? No, it can’t and it won’t be able to for a very, very long time, and it’ll be expensive as hell. Further, AI as it stands is largely a reversion to the mean. This means content won’t improve, but be “mid” (at best). Audiences want “the same but different”, AI is just “the same”.
Another argument I see is that creators won’t be able to compete with virtual influencers. This is an idea propped up and laundered by people who have never spent a single day in the media business. For the last decade, every other year or so there’s been some story about some “virtual” influencer, and without fail there’s never any follow-up and we never hear about it again. Audiences at scale do not want to “connect” with a computer.
With that said, there will be more opportunities to use machine learning and “AI” as tools. I believe its utility will be most valuable in things like programming (including ideation), storyboarding, graphic design, data analysis, post-production work, etc. Yes, there will be some specific jobs or tasks that are fazed out or replaced in time, but by and large, this will be slow. People and companies that use these tools, will theoretically be able to make better content. That’s true of every tool used in the creation of anything. It’s not the tool that makes the product, it’s the craftsman wielding it.
5. Bifurcation of audience
The fifth and final threat here is in the bifurcation of audiences, or more specifically, the customization and curation of experiences to the individual. While theoretically possible, this won’t become a serious issue. Humans and their tastes are far more similar than we like to let on. Additionally, we share things we like with people we think will like it, which is exactly how a recommendation engine works. There will always be popular things, rising and falling, and such is the nature of entertainment.
===
Entrepreneurial Creators focusing on long-form YouTube first content are currently creating and building companies that greatly surpass their creator and influencer counterparts. These companies will ultimately rival traditional studios in the next 10 – 20 years. Seeing this, early movers in the space have begun a wave of acquisitions, but have not made much of a dent in the available asset class of digital media companies, and nothing at scale. This means that more capital should flow into the creator economy from private equity, family offices, strategics, VCs, and advertisers creating a much larger market for M&A activity in the coming 3 to 5 years.
I am Matthew Gielen, former CEO & Co-Founder of Electric Monster, and former CEO & Founder of Little Monster Media Co. In 2016 I founded Little Monster, a YouTube strategy agency that worked with media companies like Viacom, NBCU, Amazon, and Netflix. In 2021 I sold that agency to Electric Monster.
Electric Monster was created to acquire and scale digital media assets (YouTube). In total, we completed seven acquisitions, the largest of which was React Media (formerly Fine Brothers Entertainment (FBE)) in late 2021. In December 2024, I sold Electric to Brat TV (now ZATV).
Before creating these companies, I was the VP of Programming at Frederator Networks for 3.5 years, and before Frederator the same at Driver Digital (now Driver Studios) for 3 years. Throughout the years, I have published numerous research papers on websites like Tubefilter and presented them at conferences such as Vidcon and VidSummit.
Hey YouTubers! Do you want to be rid of the pesky chore of actually appearing…
Each week, we handpick a selection of stories to give you a snapshot of trends,…
Back in 2024, the National Association of Broadcasters recognized the importance of content creators by…
Too much screen time can be a dangerous thing, and Hoorae is taking that idea literally. The…
The latest product backed by Night's venture studio emerged out of a partnership between the creator…
Indie animation is flourishing on YouTube. From the pop culture juggernaut that is The Amazing…