Cameo is in a weird place. At the height of COVID, it was worth $1 billion, and celebrities big and small were flocking to join. Snoop Dogg, Mike Tyson, Lindsay Lohan, the late Gilbert Gottfried, Brian Baumgartner aka Kevin from The Office, and even Carole Baskin, one of the controversial and extremely memed central figures of Netflix‘s Tiger King docuseries, all congregated there to offer custom-made videos for the denizens of the internet.
But in the last couple years, Cameo’s ubiquity has shrunk. You can still get a Snoop Dogg video for $5,500, and if your budget is on the cheaper end the Costco Guys will give you a BIG BOOM for $180, but Cameo hasn’t been able to source and retain a steady contingent of Hollywood A-listers. Its CEO, Steven Galanis, told TIME earlier this year that Cameo suffered during the “revenge spending” era post-lockdowns, where people were able to drop mass dollars on experiences they’d been denied for months or years.
“We absolutely exploded during COVID, and as the COVID-bump ended—instead of having to buy a Cameo for their Mom’s birthday—they could go see them in person, or they could go to a restaurant, or they could go to a concert, or they could travel. The revenge spending led to a big drop in the core business for us,” he said.
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Back in late 2024, the platform looked to be in serious financial trouble. As The Guardian reported at the time, Cameo demonstrated that it couldn’t afford to pay a $600,000 FTC settlement for breaching rules on celebrity endorsements. Instead, it managed to hand over just $100,000.
Now, though, Cameo is trying to resurge through a new strategy: partnering directly with TikTok and the millions of creators who post there.
Through this partnership, U.S.-based creators will be able to sign up for Cameo and offer videos for sale directly, all on TikTok; their viewers will then be able to buy said videos without ever leaving TikTok’s platform.
To encourage sales, TikTok is giving creators custom call-to-action buttons they can add to their videos. Viewers can also use TikTok’s search function to find a roster of all creators offering Cameos through the platform.
“Creators are at the heart of everything we do at Cameo, and TikTok creators have become an essential part of our community,” Galanis said in a statement. “Cameo videos regularly go viral on TikTok, showing the power of authentic fan connections and the appetite for personalized content.”
He added that “TikTok talent delivered its strongest year yet on Cameo in 2025, and by integrating directly into TikTok and making onboarding even easier, we are giving creators a simpler way to grow their business, deepen audience engagement, and unlock new revenue opportunities.”
Franklin Ramirez, TikTok’s Director of Global Product Partnerships, added, “Empowering creators with tools to build deeper relationships with their community in an authentic way is at the core of what we do at TikTok. The new Cameo integration brings highly personalized experiences directly into TikTok, giving creators another way to connect one-on-one with their communities and monetize their content.”
It’s not clear whether TikTokers will have to give up a deeper cut of their revenue, on top of the 25% cut Cameo takes from bookings. Either way, we can see this being a potential revenue stream for creators willing to capitalize on their fans wanting a little personal attention.
We get why Cameo is going this route. It’s not the first time we’ve heard that traditional Hollywood isn’t connecting with audiences and filling the coffers the way it used to–and not the first time the solution to that problem is ‘turn to digital content creators instead.’
Although we are curious about Cameo deciding to go with this strategy, considering Galanis also told TIME that he saw the creator economy as a shiny flash in the pan akin to crypto, NFTs, web 3.0, and AI (which undoubtedly has also had an effect on Cameo’s biz, since now people can just generate their own versions of celebrities saying happy birthday). He added that he’s noticed companies tend to get in trouble when founders “keep chasing the hot thing as opposed to doing the thing that’s in their personal zone, what I call the Ikigai: the intersection of what they love, what they great at, what the world needs, and what they can get paid for.”
Maybe he’s changed his mind about the staying power of creators.
