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YouTube and TikTok Are Amping Up the Creator Monetization Arms Race
Kristin Snyder
Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
YouTube and TikTok are going head-to-head on new ways to pay their content creators.
YouTube Shorts will now incorporate an expanded array of ads on its short-form video feed, Business Insider reported Tuesday, which could potentially lead to Shorts creators receiving a cut of ad revenues. Meanwhile, TechCrunch reported yesterday that TikTok is beta-testing LIVE Subscription, a new model which allows fans to directly compensate creators.
YouTube Shorts, which previously showed limited ads from select advertisers, will now expand to ads purchased through YouTube’s main video platform. While creators won’t immediately benefit from the change, YouTube plans on analyzing the Shorts ads’ performance to determine how it will pay creators, BI reported.
Currently, YouTube Shorts’ $100 million creator fund only pays out top performers and is set to end later this year. While creators on YouTube’s main platform receive a 55% cut of ad revenues, BI reported that Shorts creators have thus far found monetization difficult.
"The Shorts Creator fund isn't anywhere near large enough to incentivize larger creators to stick around or generate unique content for the platform,” Shorts creator Nicholas Crown told the publication. “Without ad rev sharing, creators generating millions of impressions on Shorts often make pennies from the occasional pre-roll ad that runs through AdSense on a Short.”
TikTok’s LIVE Subscriptions, on the other hand, will give creators on the video-sharing platform a chance to earn direct payments from fans, while giving paying subscribers access to exclusive chats, emotes and badges. The feature will launch with select creators on Thursday, TechCrunch reported; while pricing has not yet been announced, LIVE’s is believed to be “comparable” to livestreaming platform Twitch’s $4.99 monthly subscriptions. Instagram is currently testing a similar creator subscription model.
With TikTok and YouTube stars gaining popularity, both companies are seeking to offer new monetization models that would keep those creators on their platform. Social media influencers, for their part, have looked to spread their content across multiple platforms—as evidenced by Snap poaching TikTok stars for its own original content. In turn, both Culver City-based TikTok (which is owned by Chinese tech firm ByteDance) and Santa Monica-based Snap have introduced new ad revenue initiatives for creators this year.
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Kristin Snyder
Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
https://twitter.com/ksnyder_db
Office Hours Podcast: Greycroft’s Dana Settle on LA's Booming Tech Scene
06:30 AM | December 03, 2021
Spencer Rascoff and Dana Settle at the dot.LA Summit.
It was once a contrarian perspective to think a venture capital firm could survive outside of Silicon Valley. But Dana Settle moved to Los Angeles and tried it anyway.
On this episode of Office Hours, co-founder of Zillow and dot.LA Spencer Rascoff talks to Settle about the booming L.A. tech scene and her investment firm Greycroft.
Settle moved to L.A. from Silicon Valley in 2005. The venture community in the area was small then, but she felt the inklings of something promising. Startups like Cornerstone OnDemand and Userplane were growing and so were the kind of industries arriving in L.A.
While her time up north saw a rise in tech companies, Settle saw L.A. disrupting every industry as data and artificial intelligence changed the game.
"This is the second largest city in the country. [It] has every single industry and huge opportunities here across biotech, real estate, mobility, space — every single area that you can imagine," said Settle.
As a founding partner at Greycroft and a member of its management committee, Settle is responsible for the firm's investment strategy and vision. When it comes to looking for startups to invest in, it's really about the founders for Settle.
She's looking for someone not just with a vision, but the ability to attack great talent.
"It doesn't mean you have to be like a total salesy extrovert or whatever. I mean, some of the best founders… are introverted. They have that crazy charisma that's just soft spoken, and everybody just wants to go with them," said Settle.
She also looks forward to seeing track records of success whether it was academic achievements or athletics. Any spark of success is valuable to Settle.
Within the last five years, Settle said that founders have gotten good at asking for higher demands. While they've met founders' needs, the real investment to Settle is seeing Greycroft be referred to other startups.
"Our sort of first principle is that venture capital is a long-term repeat business. And if you believe that, then you know, all of your interactions with founders and everything that you do every day, ultimately should build your brand. It's ultimately a referral business," said Settle.
Want to hear more episodes? Subscribe to Office Hours on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio or wherever you get your podcasts.
dot.LA Engagement Intern Joshua Letona contributed to this post.
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Spencer Rascoff
Spencer Rascoff serves as executive chairman of dot.LA. He is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso and Supernova, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. During Spencer's time as CEO, Zillow won dozens of "best places to work" awards as it grew to over 4,500 employees, $3 billion in revenue, and $10 billion in market capitalization. Prior to Zillow, Spencer co-founded and was VP Corporate Development of Hotwire, which was sold to Expedia for $685 million in 2003. Through his startup studio and venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny, Spencer is an active angel investor in over 100 companies and is incubating several more.
https://twitter.com/spencerrascoff
https://www.linkedin.com/in/spencerrascoff/
admin@dot.la
Greycroft Founder Dana Settle on the VCs $1 Billion Raise and Their Plan for the Future
05:00 AM | April 27, 2023
Dana Settle, Greycroft
Venture capital firm Greycroft, which has an office in Los Angeles' Arts District, closed a combined $1 billion in capital commitments across several new funds. The money will be used primarily to invest in varying stage companies with a focus on AI, co-founder and managing partner Dana Settle told dot.LA.
Greycroft’s two flagship funds, the Greycroft Partners VII and Greycroft Growth IV, closed a combined more than $980 million, the firm announced Wednesday. Following the deal, the VC firm now manages a total of $3 billion in capital. Settle clarified that a small portion of the $1 billion total came from additional capital Greycroft raised throughout the last year.
The bicoastal VC outfit is no stranger to big fundraises; just three years ago it closed a raise for two funds worth a combined $678 million. This most recent raise came from a combination of undisclosed limited partners both existing and new, Settle said.
The new funds invested in two local companies so far: Data-sharing startup Bobsled, which raised a $17 million Series A led by Greycroft April 25, and retail investor management platform Stakeholder Labs, which raised a $4.2 million seed round on February 14.
In addition, Settle told dot.LA that while Greycroft invests in a diverse set of companies, its main goal is driving the largest returns. “The thematic areas [of the new funds] are certainly AI and the opportunities that we see for companies that are foundational models in AI, as well as applications that are being enabled by AI,” Settle said. “If you look across the spectrum, it's literally every single industry in the world.”
Greycroft has backed around 400 companies since its launch in 2006. Some of Greycroft’s biggest exits include Santa Monica-based electric scooter firm Bird, mobile game maker Scopely, and tech news outlet Axios Media. Bird went public via a SPAC deal in 2020, while Scopely was bought by Saudi investor Savvy Games Group earlier this month for $4.9 billion.
“We believe deeply in the LA ecosystem,” Settle said. “The opportunity set here is incredible and expansive, just because of how diverse the set of industries is and what an entrepreneurial community it is.”
It’s worth noting too that Greycroft closed the large deal in the midst of what is otherwise a difficult funding environment for VCs. According to PitchBook data, the looming recession has prompted VCs to scale back their investments into startups. Their latest report found that VCs across the country have only raised a combined $11.7 billion across less than 100 funds.
“I feel we could not be more fortunate than to have raised this fund when we did, just in terms of having such an incredible team,” Settle said. “Sometimes you just get lucky on timing.”
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Samson Amore
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.
https://twitter.com/samsonamore
samsonamore@dot.la
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