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Now, I might not be an A-list celebrity, or even a F-list celebrity, but I’d like to believe that there might be a small (I really cannot emphasize that enough) market for video recaps from yours truly. Because honestly, who wants to read this many words per week? Yes, after nearly a decade in the creator marketing space, it’s beginning to sink in that this whole video thing might be here to stay.
As longtime readers have probably already intuited, I’m being a bit tongue in cheek. Not about video—that thing is a phenomenon. Hot take, but with apologies to radio stars everywhere, video is here to stay. No, more about my ability to be a part of that phenomenon. Words are my chosen medium, though I’ve been known to appear on camera from time to time. (Clearly a newsletter is more my speed.)
Alright, longform video might not be for me, but what about short-form? Something that gives me the ability to chime in casually with a quick message to my adoring public? That would be pretty tight. But surely no such platform exists—and certainly not one that’s taken the creator economy by storm?
The Top Brand of All Time (of the Week): Cameo
Launched in March 2017, Cameo took a concept that would have never occurred to me—why not pay prominent figures to record cute little videos for you?—and turned it into a hit. There’s a reason I’m a newsletter writer and not an entrepreneur. People like their cute little videos! Again, I’m not sure why nearly a decade analyzing this space left me unable to draw that conclusion.
One cool thing about Cameo launching so recently is that CreatorIQ’s metrics cover pretty much its entire existence. Let’s start in 2018, to give Cameo a chance to establish itself. What do we see from the brand’s early days to now?
Cameo EMV: 2018 - 2024
The first thing I want to note—to get back to that “instant hit” idea—is that Cameo burst onto the scene with a high floor. To garner $100M EMV in your second year is quite a feat, especially given that many successful brands take years to reach that threshold, if they ever reach it at all.
Because Cameo started with such a bang, that left somewhat less room to rise. As a result, the brand’s 2024 EMV proved a 4x growth: still great, but a bit more modest than some of the 10x or 20x growths I’ve analyzed before. Nonetheless, Cameo fulfills the classic HBBIP criterion of collecting more EMV in each subsequent year, keeping those columns nice and linear. Still, we see a bit of wavering in the middle stretch circa 2022. This wavering becomes more pronounced in other metrics, such as engagements.
Cameo Engagements: 2018 - 2024
I guess folks didn’t want their cute little videos in 2022. Despite that hiccup, we once again have a roughly 4x increase in this metric from 2018 to 2024—again, not crazy compared to some brands I’ve analyzed in HBBIP, but most brands would take it.
Cameo Impressions: 2019 - 2024
When it comes to impressions, we’ll check out Cameo’s progress from 2019 onwards due to changes in how we calculate Impressions between 2018 and 2019. Once again 2022 dips a bit, but it’s not as pronounced as what we saw for engagements, meaning that Cameo was still getting the message out that year, even if it didn’t resonate quite as deeply. Again we see that high floor at work: 2B impressions in your second year of existence ain’t too bad. I guess it helps to work with celebrities.
Cameo Number of Posts: 2018 - 2024
Cameo’s number of mentions maintains a similar pattern as other metrics, with a dip in 2022 and a roughly 4x growth multiplier. Ho-hum, more of the same.
But it’s creator count where things start to diverge a little.
Cameo Creator Count: 2018 - 2024
First, despite all that growth in other metrics, Cameo’s creator count didn’t even double between 2018 and 2024. In fact, 2024’s count barely surpasses 2021’s. It’s not the case, in other words, that steadily more people have been mentioning Cameo: they’ve just been doing so more effectively.
And who are these people?
To clarify, we’re looking at people who mention Cameo on other social media platforms—not Cameo specifically. Basically, creators who throw a mention of their Cameo channel or videos into content shared on other channels.
From March 2024 to February 2025, Cameo collected $425.2M EMV. Of that total, $178.7M EMV—a sizable 42%—came from Cameo’s top five earners:
Cameo's Top Five Earners
- Progressive media personality and part-time video game character David Pakman
- Leading Roblox authority and YouTuber KreekCraft
- The Internet’s Chess Teacher, Levy Rozman (aka GothamChess)
- Dance, comedy, and lifestyle creators the Dobre Brothers
- Gossip purveyor and name I hadn’t thought about in years, Perez Hilton
All of these creators are primarily known for their YouTube channels, underscoring a close tie between that video platform and Cameo. This skew toward YouTube, along with the diversity of the industries represented by these top creators, puts me in the mind of Substack: another burgeoning media empire allowing creators another means of self-expression.
In terms of Cameo’s raw totals across key metrics, the brand is already ahead of Substack, though the newsletter platform has seen more pronounced growth in recent years. As the creator ecosystem expands further, I’ll be keeping my eyes on both brands.
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