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I hope you all had excellent new years, and that you’re excited to take on 2025. Here at HBBIP Headquarters, we’re planning big things for the year to come. I’m not much of a believer in New Year’s Resolutions—why wait until January 1 to make a change?—but rest assured that I’ve got a few ideas percolating for how to make this blog series even better.
We’ll be rolling out these changes in the coming weeks and months, but for now, I wanted to start out the year properly. You know: some kind of grand, sweeping story that conveys the power of creator marketing—which is just plain marketing, if we’re being real. I mean, it’s 2025, people: we are closing in on Q2 of the 21st Century. If we can’t admit that creators are a fundamental aspect of any savvy brand’s marketing strategy, then what are even we doing here?
So if creator marketing is just marketing, and the creator economy is just the economy, what sort of stories are left for me to tell? Well, plenty, in fact.
For example, how about the story of how ‘creators’ and the economy met in the first place? After all, sometimes the best way to start out one year is to look back at how far you’ve come.
The Top Brand of All Time (of the Week): Patreon
When I talk about the big changes we want to make to HBBIP, I definitely have no ulterior motives in profiling a company that helps people pay their favorite creators. Don’t worry: I will never ever ask you for your money, unless my bosses say that I can. At any rate, if I ever profile OnlyFans, that might be your cue to unsubscribe.
Back in 2013, when creators were a fledgling industry and paying creators wasn’t the well-defined practice it’s become thanks to, say, companies like CreatorIQ, Patreon stormed onto the scene. The platform promised a new way for fans to show support for their favorite creators, particularly in the podcast space. In other words, Patreon saw that creator content was proliferating, read the room, and helped create the same future it was predicting.
And how has that bet played out for Patreon’s social profile ever since?
Patreon Impressions: 2019 - 2024
Let’s start with impressions, both because it paints an impressive picture, and because it provides the largest scale. From January to November 2024, Patreon pulled in 27.5B (with a B!) impressions—more than 3x the 8.0B impressions that the brand collected in 2019.
Sometimes I generate some pretty specific, sophisticated takeaways about this industry, the sort of things that a novice wouldn’t be able to put together on their own. This is not one of those times. If you triple the number of people on the internet who see content about you in five short years, and that number happens to be several multiples of earth’s population, then congratulations, you have found the right creators to spread your message.
How did that look from an engagement standpoint?
Patreon Engagements: 2018 - 2024
Much the same, but more so: now we’re looking at a multiple of 4x. Any predictions for EMV?
Patreon EMV: 2018 - 2024
That’s right: now we’re at a multiple of roughly 5x. (I’m being a bit loose with math here, but the underlying point is that there’s been a lot of growth).
Corresponding with these metrics were big spikes between 2023 and (most of) 2024 in Patreon’s number of creators and number of posts:
Patreon Number of Creators: 2018 - 2024
Another 4x growth since 2018 on the creators side…
Patreon Number of Posts: 2018 - 2024
…And a roughly 5x growth on the posts side.
Why such a big YoY spike in content? And what’s been behind Patreon’s growth in general? Well, if you stretch your memory back all the way to last year (aka several weeks ago) and recall my post about iHeartMedia, you might remember that YouTube is becoming digital audiences’ platform of choice for viewing podcast content. As I put it then, “In the rise of iHeartMedia, we can see all the trends that are reshaping the media landscape: ascendant podcasts, more video clips, and the resurgence of YouTube amongst Gen Z consumers.”
Well, we can also see that via the rise of Patreon. I took a look at the brand’s top platforms from January to November 2024, trying to see where the bulk of its momentum is coming from, and as with iHeartMedia, there was a pretty clear answer:
YouTube was responsible for:
Impressions
93% of Patreon’s impressions…
Engagements
…86% of Patreon’s engagement…
EMV
…and 88% of Patreon’s EMV. (Note that there are also other platforms in play, which is why the numbers don’t add up to 100%.)
I rarely see numbers this lopsided. YouTube dominates for Patreon like few platforms do for other brands.
And the beauty of YouTube content, much like the beauty of Patreon itself, is that there’s room for everything under the sun. Taking a stroll through Patreon’s top EMV-generating posts (do I have to tell you that 98 of Patreon’s top 100 posts, including Nos. 1-76, were all YouTube?), I came across:
- Skincare promos
- Skits from voiceover actors
- A new kind of makeup art
- Workout inspiration
- Animal content (be warned on this one: everything ends up okay, but it contains an ensnared seal—I was riveted)
- Clips that people are definitely only watching because they’re really into motorcycles
If you’re curious too, send me $5.
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