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- Influence Weekly #419 - The CRM Debate: How 24 Creator Economy Experts Build And Maintain Their Influencer Pipelines
Influence Weekly #419 - The CRM Debate: How 24 Creator Economy Experts Build And Maintain Their Influencer Pipelines
Why Quibi The $1.75B Short-Form Video Platform Failed While TikTok Thrived
Nii Ahene
December 12, 2025
Spotlight Stories
Andrew Perlman’s Creator Economy Playbook: How Recurrent Ventures Turned M&A Into A Media Reinvention Engine
IShowSpeed Named ‘Streamer Of The Year’ At 2025 Streamer Awards
Adobe Partners With YouTube To Bring Premiere Mobile Editing Tools To Shorts Creators
One Third Of Podcast Creators Quit As Video Demands Clash With Audio Habits
Great Reads
Recurrent Ventures acquired 14 media brands since 2018, transforming traditional publishers into creator-driven businesses through video content and live events. The Miami-based media company began with The Drive automotive publication and expanded with acquisitions including Donut Media, Popular Science, Outdoor Life, and Task & Purpose across lifestyle, military, and science verticals.
Co-founder and CEO Andrew Perlman structured the company as creator verticals rather than traditional media, with each brand serving niche communities. Recurrent acquired Donut Media in 2021, viewing its ensemble cast model as more sustainable than single-creator channels. The company applies a "T-shirt test" for acquisitions, evaluating whether audiences feel brand connection beyond traffic metrics.
Quibi launched in April 2020 with $1.75 billion in funding and 175 original shows but shut down six months later after attracting only 450,000-500,000 paying subscribers. The mobile-first platform spent $1.1 billion on content in its first year, with production costs reaching $100,000 per minute compared to YouTube creators' $500-$5,000 per hour.
Quibi featured Hollywood talent including Steven Spielberg, Jennifer Lopez, and Kevin Hart, along with its signature Turnstyle technology that allowed dual vertical and horizontal viewing. The platform positioned itself for "in-between moments" like commutes but lacked social features including public comments, community feeds, and remixing tools that power modern short-form video platforms.
When Quibi closed on December 1, 2020, Roku acquired its entire catalog for approximately $100 million. During the same period, TikTok grew to 800 million monthly active users by emphasizing user participation and viral content creation over premium production values.
Net Influencer surveyed 24 creator economy professionals about Customer Relationship Management tools, revealing widespread dissatisfaction with existing solutions. Industry leaders reported that traditional CRMs fail to capture creator relationship nuances and fragmented communication workflows.
Practitioners cited specific gaps including YouTube granular data, standardized pricing transparency, and mobile-friendly approval tools. The survey highlighted a market transition where no single platform addresses discovery, relationship management, and campaign execution effectively, forcing teams to combine multiple tools or build custom infrastructure.
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Campaign Insights
Forrester Research released data showing Gen Z relies heavily on social media for holiday shopping, with 81% discovering new products on these platforms and 68% making purchases directly from social media ads. The research firm surveyed 554 members of its online community and found social media posts from brands were the most influential channel for Gen Z shoppers, while emails and TV commercials remained more effective for older demographics.
Major retailers responded by making creators central to their holiday campaigns rather than treating them as extensions. Best Buy partnered with over 200 influencers through its "Best Buy storefronts" program, featuring curated shopping recommendations from creators. Sephora launched a multidimensional holiday program involving celebrity influencers including Mariah Carey, the Sephora Squad, and an affiliate program called My Sephora Storefront.
Forrester predicted that creator-led affiliate budgets will double in 2026, with this holiday season's campaigns confirming the trend toward creator-centric marketing strategies.
TikTok named Jess Glynne's 2015 single "Hold My Hand" its UK Song of the Year for 2025, marking a viral resurgence for the decade-old track. The song appeared in approximately 6.6 million TikTok videos and accumulated over 80 billion views across posts using the audio. It also secured second position on TikTok's global songs ranking for 2025.
The track gained popularity through the viral "Nothing Beats a Jet2 holiday" trend, where users created content around travel mishaps and vacation experiences, often using the song ironically in contrast to the airline's optimistic advertising campaigns. Despite its viral success, the song did not re-enter UK singles charts in 2025.
Harvard Business Review published research revealing a trust crisis in the $24 billion influencer marketing industry. The study found that while 88% of consumers said authenticity matters when evaluating influencer content, nearly half believed most influencers are fake.
More than one-third of consumers reported that influencers misrepresent themselves and the products they endorse. The research highlighted what authors called "an increasingly broken influencer ecosystem" where consumers feel misled by sponsored content.
The study was conducted by professors from Georgia State University and Imperial College Business School and published in December 2025. The research identified a paradox facing chief marketing officers: influencer marketing continues growing while consumer trust erodes.
Signs.com surveyed 1,000 U.S. consumers and found user-generated content ranked as the most trusted format for discovering small businesses on social media, with 31% of respondents choosing UGC over brand-created visuals at 27% and influencer content at 20%. The custom signage company's research revealed generational differences in trust patterns, with Gen X and boomers preferring UGC while 30% of Gen Z trusted influencer content most.
Nearly half of respondents said AI-generated content made posts feel less trustworthy, with skepticism highest among Gen Z at 64%. Customer testimonials proved most effective for both capturing attention and driving purchases, with 52% citing reviews as purchase influencers and 35% watching testimonials for at least 10 seconds.
Billion Dollar Boy won Adweek's 2025 Social/Influencer Agency of the Year award after posting revenue growth of 48% from $22 million to $32 million. The London-founded creator marketing agency, which operates across 42 markets with over 2,500 creators, saw gross profit increase 33% and fees rise 70% globally.
The agency added 25 new brands including Crocs, Burberry, Ikea, Unilever Foods, Adidas, and Sephora. Existing client spending jumped 80% year-over-year, with Disney+ expanding scope by 4,618% and Unilever by 1,048%.
BDB's U.S. operations generated 99% EBITDA growth, marking the agency's most successful six-month period. The company's workforce expanded 30% in the U.S., while maintaining 84% employee retention. BDB operates its proprietary AI platform called Companion, which indexes 173 million creator profiles, and runs FiveTwoNine, a creator-entrepreneur platform with over 1,600 members.
Older social media users drove platform growth in 2024, with YouTube traffic from the 55-64 age bracket rising 20% in the US and 14% in the UK since 2020, according to research from media analysts Ampere. TikTok saw a 16% increase in British users in this age group over the past year.
Fitness trainer Caroline Idiens built 2.3 million Instagram followers, 70,000 TikTok followers, and 50,000 YouTube subscribers through her @carolinescircuits account since 2020. Her book "Fit at 50" became a Sunday Times bestseller. Valerie Mackay accumulated 312,000 TikTok followers and nearly 1 million Instagram followers as @embracingfifty over eight years.
Interesting People
Jon Youshaei, a creator industry veteran who previously worked at YouTube and Instagram, launched Boring Stuff in December 2025, a Los Angeles-based tax and financial services company targeting content creators. Youshaei co-founded the company with Amanda Marcovitch, Varun Bhuchar, and Zack Honarvar after developing the service in stealth mode for one year.
The company already serves creators including Airrack with 18 million subscribers, The Try Guys with 8 million subscribers, and Yes Theory with 9 million subscribers. Boring Stuff offers tax preparation, bookkeeping, monthly financial reporting, payroll management, and operational systems using a retainer-based pricing model rather than revenue-sharing arrangements.
The 2025 Streamer Awards announced iShowSpeed as "Streamer of the Year" at The Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles on December 6. The ceremony reached 965,746 peak viewers across all livestreaming platforms, making it the most-watched edition in the event's five-year history.
iShowSpeed secured two awards, also winning "Best IRL Streamer." The creator has built substantial reach with over 44 million YouTube subscribers, 41 million TikTok followers, and nearly 5.7 billion channel views. Rolling Stone previously named him "Most Influential Creator of 2025."
Kai Cenat won three category awards including "Best Just Chatting Streamer" and "Best Marathon Stream" for "Mafiathon 3." CaseOh_ received "Gamer of the Year" and "Best Variety Streamer" awards. The ceremony distributed awards across more than 35 categories, with creator QTCinderella hosting the broadcast that peaked at 221,815 viewers on her Twitch channel.
Civil engineer Crystal Nicole transitioned to full-time content creation in 2020 after building her brand around natural hair care tutorials. Nicole launched her YouTube channel "CurlieCrys" in 2017 while working in engineering, creating content from 7 to midnight while maintaining her day job.
Nicole's monthly content earnings exceeded her engineering salary by 2020, prompting her to resign during the pandemic. Her channel now has over one million followers across platforms. Her viral skincare transformation content helped her gain acceptance into Sephora Squad, a year-long brand partnership program that connected her with beauty companies.
Maya Bakhai, founding partner of New York-based early-stage fund Spice Capital, launched the firm in 2021 after five years at 35V, the investment firm founded by NBA player Kevin Durant. Spice Capital has built a portfolio of 60 startups across technology, media, and consumer sectors, backed by investors including Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, Alexis Ohanian, and Arielle Zuckerberg.
The fund focuses on creator economy infrastructure rather than individual creators, with beehiiv as a flagship investment. Beehiiv, founded by former Morning Brew CTO Tyler Denk, provides an end-to-end system for running email newsletters with analytics and monetization tools. Bakhai tested her investment thesis during the pandemic by investing her entire salary in roughly 30 small-ticket investments before launching the fund.
Steven Cravotta, founder of viral mobile apps Puff Count and Wordle!, launched Posted in July 2024, a marketplace connecting brands and creators through contests and deals. The Los Angeles-based platform allows brands to launch campaigns in under 30 minutes while creators can earn money the same day they sign up.
Posted operates two campaign models: Deals, where brands pay only for content they approve, and Contests, where creators compete for prize pools based on performance metrics like views. The platform charges brands a fee after a trial period and takes a small transaction fee when creators cash out earnings.
Industry News
FlightStory, the media company co-founded by Steven Bartlett, invested seven figures in "Hot Smart Rich," a podcast and media brand created by Maggie Sellers Reum. The deal was announced December 10 and targets ten times revenue growth for the female-focused business content brand.
The "Hot Smart Rich" podcast reached 1.8 million total downloads and attracted 500,000 individual audience members in under one year. Sellers Reum maintains an 8.10% engagement rate compared to the industry standard of 2.4%. The HSR Angels community spans six cities including Los Angeles, New York, and London, with 31% identifying as active entrepreneurs.
FlightStory will fund infrastructure development and team expansion across content production, marketing, operations, and e-commerce functions. The company applies methodologies from Bartlett's "The Diary of a CEO" podcast, which ranks as the world's second-largest host-led podcast with 35 million followers and 60 million monthly listens. Founded in 2023, FlightStory previously launched podcasts that reached number one on Spotify and Apple charts.
Adobe launched a dedicated YouTube Shorts creation space within its Premiere mobile app for iOS in December 2025. The partnership integrates Adobe's video editing tools directly into YouTube's ecosystem, allowing creators to access templates, effects, and direct publishing capabilities without leaving the platform.
The "Create for YouTube Shorts" space provides exclusive templates from top YouTube creators, built-in text effects, transition presets, and multi-track editing capabilities. Creators access the space through a free Premiere mobile login and can publish directly to their YouTube Shorts feed from their phones.
TikTok announced two collaborative features on December 10, 2025, designed to enable shared content discovery and organization. The platform introduced "Shared Collections," which allows users to collaboratively save and organize videos in shared collections, available globally to accounts over 16. Users must follow each other to create collections, which can remain private or be made public to the broader TikTok community.
TikTok also launched "Shared Feed," generating daily selections of 15 videos in direct messages based on the interests of two connected users. The feature curates content from categories including sports, holiday activities, and fashion creators, drawing from participants' TikTok activity including likes, views, and comments. The feature will roll out globally in coming months.
Research from Sounds Profitable and Signal Hill Insights revealed that one-third of podcast creators abandon content production, creating sustainability challenges for the industry. The study of 5,034 American podcast consumers found that 6% had creation experience but no longer produce content, representing half the current active creator base of 12%.
The research identified "format friction" as a key factor, where creators produced video content while maintaining audio-first consumption habits. Among active creators, 71% now incorporate video into workflows while 65% include audio. Lapsed creators showed demographic alignment with video creators but consumption patterns matching audio preferences.
Creator marketing agency Influencer appointed Ryan Fitzpatrick as Chief Financial Officer on December 10, 2025. Fitzpatrick joined from VaynerX, where he built financial systems supporting global growth operations.
The London-based agency, founded in 2015 by Caspar Lee and Ben Jeffries, employs over 200 staff across North America, Europe, and the Middle East. Influencer maintains official marketing partnerships with TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, Snap, Meta, and Twitch, having delivered over 3,000 campaigns for brands including Spotify, Google, Nike, Disney, and Coca-Cola.
Digital management company MADE BY ALL launched MADE BY US, a creative studio connecting brands with creators as creative directors for campaigns. Founded in 2017, MADE BY ALL represents creators including Teyana Taylor, Dhar Mann, and Hannah Stocking who collectively reach over one billion people across platforms.
The company appointed Nic Stanich, former Disney and Tastemade executive, as studio president. Stanich oversaw global branded production at Tastemade and launched TikTok and YouTube strategy for Disney's Freeform network targeting Gen Z audiences.
Creator-led tech show TBPN has sold almost all its 2026 advertising inventory through annual, category-exclusive sponsorship deals, co-host Jordi Hays announced at Axios Communicators Live. The media startup, launched in 2024 by Hays and John Coogan, expects to generate $5 million in ad revenue in 2025 and plans to triple that to $15 million in 2026.
TBPN operates through year-long partnerships that prevent competitors from buying ad space once a brand commits. The profitable company has no outside investors and recently hired former Postmates and HQ Trivia executive Dylan Abruscato to help scale revenue.
The daily three-hour livestream covers tech and finance on X and YouTube, attracting high-profile guests including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. TBPN partnered with the New York Stock Exchange for floor access and worked with Los Angeles agency Day Job on branding that features heavy sponsor logos inspired by Formula 1 racing.
Beast Industries CEO Jeffrey Housenbold announced MrBeast's entry into the creator marketplace business at The New York Times DealBook Summit on December 3. The platform will connect creators with Fortune 1,000 marketers in what the company describes as a two-sided global marketplace.
The marketplace remains in general discussion phase with no specific details available, according to a company spokesperson. An early 2025 fundraising pitch deck outlined plans to identify brand-aligned creators, facilitate multi-platform campaigns, and support creator monetization and growth.
TikTok launched a "Nearby Feed" feature in France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom in December 2025, allowing users to discover location-based content from local creators and businesses. The feature appears as a tab on TikTok's home screen and displays posts based on geographic location, content topic, and posting date.
The location-sharing feature is optional and restricted to users 18 and older. Content from users under 18, private accounts, and posts older than 90 days are excluded from the feed. Users can enable or disable location services through their settings.
YouTube released its annual "Global Culture & Trends Report" for 2025, analyzing creator strategies, subscriber growth, and content patterns across 12 countries. The platform examined data from hundreds of creators beyond top-10 lists to identify themes shaping digital content creation.
U.S. creators gaining the most subscribers implemented structured series formats. Druski launched "Coulda Been Love," a dating spin-off series. iShowSpeed created "Speed Goes Pro," featuring athletes including Kevin Durant and Tom Brady. SleepyCrafter gained more than 2.8 million subscribers since launching in late 2024 with 3D printing hide-and-seek challenges.
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The House v. NCAA settlement took effect July 1, allowing colleges to compensate student athletes for name, image, and likeness usage. This policy change opened new marketing opportunities as college athletes demonstrate social media engagement rates 3.7 times higher than traditional influencers at 5.6% versus 1.9%, according to Opendorse data from June.
Brands expanded beyond traditional sports partnerships into unexpected categories. Texas Longhorns quarterback Arch Manning's Warby Parker collaboration generated 87% more media impact value than the eyewear brand's typical content, based on LaunchMetrics data one week post-announcement. College players Angel Reese and Paige Bueckers formed long-term partnerships with Reese's and Oreo respectively, culminating in a collaborative product.
Cameo partnered with Pro Athlete Community to expand athlete access beyond prominent names. The shift reflects changing fan preferences, with 31% of US sports fans seeking personal life updates compared to 34% wanting game highlights, per YouGov's April survey. One in five Gen Z adults reported making beauty purchases influenced by athletes, according to Morning Consult data from February.
AI-generated travel influencers are disrupting the creator economy as tourism boards and travel companies turn to digital avatars that cost a fraction of human influencers. Creating a basic AI avatar runs five hundred to two thousand dollars, while fully synthetic characters with unique personalities cost up to fifteen thousand dollars—far less than hiring human creators and production crews.
Qatar Airways' AI flight attendant Sama has three hundred twenty-eight thousand Instagram followers, while Germany's digital storyteller Emma promotes destinations to nearly thirty thousand. Human influencers report declining sponsorships and reduced perks as brands shift budgets toward AI alternatives.
Marketing agency New Media says half its travel clients now experiment with AI, allocating twenty to thirty percent of marketing budgets to the technology. The shift affects both emerging creators and established influencers with millions of followers, raising concerns about authenticity as AI-generated content becomes increasingly difficult
Day Job, a Los Angeles creative agency founded in 2018 by Rion Harmon and Spen Madsen, doubled its revenue and headcount in 2024 as tech companies sought distinctive branding. The 20-person bootstrapped firm worked on rebranding the Technology Brothers Podcast to TBPN, which expects $5 million in revenue this year and featured guests including Mark Zuckerberg and Alex Karp.
Day Job expanded beyond consumer packaged goods clients like Recess and Fly By Jing to serve tech startups and venture capital firms. The agency rebranded early-stage VC firm Patron, created campaigns for Andreessen Horowitz-backed AI startup Stuut, and worked with customer service startup Bland AI and crypto exchange Gemini.
TBPN cohost Jordi Hays credited Day Job with creating multiple viable brand directions. Patron's Amber Atherton said she hired Day Job after learning about their TBPN work, seeking "the most non-VC website possible." Harmon said tech companies increasingly recognize branding importance amid market saturation and AI commoditization concerns.
Australia launched a landmark social media ban Wednesday requiring users to be at least sixteen, affecting an estimated four hundred forty thousand teens on Snapchat, three hundred fifty thousand on Instagram, and two hundred thousand on TikTok. The law covers Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, Threads, Twitch and Kick, while exempting messaging and gaming platforms like Discord, Roblox and WhatsApp.
Tech companies must verify ages using tools like facial analysis and activity patterns, and face fines up to thirty-three million dollars for non-compliance. However, there are no penalties for teens or parents who continue accessing platforms. Most surveyed teens said the ban won't work and they plan to keep using social media. Denmark, the European Union and Malaysia are watching closely as they consider similar restrictions. Two fifteen-year-olds have filed a constitutional challenge.