Good morning. LA creators—are you 1) looking to meet other creators 2) curious how creator-run businesses operate and 3) free next weekend? We’ve got just the thing: Sign up for our Coffee With Creators event on the morning of Saturday, August 24, in Hollywood here.

— Hannah Doyle & Nate Graber-Lipperman

Creator Agencies Prioritize Brand Safety

This week, marketing agency Captiv8 released an AI-powered tool that combs through creators’ content and gives them a “brand safety” rating based on how much they associate with hot-button topics like politics, sex, and religion.

Keep in mind: Creators are more involved than ever in this year’s election. Nearly 28% of US creators have been approached by political organizations to create content ahead of November, according to a new study by creator marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy.

But not all brands are excited about creators’ political content. “We noticed from the election before, [brands] wanted to know—have creators talked about the election and talked about the president? Because [brands] don’t want to be in that conversation,” Krishna Subramanian, Captiv8 founder, told the NYT. 

We talked to a creator and a marketing agency to get their POVs on brand safety →

The brand perspective: “We are experiencing an increased number of requests from brands to add political vetting to the mix,” Christine Göös, director of marketing at Billion Dollar Boy, told us. To vet creators for brands, they use a mix of manual search and analytic tool Companion.

But that doesn’t mean creators should stay quiet re: politics. “There are audiences that demand their favorite creators to take a stand on issues they feel passionate about, and feel alienated if they don’t,” Göös said. “Each creator should weigh in on the pros and cons of integrating their political ideologies into their content as they know their audience best and how they’ll likely react.”

The creator perspective: Actor and creator Chelsea Sik has chosen to take a stand on issues she feels passionate about like reproductive rights. “I don’t operate in a scarcity mindset. I think there’s a brand for every type of creator,” Sik told us. 

Apple vs. Patreon, Explained

Apple threatened to remove creator membership platform Patreon from its App Store last year if creators didn’t start charging their paid subscribers through Apple’s in-app purchasing system, Patreon shared in a blog post this week.

The details: Apple charges a 30% commission on all sales made through the App Store.

• Up until now, Patreon has avoided this fee by using alternative payment processors.

• Starting this November, Apple will apply its App Store fee when a new membership is first purchased through Patreon—and again each time the membership is renewed.

In response, Patreon built a new tool that allows creators to automatically increase their subscription prices in the iOS app to cover the share Apple demands. Creators can also opt to charge fans the same cost and eat the 30% commission themselves.

Zoom out: App store prices are becoming an increasingly important factor in creator businesses, particularly for those that have launched subscription streaming services.

For example, creator group Corridor Crew encourages followers to sign up to their service on desktop—where they charge subscribers $20 less per year than they do on the App Store.

Olympic Athletes Beat Professional Creators at Their Own Game

NBCUniversal, the official broadcast partner of the Olympics, sent 27 creators—including Kai Cenat and Livvy Dunne—to this year’s games to drum up interest for fans across platforms.

But professional creators weren’t the big winners. Why?

Because athletes including USA rugby team star Ilona Maher (who gained over 2 million TikTok followers over the last several weeks) and Norwegian swimmer Henrik Christiansen (who really loves gooey chocolate muffins) stole the show. And that kind of exposure can help Olympic athletes—many of whom are amateurs—support themselves as they train for LA 2028.

Zoom out: One analysis found that during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, athletes who competed in the games created 232,000 posts and gained a combined 113 billion followers across platforms.

🔥 Press Worthy

• Emma Chamberlain and MrBallen are among creators named to The Hollywood Reporter’s “Most Powerful People in Podcasting 2024” list.

• The PGA Tour announces the full field of golf creators for its first Creator Classic.

• The DNC will stream its next event on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.

• Reddit is becoming a go-to platform for news publishers to share stories and improve search visibility.

• TikTok users are buying plane tickets from travel creators within the app.

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