And the Streamer Award Goes to… 🏆

QTCinderella’s live show breaks previous viewership records

Good morning. Here are two crazy stats to illustrate how massive this whole YouTube thing really is → Nielsen announced yesterday that YouTube has now been the #1 streaming service in the U.S. for a full year. Also: YouTube just shared that viewers around the world are now watching over 1 billion hours of YouTube on their TVs every day.

QTCinderella’s Streamer Awards Set Viewership Record

Streamers QTCinderella (left) and Pokimane (right) host the third annual Streamer Awards / QTCinderella

Twitch streamer QTCinderella organized and co-hosted her third annual Streamer Awards this weekend in LA, setting a new livestream record for the show of 645,000 peak viewers, according to analytics database Streams Charts.

Context: QT started the independent awards show in 2022 as a way to celebrate the variety of content streamers make online.

  • This year, fans voted on nominees for 28 different categories such as “Best Speedrun Streamer” and “Rising Star Award.”

  • QT supported the 2024 event through sponsorships with companies including AT&T and Marvel.

So what helped drive viewership to a record? 

  • This year, the event allowed “co-streaming,” aka letting creators play the event live and react on their own channels.

  • More than 400 channels co-streamed QT’s official event stream on Twitch, with viewers across channels watching the awards show for 3.3 million combined hours.

“You see [Twitch CEO] Dan Clancy…he’s at the event, chatting it up with creators and taking photos,” Will Baumann, whose ecommerce company Fourthwall helped provide the Streamer Awards’ merch, told us. “So it clearly is kind of filling that gap where it does feel mainstream in the Twitch world.”

Zoom out: This year’s Streamer Awards viewership suggests the direction in which entertainment media are moving. The Streamer Awards surged for the third straight year; the 2024 Emmys registered a record low 4.3 million viewers, down from 5.9 million the year before.

Creators Take on UGC

Marketing brand Collabstr finds that the amount of user-generated content rose by 93% between 2022 and 2023 / Illustration by Moy Zhong

User-generated content (or UGC, content that creators make for brands to own and post themselves) is becoming a significant industry in the creator space—let’s break it down.

The details: Over half of the 80,000 creators recently analyzed in a report from influencer marketing brand Collabstr made UGC ads in 2023, up 93% from a year ago. 

  • The UGC market is expected to reach $71.3 billion by 2032, ballooning from $4.7 billion in 2022. 

  • FYI, the creator economy at large is expected to reach $500 billion by 2030.

What creators are saying…

Right now: “Candidly UGC creators aren’t valued very highly, particularly with platforms like Billo,” social strategist JT Barnett said in a TikTok. “Creators make ads for [Billo] for $10–50/video…so most companies now view UGC as very low-paying content. They’re not willing to spend $1–2k on a piece of content in the current market.”

But in the future: Creators say the demand for UGC will continue to grow. “It’s one piece of the creator pie,” lifestyle creator Charlene Izere said in a TikTok. “Critics say UGC is for creators who can’t build a following, but that’s so far from the truth…there are so many reasons why a creator may have other interests and skills they want to monetize, and UGC provides a way to do so.”

Have you made UGC Content? What do you think of it?

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Pinterest Heads for Streaming

Danni Rose and guests use Pinterest to inspire gatherings and menus in “Deliciously Entertaining” / Tastemade

Pinterest is launching its first TV show, Deliciously Entertaining, with food media company Tastemade on Friday. It will run on Tastemade’s streaming app, which appears on platforms like Roku, YouTube TV, and Fire TV.

Tune in: Deliciously Entertaining will be hosted by food creator Danni Rose and feature guests like Lance Bass and Trixie Matell making recipes they find on Pinterest.

Perspective: Pinterest is a small platform compared to other social media giants, but it’s seen steady growth in users and shopping conversion. Monthly active users reached an all-time high last quarter at 498 million (up 11% annually). And more than 40% of its users are Gen Z.

🎥 From The Studio

Colin and Samir are going live on Discord next Tuesday, February 27th, at 5 PM PST to answer questions and talk about building a creator-led merch brand.

We’ll discuss the details of the latest Press Publish merch and answer your questions on building a brand of your own.

Come prepared to pitch your merch idea for a chance to win Press Publish merch and other prizes. Mark your calendars and RSVP here.

Got merch questions? Hit reply and we’ll pass them along.

🔥 Press Worthy

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