The creator economy, by the numbers
Creators make what we watch. Platforms keep most of the money.
Advertisers were forecast to spend $306.4 billion on social media in 2025.3 Here’s how much of it reaches the people who make the posts, videos and streams those ads run beside.
One company was forecast to take 60.1% of the world’s social media ad spend in 2025.3
What it earned, what it kept, and what it paid creators
$201.0 billiontotal revenue, 2025
$83.3 billionoperating profit
$3 billionpaid to creators
$1.49 of every $100 it earned went to creators.
It kept $41.44 of every $100 as operating profit: about 28 times what it paid creators.
Revenue and operating profit are the whole company’s; 97.6% of revenue came from advertising.1 Operating profit is what it kept after all its costs, creator pay included. Payouts are the nearly $3 billion its flagship social app paid through creator programs, up 35% on 2024.2 We found no published 2025 total for its other apps. Squares are drawn to scale by area.
The ten biggest platforms
What they earned and kept in 2025, and what they say they paid creators.
Four of the ten published a 2025 figure for what they paid or shared with creators. The other six took in at least $290 billion between them and published no 2025 total.
Social network and photo apps
Short-video app maker
Video platform
Short-video and live-stream app
Professional network
Photo-messaging app
Video community
Image discovery site
Forum network
Live-streaming app maker
2025 revenueOperating profitCreator pay the company publishedNo total published
Bars share one scale. Operating profit is what a company kept after all its costs, creator pay included. “est.” marks a private company’s revenue as reported by the press, not by the company. Yuan figures are converted at 6.9931 to the dollar. The creator-pay figures from video and live-stream apps are cost lines that also include other partners or taxes. We left out a messaging-and-games conglomerate, whose social media revenue isn’t reported apart from games and payments; a microblogging site that publishes only its advertising revenue, $1.8 billion, less than the tenth platform’s total;20 a private lifestyle-sharing app whose 2025 revenue we found only as analysts’ estimates; and third-party estimates of creator pay, which are modelled guesses rather than company figures.
Without creators, a social platform is an empty feed.
Yet the platforms that pay creators pay mostly for revenue they can trace to each creator’s own posts and videos.
What about everything else a platform earns, that it could never earn without what creators make?
The best case
Even the most generous pays only for what it can trace.
A video platform with more than $60 billion in 2025 revenue5 says it paid over $100 billion to creators, artists and media companies in four years.6 That’s real money. But it’s a share of the ads that run on each creator’s own videos.7 The platform those videos helped build isn’t part of the deal.
CreatorPlatform
The bigger picture
Creators are now the main event.
WPP Media’s 2025 forecast expected content made by users and creators to overtake professional production in ad revenue that year.4
What the research says
Why the split looks like this
Platforms set the terms
Researchers who study platforms find that the people who make content have to keep adapting to platform rules and pricing they don’t control.9, 23
The split is a design choice
Economic models of ad-funded platforms treat revenue sharing as a design decision the platform makes, and partly a tug of war with creators.10
“Free” leaves people out
Economists have argued that treating what users contribute as free ignores their part in creating it and spreads the gains unequally.11
What we’re designing instead
We’re building ClimbHigh AI the other way around.
We believe paying creators only for revenue traced to their own content leaves out most of what they make possible. So the model we’re building toward reserves 67% of ClimbHigh AI’s ownership for creators, earned as pay for teaching on it.
Proposed model
Where this stands: This is the model we’re designing, not a final program. Nothing is final until counsel-approved agreements are signed, and every creator sees every term in writing before signing. Joining the waitlist is free and doesn’t earn, reserve or guarantee any ownership.
Ownership awards are compensation for content contributions, subject to program terms, written agreements, eligibility, and applicable law, and may vary or be unavailable in some countries. This is not an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy securities.
