2024 Lookback: Who Needs Emmys When the Creator Economy Is Cooking?

As another turbulent year in media and tech comes to an end, VIP+ analysts are revisiting what they got right — and wrong — in their 2024 forecasts. In this installment, Robert Steiner recaps the year the creator economy went mainstream without the approval of the entertainment industry’s old guard.

Back in May, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan wrote a guest column in the Hollywood Reporter, pushing for the online video platform’s creators to be properly acknowledged by the Emmy Awards. “Creators are defining a new era of entertainment. And they deserve the same acclaim as other creative professionals,” he wrote.

I agreed with Mohan that if there was any time to make the case for a YouTuber getting a major Emmy nomination, it would be 2024. Aside from the fact that YouTube was now big enough to consider Netflix a direct competitor, the internet’s top online creators can now earn millions and build entire production companies just from online content. But both Mohan and I were proven wrong, as it appears online creators will need to try again next year to campaign for those Emmy noms.

Still, that doesn’t mean 2024 was a wash. In fact, it was a year when, seemingly more than ever, online creators broke through on their own terms. At this point, winning an Emmy is probably just a side quest more than the main goal for the online world’s biggest players.

Between Kai Cenat hanging out with Serena Williams and Michael Bay chilling with the “Skibidi Toilet” guy, 2024 saw a slew of milestones for the creator economy going mainstream. Here are just some of the ones I covered for VIP+ over the past year.

YouTube: From “Broadcast Yourself” to “Broadcast Everything All of the Time”
When Mohan wrote that THR op-ed in May, YouTube had just reported $8.1 billion in revenue for Q1 2024, following an all-time high of $9.2 billion the previous quarter (and it got awfully close to that number again this past Q3).

But somehow these numbers aren’t the best examples of YouTube’s sheer dominance in entertainment from the past year. In the July edition of the Nielsen Gauge Report, YouTube became the first streaming company to surpass 10% TV viewership in the U.S.

Before the Olympics javelined NBCUniversal into the top spot the following month, YouTube was the most watched streaming platform in the American TV screens — more than Netflix, Disney+ or any of the other traditional SVOD hubs.

That feat exemplifies how far YouTube has come from its days as a website for uploading home videos. And as a victory lap, the company unveiled some major updates to its TV app to, in blunt terms, look a lot more like Netflix — the same adapt-and-improve strategy it deployed against TikTok and Twitch when it seemed high time to diversify its portfolio and dominate another corner of the industry. All of this is to say we can expect YouTube’s push into traditional SVOD territory is far from finished.

Hollywood Trades the Late-Night Couch for Hot Wings
“Deadpool & Wolverine” was not only one of the biggest box office hits of 2024, but its promotional rollout was a textbook example of the modern Hollywood press tour.

Whereas late-night TV was once the go-to for A-listers to promote a film, “Deadpool & Wolverine” stars Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman dedicated significantly more time to appearing on online-only shows including “Hot Ones” and “Chicken Shop Date.”

The splits in views and engagements between online shows and late-night TV clips on YouTube across the “Deadpool & Wolverine” press tour exemplifies traditional TV’s diminishing cultural cachet and usefulness for reaching relevant audiences. But no made-for-internet show speaks to that reality better than “Hot Ones,” the popular interview series that regularly books A-listers and scores millions of views per video.

On top of its fervent online audience and budding deal with Netflix, the show’s production company, First We Feast, just went independent following an $82.5 million buyout from Buzzfeed. It’s clear the people behind “Hot Ones” have ambitions to evolve into a household brand bigger than any talk show, and if they keep bringing Hollywood’s finest to the hot seat, they just might pull it off.

Horror and YouTube: A Match Made in Hell (in a Good Way)
October gave the traditional entertainment biz a good jump scare: The same weekend that “Joker: Folie à Deux” opened and promptly imploded at the box office, an independently released documentary by ghost-hunting YouTubers Sam and Colby quietly earned almost $2 million across just 350 screens nationwide.

Sam and Colby aren’t the first horror-oriented YouTubers to make the jump to the silver screen. Last year’s “Talk to Me,” the acclaimed debut film written and directed by Danny and Michael Philippou, better known as RackaRacka, became A24’s third-highest-grossing film to date behind best picture winner “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and summer blockbuster “Civil War.”

Even then, these are just the latest examples of the horror genre thriving on YouTube and finding mainstream appeal in a history that’s almost as old as the website itself. And given the slate of online horror creators, such as Curry Barker and Ken Parsons, currently working alongside Hollywood veterans to produce future projects, YouTube continues to be a proving ground for the next generation of horror creators.

Kai Cenat Invites Hollywood to the Subathon
Kai Cenat is probably a name that younger audiences recognize. As VIP+ covered in its July special report on SVOD vs. social video, livestreaming is quickly emerging as the entertainment of choice for Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences, and this 22-year-old is one of the most “influential” of influencers at the moment.

But Cenat’s month-long “Mafiathon 2” subathon wasn’t just noteworthy for the record-shattering 728,535 Twitch subs and reported $3.6 million he earned. The stream gained considerable mainstream media attention for the many celebrities who stopped by: Lizzo, SZA, Snoop Dogg, Serena Williams, Bill Nye the Science Guy –– the list goes on.

Cenat’s subathon was the first major example of Hollywood catching up to what the music world had already figured out: Livestreamers can influence key demographics quickly and effectively. Just as the mainstream film and TV industry turned to online videos to reach audiences that were leaving behind broadcast TV, the same shift might happen to livestreaming as Cenat and others continue to hit bigger view counts and make friends in high places.

Skibidi Toilet (and Michael Bay) Will Rule Us All
Finally, the biggest crossover success to come from the creator economy this year was “Skibidi Toilet” — the most confounding, polarizing and popular thing to emerge from the internet in a long time, possibly ever.

As strange as the surreal, hyperviolent animated YouTube series is for most audiences over the age of 14, the world-dominating toilets are getting the big-screen treatment thanks to director Michael Bay and former Paramount Pictures president Adam Goodman.

You might not like the timeline where “Skibidi Toilet” movie concept art exists, but you shouldn’t be surprised. Show creator Alexey Gerasimov, aka DaFuq!?Boom!, has earned more than 18 billion views in under two years — in fact, the channel was only at 17 billion total views since we broke the news of the “Skibidi” film deal in July.

At one point, DaFuq!?Boom!’s monthly viewership was outpacing YouTube’s current king MrBeast, who just premiered his $100 million competition show on Amazon Prime. If that show can exist and will likely succeed, even with its mounting controversies, then “Skibidi Toilet” has enough gas to perform a similar feat despite the derision it inspires from older audiences.

The Skibidi Toilet Cinematic Universe probably won’t win any Oscars, but who needs awards when you have billions of views, millions of devoted fans and all the potential in the world?

Other VIP+ 2024 lookbacks ...
• Tyler Aquilina revisits the media business’ first year in a post-streaming wars world
• Kaare Eriksen revisits 2024 domestic box office — and which films didn’t measure up
• Audrey Schomer revisits how the year in generative AI has impacted Hollywood