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Night Light | 2024 Predictions

Night Light | 2024 Predictions

Reed’s 2024 Predictions

Last year we saw a few changes to the creator economy. We changed the way we watch YouTube, I lost count of new creator-led brands, and Kick signed some big names. This year, I have a few predictions that will help you navigate the creator economy in 2024:

Livestreaming Continues to Flatten:

During the pandemic we saw a massive spike in livestreamed content, but in the last 2 years things have been pretty flat. Creators saw a massive bump during Covid, but streamers that were getting 1,200 concurrent viewers 2 years ago are now getting closer to 100. Subscribers, unique streamers, and watch time are down across the board. YouTube not prioritizing streaming and Facebook getting rid of their live streaming service all-together doesn’t give me too much faith that 2024 is going to be any different.

Source: TwitchTracker

Longer Videos / Slower Editing Will Become the New Meta:

There’s two parts to this prediction. I’m seeing a lot of YouTube creators making longer videos. You can run more ads, the watch time is higher, and RPMs are significantly better. I’ve noticed this has been pretty consistent across my suggested videos and others’ pages.

Creators will also be slowing down their editing style. I can go on and on about Outdoor Boys, Sam Sulek, and a ton of other creators that are gaining massive traction by just being themselves and not overly editing their videos. I think that the growth hacking environment on YouTube will continue, but people are a little fatigued from it. We’re looking for raw authenticity with a low editing barrier not incredibly quick videos without any breathing room. It’s very noticeable in Emma Chamberlain’s newest videos, in 2024 we’ll see a lot more of this.

This 30 second intro to Emma's recent video >

Shorts, Reels and TikTok Will Remain the Best for Discoverability:

Swipe-Content is still the best top of funnel to discover new creators. I think the big question that still remains is whether or not those creators can use short form content as a way to push audiences to their long-form content. I haven’t seen a ton of creators succeed in doing this ( it’s even true about my own channel). We’re already seeing that a majority of the top 500 YouTube creators (in terms of views) are there because of short-form content. Earlier this week I posted about this if you want to read into it more.

Creator Businesses Will Consolidate/Go out of Business:

I think a lot of it has to do with the amount of capital that was raised during and right after the pandemic. Now we’re seeing creator businesses running out of money. They couldn't find a product-market fit, weren’t able to generate any cash flow, and now they either need to raise capital or merge with an existing company. It’s unfortunate, but a lot of them are going to go out of business in 2024.

More Products and Brands From Creators:

In 2023 we saw a lot of retail buy-in for creator products including PRIME Hydration, Feastables, and Chamberlain Coffee. I think this will continue in 2024. Retailers have now seen that creators can drive substantial amounts of traffic in-store, and we're going to see more adoption from the retailers taking in creator-led brands.

PRIME flying off the shelves at our local HEB

Multi-Language Won’t Be a Priority:

Creators are now starting to realize how expensive dubbing videos are. I also think most creators didn't have a clear vision of why they were doing multi-language in the first place. They just wanted to grow their international audience without really having a way to monetize in these other countries (especially countries that have lower RPMs). That's the big distinction here, Jimmy was able to make a substantial investment into multi-language knowing that our goal is to sell Feastables globally. It’s incredibly expensive to do this. Also (from what I’ve heard so far) until AI can actually recognize emotion better and dub in a decent way, I think that multi-language is going to take a backseat for the majority if not 99% of creators.

Brand Deals Pick Up In Back End of 2024:

I made the prediction in 2023 that brand deals were going to stagnate and even go down. I was very correct. I think the first couple of quarters in 2024 are going to be equally as difficult. I’ve spoken to a lot of companies that have yet to unlock their Q1 and Q2 budgets. This is obviously scary because by January they should already know where they’re spending capital or know where their budgets are being allocated. Uncertainties in the economy and high interest rates are making brands hesitant to spend, I’d anticipate this continuing into 2024.

Big Opportunities For Creators to Work With Movie Theaters:

The writers strike left a massive window open for movie theaters which aren’t going to have many tentpole theatrical releases like in 2023. We did see some interesting things happen at movie theaters like Sam and Colby dropping their conjuring series early and Talk to Me by the RackaRacka boys made over $90M. I think other creators will work with theaters to monetize their content in a new way. There’s a lot of incentives for theaters to work with creators in 2024.

Huge win for Sam and Colby + Cinemark

The Video Game Industry Will Have a Tough Year:

We finally got a trailer and release date for GTA VI. I’m excited about it, but it’s not coming in 2024. In fact there’s not a whole lot coming in 2024 compared to 2023 (Legend of Zelda TOK, Spider-Man 2, Super Mario Wonder). Last year seemed big partly due the development bottleneck during covid. Games with more development time suffered, and we saw a lot of titles drop in 2023.

For the last two years all I’ve been hearing from friends and streamers is complaints about not having games to play. A game would come out, it would last a week, and then it would tail off. Games like Lego Fortnite are going to have to continue to push out updates, and games that don't push out weekly/monthly updates aren’t going to last.

Wishing you all the best in 2024, excited to reflect at the end of the year and see how this all holds up.