Social Rocket
The creator media brand What’s Trending shows how far a small social publishing team can scale. Founder Shira Lazar tells Digiday that annual revenue is in the mid six figures in weaker years and in the low seven figures in stronger years – with a core team of just three people.
The business model has long gone beyond classic platform advertising. According to Lazar, What’s Trending earns money from brand partnerships, creative services, licensing, distribution and events. At the same time, the brand remains heavily dependent on social distribution: it is active on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.
From social format to creator media brand
What’s Trending started 2011 as a creator-led news and entertainment format. Today Lazar describes the company as an integrated model combining editorial, social, data, distribution and live events.
According to Digiday, the brand reaches around 4 million followers across its social channels, almost 2 million of them on TikTok. In addition there are distribution partnerships, including with MSN, Spotify and Screenvision.
For brands, the structure behind this is more interesting than the absolute reach: a creator personality is not just a testimonial, but can itself become a media product.
This fits the development we have already described in CAKES Media and the shift of TikTok reach into owned media.
Revenue is broader – but not automatically more stable
Lazar also says that earnings can fluctuate strongly. Individual large brand deals can shape a good year, but are not guaranteed to be repeated.
That is exactly why What’s Trending is trying to build several revenue streams at once. For creators and creator companies, the question of how reach, sponsorship, events and distribution work together in a plannable way becomes more important.
The trend fits with creator upfronts, which are meant to make advertising deals more plannable and with the growing debate about measurement and standards in creator marketing.
Equity models are also gaining importance. More and more creators want equity instead of only one-off brand deals.
What marketers can take away
Creator-led media is not simply influencer marketing with longer content. What matters is that a person or a small team builds their own editorial product, a recognisable voice and several revenue models.
For brands, this creates partners who bring reach, production, distribution and community trust at the same time. At the same time, the risk remains high if revenue depends too heavily on individual campaigns or platforms.