The New Creator Playbook

How to Thrive in the Age of AI

Author

Jim Louderback
May 12, 2025

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This Week: An AI pug went viral, foreshadowing the future of online video.  I lay out a path forward and profile a potential solution – for at least some creators.  Two industry titans debuted new metrics hoping to snare brands and buyers.  Plus two fascinating research studies, one focused on beauty and the other on LinkedIn creators and much, much more! And thanks again to Whalar Group for sponsoring this issue!

NEW: Listen to this in audio, thanks to NotebookLM

Hi, I’m Jim Louderback and this is my weekly creator economy newsletter. If you’ve received it, then you are either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you.


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💡 TOP STORIES

SURVIVING THE AI POSTAPOCALYPSE

 AI will disrupt creators.  I’ve been warning about this for a year or more here.  But now it’s starting to get real.  This week’s flashpoint?  An AI animated pug is racking up millions of views on YouTube, proving that AI storytelling is here to stay.  @Zack Honarvar’s latest post asks “what happens to creators when AI can make content we prefer watching?”, and sparked a good conversation about what’s coming next.   It’s unavoidable; AI will siphon off a considerable amount of time-spent with online video – and in a zero-sum consumption world (i.e. we have no more spare time to consume more media) that means less human-hosted viewing minutes to go around.  

I’ve thrived through several waves of tech-induced disruption of media – from magazines to websites, TV to YouTube and radio to podcasts.  Nothing steals it all away, but in each case the older media was irrevocably transformed.  Be the change – don’t wait for it to decimate you.

Here are four things creators need to do now to survive the disruption – or as @Uzo Ometo put it, “building an AI resilient ecosystem”:

  1. Lean into what makes your content uniquely human so that when viewers WANT that human connection they disproportionately turn to you.

  2. Double-down on identifying, connecting and building off-platform spaces for your super-fan community to connect and consume.

  3. Build out your own AI skunkworks now to experiment with new AI formats that preserve the essence of your unique viewing proposition.

  4. Become a “GEO” expert – that’s Generative Engine Optimization – to get GenAI engines to give your content preference in chats. 

Don’t let AI Pugs get you down

GEO OPTIMIZATION

SEO is rapidly being replaced by GEO, and it changes everything.  I’ve covered this a lot in the last two weeks, but summarizing a few links below.  

I’m creating a new report focused on tactics, sources, insight and will release it in a special mid-week version of Inside the Creator Economy – but it will only be for my Beehiiv).  Make sure to subscribe here to get it on Thursday (it’s free!)!

Still Worried About SEO?  Google threw another creator summit last week where they invited a few creators and shared their search updates.  

TPBN: ONE WAY FOR HUMANS TO BEAT AI

Have you spent any time with TBPN – aka the Technology Brothers Programming Network?  It’s a great example of how creators can build a moat that AI won’t easily cross.

 

Reminiscent of CNBC (and the 10-hour daily Tech Live program I helped build at TechTV in 2001), it delivers three hours of personality drive commentary on the biggest tech stories of the day, along with spot-on interviews with top venture capitalists and execs. Co-founders @John Coogan and @Jordi Hays have crafted a distinct visual identity and tone that resonates with the tech elite, building real human connections that algorithms and AI can’t replicate (at least for now).

Creators take note: To counter AI, focus on your unique voice, build real connections with your community, and lean into formats that showcase your expertise and personality.  Consider doing it live. 

AI might churn out endless content, but it can’t replicate the human connection forged via cringey banter, inside jokes, and the butt-clenching moments that only live can deliver.

WHAT IS A VIEW WORTH?

I’ve been wrestling with this question for nearly 20 years, and it’s only gotten worse. Shorts, TikTok, and Reels now count a video start as a view—even if it’s swiped past in a fraction of a second. It’s a metric about as valuable as a billboard on the autobahn.  But two new developments last week – one from Spotify and one from CreatorIQ – offer both clarity and confusion.

First, CreatorIQ expanded its proprietary Earned Media Value (EMV) with four new “Share Of” metrics: Share of Voice, Share of Exposure (likely similar to the Out of Home metric OTS), Share of Engagement (likes, comments, etc.), and Share of Influence (probably an updated EMV).

It’s a blizzard of TLAs, each promising to help brands identify the right creators, optimize campaigns, and track ROI. There’s probably a lot of profound mathematics here, but without clarity on variables, weights and regression models these metrics remain an unproven black box.   They might genuinely benefit brands and creators with real community power, or they might just add more noise to an already chaotic ecosystem.

CreatorIQ also launched a free calculator for brands to benchmark themselves against the competition – but it was down when I tried to test it yesterday.

Meanwhile, Spotify is upending podcasting with its new “plays” metric, which tracks when someone starts a podcast, like the now universal short-form view. This is a major shift from the IAB’s standard “stream” metric, which triggers after 60 seconds. YouTube’s long-form view metric, which apparently still kicks in at 30 seconds, is suddenly conservative by comparison. The result? Significant view inflation on Spotify, making its numbers harder to compare with other platforms.

I think Spotify is making a mistake. Podcast consumption is fundamentally different than a TikTok swipe, and this risks devaluing the medium.  Good news here though: The IAB is wading in as well, hoping to provide clarity to this proprietary and confusing world.  I’m on the task force and will report back when I can.

Related: Can you measure positive attention?  Next in Media founder @Mike Shields partners with Rembrand to find out. Download the study at bottom of Mike’s post.

 

😎 SPONSOR

Creators do punch well above their weight! Nielsen reported that Whalar campaigns had a ROI of $2.41, surpassing all other media channels. More importantly, creators are efficient – while making up less than 1% of total media, they contribute 3x the impact. Check out the full Media Mix Model (MMM) study here to learn more about how creators are media investments.  

💡 PLATFORMS

YOUTUBE

 

META

 

TIKTOK

 

OTHER PLATFORMS

💡 QUIBIS

MEDIA DISRUPTION

CREATOR MONETIZATION

Thanks to Alex Dwek from Nas.io for this image!

MARKETING AND BRANDS

OTHER CREATOR ECONOMY

CREATOR TECH – AI, WEB3, VR, MORE

RESEARCH

Trust is a Currency, not a Buzzword:  That’s just one of the fascinating takeaways from influencer marketing agency Kyra’s “State of Beauty” report.  Although focused on GenZ and beauty, the findings apply broadly across many categories. TikTok remains indispensable, but YouTube is rising, along with live-stream shopping.  But beware: given the state of tariffs, all shopping data is suspect.  What’s timeless?  That trusted experts “just like me” rule.  With no real methodology, consider it directional, not predictive.

LinkedIn Influencers Are a Big Deal: This guide to the LinkedIn opportunity from another IM agency makes the case for LinkedIn creators.  Although self-serving, (par for the course), it includes good case studies, profiles and data. Want to lean-in with LinkedIn?  DM me!

📍 Where’s Jim? Check it out!  My friend @Dylan Huey included me in his “Two Minutes With” series last week.  I was a bit verbose, but I think it turned out OK!  Excited to speak this Thursday at the Creator Career Conference (C3) in San Francisco!  Excited to talk newsletters with Katherine Rundell from Beehiiv and Jackie Caldwell.

100% written by me – no human or AI ghostwriters were involved in the production (except for the cover art!).

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I've built and sold multiple creator economy startups to top media companies - including Discovery and Paramount. Subscribe for free to get this newsletter every Monday.

Let me know what you think – email me at [email protected]. Thanks for reading and see you around the internet.