From Content to Payment : The Rise And Implications Of Social Media Ad Revenue Sharing

 
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Published: April 2024
Author: Victoire Rio
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From Content to Payment: The Rise and Implications of Social Media Ad Revenue Sharing

 
More than 50 million people worldwide now generate revenue from social media activity. A quickly growing share of that revenue comes via participation in social media ad revenue share programs. We estimate that platforms now collectively redistribute more than US$20 billion in ad revenue annually to upwards of five million social media accounts.
What was at first a relatively limited enterprise has seen a recent explosion; the number of ad revenue share programs has more than doubled since 2022, and membership is rapidly expanding across all major social platforms.
Despite the enormous sums of money involved, ad revenue share programs operate with little transparency and oversight. As a result, such programs are responsible for inadvertently:
  • subsidizing the global disinformation crisis by providing lucrative revenue streams to grifters and disinformation propagators
  • fueling reputational risk and financial losses to advertisers
  • accelerating the demise of legitimate creators and independent media.
This report charts the evolution of social media monetization and the rise of ad revenue share programs. It offers an overview of how these programs work and the challenges they pose.
We intend for this report to help kick start an urgent conversation around ad revenue share programs and ways to regulate them, with the goal of ensuring that they effectively serve not just platforms, but also advertisers, creators, independent media and society globally.
 
Cite this report
Victoire Rio (2024), From Content to Payment: The Rise and Implications of Social Media Ad Revenue Sharing, https://whattofix.tech/publications/Content-to-Payment