Social Media Monetization 2025: an update on the social media monetization landscape

February 22, 2025

Did you know social media platforms redistribute more than $20 billion to millions of accounts through revenue redistribution programs? Last year, we published our baseline report, which for the first time mapped the social media monetization landscape, with a focus on revenue redistribution programs (also known as “revenue share programs” or “ad revenue share programs”).
We’re now excited to share our updated Social Media Monetization 2025 deck to guide you through the big changes and trends across social media monetization in 2024 and moving into 2025.

Like our baseline report, our new deck touches on the broader and increasingly diverse monetization options offered by social platforms, but it really zeroes in on revenue redistribution programs.
That’s because it’s through these programs that platforms play a distinctly proactive role. Unlike other monetization features like fan tips, subscriptions or branded content, where audiences and advertisers more directly lend support to creators or publishers, revenue share structures involve platforms actively redistributing a portion of their revenue to creators and other qualifying account admins. This entails platforms engaging in financial relationships with partners, making important fund transfer decisions, and more.

So, what’s the latest? Social media revenue redistribution programs remain a messy, opaque business with few public disclosures, conflicting fine print, and vague rules. They’re also an increasingly important part of how social media platforms do business.
With more than $20 billion (and growing!) being redistributed by social media companies through these programs every year, we’re doing our best to keep tabs on how it all happens, who benefits, and how we can manage this growing industry with more transparency and accountability going forward.

2024 was a BIG year for social media advertising
By the end of the year, social media overtook search as the primary advertising medium. And Meta, in particular, had a stellar year, earning $160.63b (+22% year over year) in ad revenue.

Growing revenue redistribution program participation
We also saw the continued expansion of revenue redistribution program participation, albeit not on all platforms (Instagram is phasing out its revenue sharing programs, and X seems to be struggling on all fronts).
Take Facebook, which saw a more than 55% increase in participation in its revenue redistribution programs last year, jumping from 2 million participating accounts in 2023 to 3.1 million participating accounts in 2024. That’s downright mind-blowing when you consider that just 81,000 accounts were enrolled in these programs when WHAT TO FIX first started tracking the data in October 2019.

No improvement in transparency or accountability
With billions of dollars redistributed to millions of partner-publishers every month, we’d hoped that 2024 would bring increased transparency and accountability to a woefully opaque landscape. Instead, we may be worse off than ever.
One reason: legal attacks on advertisers, standard setting bodies, and civil society have had a chilling effect on transparency and accountability efforts. And move by the new American administration do not bode well for accountability work in the US, where most of the major social media companies are based.
Separately, in January of last year, Facebook moved to change the way it calculates payouts for its revenue redistribution program, impacting overall transparency. Here’s why: In the past, payouts were calculated based on the performance of advertisements placed alongside a given piece of content. Now, Facebook calculates revenue redistribution payouts based on a participating account’s overall performance. They market this as reflecting the priority of good content, but in practice, it also means 1) advertisers have less clarity and control around where their ad dollars go, and 2) we all have less transparency into exactly what content is being monetized.

Financial precarity for creators
The creator economy may be booming — Goldman Sachs estimates it will be worth nearly $500 billion by 2027 — but earning money through social media is as precarious as ever.
Take unexpected demonetization. For creators and publishers – from independent media to full-time social media creators – demonetization can be devastating for business. Demonetization moves by platforms are often delivered in an automated way alongside vague notifications and often inadequate opportunity to appeal. As of publication, we still couldn't find public references to TikTok and Snapchat's appeals processes.
On top of that, partners seeking remedy for undue demonetization moves are limited to status restoration only, with no apparent opportunity to reclaim lost revenue.

As we move further into 2025, the social media monetization landscape continues to expand at an extraordinary pace, driven by surging global ad spend, competition for creators and a push to populate platforms with monetizable content, including content generated by AI.
Billions of dollars are already being processed by social media platforms, while more and more creators, media publishers and spammers earn their living from monetization programs.
As these programs grow, so too does the urgent need for social platforms to operate with transparency, regulatory oversight and increased business due diligence.