Content creation has expanded from a niche online activity into a large, global economy. Adobe reports that more than 165 million creators joined the creator economy since 2020, while platform reports show major growth in video, live streaming, memberships, and creator-led communities. The figures below cover creator demographics, motivations, business activity, technology use, and platform-specific scale. Dates and geographies are included wherever the source specifies them.
Contents
- Creator economy growth and profile
- Why people create
- Creators, causes, and wellbeing
- Generative AI and mobile creation
- Video, live, and podcast platforms
- Memberships, revenue, and discovery
Creator economy growth and profile
Adobe’s Future of Creativity study reports more than 165 million creators joining the creator economy since 2020. The study also reports that 23% of people are creators who contribute photography, videography, creative writing, and other forms of online work. These figures describe the broad creator population rather than only full-time influencers.
The same study reports substantial growth in several national creator populations since 2020:
| Geography | Reported change since 2020 |
|---|---|
| United States | 34 million new creators; 40% growth |
| Brazil | 73 million new creators |
| South Korea | 11 million new creators |
| Spain | 10 million new creators |
Adobe reports that millennials represent 42% of the creator economy, while Gen Z represents 14%. Influencers account for 14% of the global creator economy. The study also finds that 60% of creators have full-time jobs, a useful reminder that creator work often exists alongside conventional employment.
Business ambitions are visible even among creators who are not yet running companies. Adobe reports that 17% of creators are business owners and 39% aspire to become business owners. Together, those figures point to a substantial group treating content as a potential business path, whether through services, sponsorships, memberships, products, or other revenue models.
Why people create
Freedom of expression is the leading motivation reported in Adobe’s Future of Creativity study: 48% of creators identify it as a reason for creating. Money is another important motivation, cited by 26% of creators. The gap between these two figures suggests that creator activity is not explained by income alone; identity and expression are also central reasons people publish.
The relationship between content and creative fulfillment is especially strong among people who create for a living or as a serious practice. Adobe reports that 69% of creators and 84% of influencers say creating and sharing content is a creative outlet they cannot find elsewhere.
The study also links activity patterns with reported happiness. Creators who make content daily and/or spend at least 10 hours per week creating report being happiest overall. This is a reported association, not a claim that a particular posting schedule causes happiness, but it highlights how consistently creating can fit into a person’s sense of purpose.
Content creation also has a civic dimension. Adobe reports that 95% of creators take action to advance or support causes that matter to them. The causes most often ranked among creators’ top causes include food and housing security at 62%, social justice at 59%, and climate change at 58%.
Creators also see practical value in their public reach. According to Adobe, 51% say creators can drive awareness for social causes, 49% say creators can give a voice to people who otherwise would not have one, and 47% say creators make it easier to voice opinions on social causes.
Creators, causes, and wellbeing
Social content is not merely a distribution channel in Adobe’s research; some creators describe it as part of their wellbeing. One in two influencers say using social media or creating social content is more important to their mental health than listening to music, exercising, or going outside in nature.
That comparison reflects respondents’ reported priorities and should not be read as a medical conclusion. It does, however, show how deeply content creation can be integrated into creators’ daily lives. The finding sits alongside Adobe’s result that creators who create daily or spend 10 or more hours per week creating report being happiest overall.
The causes data also shows that creator communities are connected to concrete social concerns. Food and housing security, social justice, and climate change each rank highly, and most creators report taking action for causes that matter to them. For content strategists, this suggests that audience relationships may involve values and community participation as well as entertainment or information.
Generative AI and mobile creation
Adobe’s Creators’ Toolkit Report shows that creative generative AI is already part of mainstream creator workflows. The report says 86% of creators are actively using creative generative AI, and 76% say it has helped grow their business and personal brand. In the previous three months, 60% used more than one creative generative AI tool.
Creators use these tools for several different stages of production:
- 55% use creative generative AI for editing, upscaling, and enhancement.
- 52% use it to generate new assets such as images and video.
- 48% use it for ideation and brainstorming.
Interest in more personalized automation is high. Adobe reports that 85% of creators would use an AI agent that learns their creative style, while 70% are optimistic or excited about agentic AI. The tasks creators most want agentic AI to handle include automating repetitive tasks at 51%, brainstorming content ideas at 50%, and surfacing content performance insights at 44%.
Adoption still has limits. High cost is cited as a barrier by 38% of creators, unreliable output quality by 34%, and uncertainty about how an AI model was trained by 28%. Permission and ownership are also concerns: 69% are concerned about their content being used to train AI without permission.
Discovery of new tools tends to happen through creator-led channels. Adobe reports that 58% discover and test tools through personal research, 57% through social media trends, and 41% through recommendations from other creators.
Mobile production is also becoming more important. Adobe reports that 72% of creators frequently create content on mobile today, and 75% expect to produce more content on mobile in the next year. The forward-looking figure is an expectation, not a measured future outcome.
Video, live, and podcast platforms
YouTube’s 2024 U.S. YouTube Impact Report says the platform’s creative ecosystem contributed $55 billion to U.S. GDP in 2024 and supported 490,000 full-time jobs in the United States during 2024. The report also says YouTube paid more than $70 billion to creators, artists, and media companies between 2021 and 2023. That payment figure covers a multi-year period and is not limited to U.S. recipients.
TikTok LIVE’s 2024 figures show the scale of live participation. TikTok reports that more than 100 million creators went LIVE in 2024, including more than 46 million new creators starting their LIVE journey. The service generated 269 billion chats, while 250,000 TikTok LIVE creators doubled their income year over year.
TikTok also reports that nearly 3,000 gifts were launched on LIVE in 2024, and that TikTok donated more than $1 million to charitable causes through its LIVE community. Almost 6 million creators participated in LIVE Fest 2024; its event page drew 477 million viewers, with participating creators from more than 60 countries.
Long-form video is growing in podcasting too. Spotify for Creators reports more than 250,000 video podcast shows, up from 100,000 in 2023. More than 170 million users have watched a video podcast on Spotify, and more than 70% of users consuming video podcasts watch them in the foreground.
Spotify reports that nearly one in three U.S. podcast monthly active users engage with video, compared with nearly one in four global podcast monthly active users. Globally, video podcast monthly active users grew 40% year over year, while the number of creators actively publishing video each month grew nearly 70% year over year.
The geography of podcast video varies. In Brazil and the Philippines, roughly 20% of monthly active podcast creators are publishing video. In Chile, video accounts for a quarter of total podcast consumption hours, while in Brazil it accounts for more than 15%. More than half of Spotify’s top 20 podcasts now have video.
TikTok’s Creator Rewards Program reports that the global community spends about 50% of its time on TikTok watching videos longer than one minute. This is a platform-wide viewing measure, distinct from the separate creator and podcast publishing figures above.
Memberships, revenue, and discovery
Patreon’s year-end 2024 figures show the scale of direct fan support. Patreon creators surpassed 60 million free memberships in 2024, while more than 10 million fans paid for memberships each month. Since 2013, creators have generated more than $8 billion in revenue on Patreon.
Patreon also reports that creators increased monthly revenue from one-time purchases by four times in 2024, and that the number of creators starting chats grew five times during 2024. More than 400,000 free memberships turn into paid memberships each month.
The Patreon fan network is a major source of growth. More than 60% of people who sign up for a creator’s Patreon come from within the Patreon fan network, and more than half of a creator’s revenue comes from that network on average. These are platform-reported averages, not guarantees for every creator.
Creator recommendations add another discovery path. Patreon’s discovery report says recommendations drove more than 2 million new memberships since launch. In the last six months covered by that report, creator recommendations supplied 12% of The Fluffy Folio’s new paid members and 37% of its new free members. The same report says creators report average annual income per fan is 24 times bigger on Patreon than on Instagram.
Patreon’s transparency reporting says the platform was home to more than 280,000 creators. Its inaugural transparency report says Patreon reviewed 38,324 pages in 2023 for trust-and-safety enforcement, suspended 3,638 accounts for guideline violations, and required 3,089 creator pages to be removed or modified.
Instagram’s community tools provide another measure of creator-audience activity. Instagram reports that broadcast channels exchange more than 1.5 billion messages every month between creators and followers. Instagram Creator Marketplace expanded to 19 countries, after beginning U.S. testing in 2022; Instagram also reported that thousands of creators and brands had been onboarded in the United States. Meta’s 2024 year-in-review reports more than 1 billion active Instagram accounts worldwide.