The creator economy has spent two decades as a testing ground for marketers. That phase is over, says Andrew Perlman, CEO of Recurrent Ventures, which owns creator brands including Donut, Bob Vila, and Futurum.

He argues the industry is living through a systemic upheaval on par with music's most famous disruption.

"For General Media, my view is [it] is having its Napster moment for lack of better description," said Perlman. "Where and how all of a sudden distribution has been democratized, and therefore, like, how do you compete?"

For brands, that resets both where audience attention lives and how it can be responsibly monetized.

The gap between interest and execution

Enthusiasm has outpaced competence, and Perlman's warning to brand leaders starts there. Despite years of platform maturity, major companies are still sitting on the sidelines.

"There is an endless list of multi-billion dollar brands that are not playing in creator and YouTube yet," he said. "Even though it feels like the floodgates have opened, in my view, I don't think that the floodgates have fully opened."

Budgets are opening, but most organizations lack the internal playbooks to deploy that spending well, per Perlman.

Platforms have noticed. YouTube chief among them, they now run "teach-ins" to close the knowledge deficit, acting less like neutral hosts than like active partners setting the standards for creator and brand strategy.

Why creator IP still scares investors

Individual-led IP is risky, and capital knows it. Investors find it far easier to underwrite agencies and infrastructure than a single creator's brand, largely because so few creators ever cross the eight-figure revenue threshold that makes them viable merger and acquisition (M&A) targets. Then there is "face risk," when nearly all of a brand's enterprise value is tied to one personality. If that person retires, disengages, or burns out, the value evaporates overnight.

MrBeast is Perlman's go-to illustration: "Mr Beast created Beast Industries because if one day he decides to retire, his channel has no enterprise value, but he'll have Feastables the chocolate line, which does have real value as an enterprise."

The channel, however famous, carries little transferable value on its own. Feastables, the chocolate brand built alongside it, carries plenty, because it survives independent of any single video or personality.

The 'SNL' model as a strategic fix

Recurrent's own approach offers brands a template. Its car enthusiast creator brand Donut uses a rotating cast of five hosts, borrowed directly from the "Saturday Night Live" format. The show, not any one host, is the asset. This structure preserves audience loyalty while insulating the brand from the departure of any individual talent, making it a far more durable partner (or acquisition target) than a single-creator-led channel.

Brands still treating platforms like YouTube as a farm system for "real" media should reconsider.

As Perlman puts it: "YouTube's a lot more than a proving ground. ... YouTube has almost double the TV watch time that Netflix has so you can stay on YouTube forever and be happy. ... Proving Ground sort of implies that it's a minor league. It's both the minor and the major league." That shift is fueling a genuine "tug-of-war," with Fox, the BBC, and Netflix all competing directly with YouTube for exclusive creator talent.

Recurrent is living that transition. Donut, its car enthusiast YouTube channel, now runs on Tubi's Creatorverse as well.

Four pillars for the rest of the year

Perlman is precise about where he's placing bets: "There are only four things that will move the needle for us: video, licensing, events, and AI. That's it."

• Video: "In my view, number one, video is eating the world—it's eating text, it's eating attention span." Perlman sees video continuing to displace text as the dominant attention format.
• Experiential/live events: The fastest-growing pillar. Perlman said Recurrent has grown this category from under 1% of revenue in 2023 to a projected 15% this year, reflecting a post-pandemic hunger to connect in person, per Perlman.
• Licensing and merchandising: This channel lets creator brands convert audience loyalty into physical retail products that also serve as brand beacons and promotional currency.
• AI: The fourth priority, adding efficiency to production and content distribution.

That growth, though, rests on a broader strategic discipline: audience loyalty over personality dependence.

Recurrent's internal filter for any new brand, Perlman says, is deliberately simple.

"The internal joke has always been like, we'd never look at a brand unless somebody would put it on a T-shirt then wear it proudly. ... [We are] really focusing on audience loyalty, making sure that you're not completely wed to one, two, or three personalities."

For brands entering this space, the takeaway is structural: invest in durable audience relationships and IP that outlives its host, rather than in any single creator's staying power.

This was originally featured in the EMARKETER Daily newsletter. For more marketing insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.