Kate Cox

And this is the heart of the creator economy.

The platforms don't pay enough money to support the content on the platforms.

So advertising has to fill in the gap.

And what you're seeing this year is the advertisers are not paying the same rates as they were, particularly in like the pandemic when rates shot through the roof because no one can measure anything.

The advertisers are getting smarter about the return their money is delivering.

So you can't just pay every creator.

You can actually start to measure creators.

We had the CEO of Shark Ninja on the show and he said they do very sophisticated measurement of engagement.

They don't just want views.

They want likes and comments.

They're doing sentiment analysis on the comments, on the videos the creators do to promote Shark Ninja products to figure out what creators to work with over time in a relationship.

That means rates are dropping, right?

You're now measuring, you're paying for results.

The inevitable result of metrics is you drop rates because you're not paying the margin for unknowns.

You're only paying for what you want.

That's fascinating to me.

Then you have just the reality of Shark Ninja is going to a bunch of creators and saying, we're going to pay for exactly this result.

And you have turned all these platforms into QVC.

And audience engagement might drop.

Then you flood the platforms with...