💰 Reels Making Meta's $50B

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As part of our transparent updates, here’s how the month wrapped up.

We prepared for the Onfolio PayPal tracking cycle to begin in early November, ensuring every transaction is accurately recorded.
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Remember when Reels was dismissed as Meta's desperate attempt to clone TikTok?

Five years later, it's generating $50 billion annually in advertising revenue. Mark Zuckerberg announced the milestone during Meta's Q3 earnings call, and the number puts Reels in rare company: It's now the same size as YouTube, which also does roughly $50 billion a year.

One model shares 55% with creators. The other shares approximately nothing.

YouTube's answer, established in 2007 with its Partner Program, remains the industry standard. Creators complain about the 55/45 split—they'd prefer more—but as one industry observer noted, "it's still the best deal in town."

Meta's answer is simpler: Give us your content for free. We'll keep 100% of the ad revenue.

Maybe Meta will throw some creators a bonus through a "creator program." Maybe you'll get invited to test new features. But systematic revenue sharing? That's not how the business works. Build your audience on our massive platform, and you'll get exposure you can parlay into brand deals somewhere else.

This isn't unique to Meta. TikTok operates the same way. So does Snapchat. Creators provide content, platforms sell ads against that content, platforms keep the money. Creators can monetize through brand partnerships, but that happens off-platform, outside the primary revenue stream their content generates.

The platforms captured the growth. Creators got exposure.

Creator economy value reached $250 billion, growing 60.8% between 2023 and 2024 alone. Average US creator earnings: $44,000 annually. That's roughly $3,680 per month. Yet 59% of beginner creators haven't monetized at all, and it takes an average of 18 months for most creators to reach full self-support.

Peter Kafka, covering media and technology for Business Insider, summarized the dynamic: "Almost every one of those platforms depends on the labor of creators—a shorter way of describing 'people who make and/or own content'—but shares very little of the revenue those creators' stuff generates."

Why don't creators push for something better?

They've tried. It never works.

Every so often, someone announces a plan to organize creators, convincing them to pull content from non-sharing platforms unless they negotiate better terms. Platforms have a straightforward counterargument, though they rarely say it out loud: Their massive scale offers exposure creators can turn into businesses elsewhere. Sure, Meta won't give you a meaningful cut of ad revenue. But someone else might pay you to feature their product in your videos.

And if you don't like it? Go find another huge platform with a better deal. Good luck with that.

YouTube stands as the lone exception, and even that exception is eroding. Shorts—its TikTok competitor—pays creators a smaller revenue share than traditional YouTube videos, with payments from a shared pool rather than direct attribution. Even the platform that pioneered revenue sharing would prefer to keep more of it.

Why not? The model works for everyone else.

When platforms own distribution, creators own nothing transferable.

A Reels creator with 1 million followers generates value for Meta's $50 billion advertising business. But that creator owns zero transferable business equity. No subscriber export capability. No direct audience contact outside Meta's platform. No way to sell those follower relationships to a buyer.

The "exposure" being accumulated enriches Meta shareholders. It doesn't build sellable creator equity.

Contrast: A newsletter operator with 5,000 email subscribers on WordPress infrastructure owns portable business assets. Database exports complete instantly. Import to any email platform in minutes. Sell the business at 4x annual recurring revenue because the buyer acquires actual subscriber relationships, not platform-dependent follower counts.

Same content creation labor. Different ownership model. Completely different exit economics.

Meta's argument—that massive platform scale provides exposure creators can monetize elsewhere—sidesteps the fundamental issue. You're building someone else's business. Audience relationships you develop, engagement you generate, content you create—all of it strengthens Meta's advertising inventory while your own business equity remains at zero.

Peter Kafka's observation cuts to the core: "It's hard to build a $50 billion a year business doing anything, anywhere. But a $50 billion business built on other people's content that you get more or less for free? That's pretty special."

Negotiating better revenue shares misses the point.

Creators hoping for 10% or 20% of platform advertising revenue remain on someone else's infrastructure. Can't export subscribers. Can't sell the audience as a business asset. You're arguing over what percentage of someone else's equity you should receive as payment for building it.

The only winning move is owning the distribution.

Creators are nearly twice as likely to experience suicidal thoughts as average US adults

Creators 4 Mental Health surveyed over 500 creators across North America. The findings: 65% report obsession over content performance, 58% say self-worth declines when content underperforms, and 43% feel isolated despite being constantly online. Creators working five years or more report the highest rates of burnout and financial instability.