CREATOR ECONOMY | ANALYSIS
YouTube's Kim Larson tells creators "do not sleep on live" as daily live viewers top 600 million; U.S. creator ad spend heads for $44 billion yet remains 3.9% of all
YouTube is telling creators to go live. "Do not sleep on live, particularly in this time where audiences are craving authenticity," Kim Larson, managing director and head of the Creator and Gaming team at YouTube, said on Sept. 30 at TheWrap's annual TheGrill conference at the DGA Theater Complex in Los Angeles.
"For the creators that I work with that add live into their repertoire, it supercharges their fandom and creates such close connection in a way that is really hard to quantify," Larson said. She cautioned that live streaming is not "for the faint of heart," because creators cannot hide behind editing, but called it a "powerful medium" for those who can handle it.
The push is backed by YouTube's own viewing data. In a Sept. 23 blog post, the company said more than 600 million logged-in viewers watched live content, including archived streams, each day in August, and that over 40% of live watch time came from viewers outside a creator's home country. A year earlier, YouTube had reported that more than 30% of daily logged-in viewers watched live content in the second quarter of 2025. As feeds fill with polished and short-form video, viewers are spending more time on unscripted, real-time interaction, and platforms are adding tools that turn that time into fan payments and ad revenue.
Ad budgets are moving more slowly. "The creator economy is tracking to be worth $44 billion by the end of the year. It's growing at 4x the pace of any other media channel, but the creator economy is still only representing 3.9% of all advertising spend," said Jo Cronk, co-CEO of creator marketing company Whalar, who shared the panel. "Like the maths don't math, but it will get there."
YouTube said more than 600 million logged-in viewers watched live content each day in August. Illustration: K-EnterTech Hub
600 million daily live viewers, 40% of watch time from abroad
Alongside the numbers, YouTube announced four live features in a post by Barbara Macdonald of YouTube Live product management. "Watch With" extends live reactions from livestreams to all eligible long-form videos; the reacting creator keeps live ad revenue and fan funding while the original creator receives attribution and view credit. It begins rolling out later in 2026.
"Go Live Together," a matchmaking tool that pairs creators as co-hosts, arrives in early 2027. "Live Showdown," due in 2027, is a team-competition format in which viewers push creators' scores up in real time through chat, gifts and Super Chats.
The fourth, live auto dubbing, translates a creator's speech into the viewer's chosen language in real time and enters a pilot in early 2027. YouTube said the tools are meant to help creators "reach new audiences and earn more while live."
U.S. creator ad spend: $44 billion, 3.9% of the market
Cronk's $44 billion figure matches the Interactive Advertising Bureau's 2026 projection for U.S. creator ad spend. In a report released Nov. 20, 2025, the IAB put 2025 spend at $37 billion, up 26% from a year earlier and about four times the 5.7% growth of the overall media industry. Spend was $29.5 billion in 2024 and $13.9 billion in 2021.
U.S. creator ad spend rises from $13.9 billion in 2021 to a projected $44 billion in 2026. Source: IAB
Forty-eight percent of ad buyers called creators a "must-buy" channel, third behind social media and paid search, and 40% named overall return on investment as their primary measure for creator campaigns, according to the IAB.
Cronk said creator ad spend, done well, returns 2.4 versus a typical 1.2 for TV. Whalar's "Creator Media Mix Model," built with Nielsen, calculated a 2.41x return for creators in 2021-2022, as Gazmend Alushi, Whalar's president of measurement and analytics, wrote in Advertising Week in June 2025. The figures come from Whalar's own campaigns rather than independent measurement.
Return on ad spend for creators versus TV, as cited by Whalar's Jo Cronk. Source: Whalar
"Behavior takes a long time to change," Larson said. "Now I have brands coming to me saying, 'Kim, who should we work with? Here's the type of audience we want to attract, and here are our marketing goals.' That has been a shift I would say within the last 18 months." Cronk compared the moment to earlier migrations: "The dollars took forever to move from print to digital to mobile. We're in this moment right now."
Creators as consultants; equity deals with caution
Cronk named creators serving as brand consultants as a major trend for the next 12 months. "They're literally the tip of the spear of what's happening, not just trends but with communities," she said. "So much happens in the DMs that none of us can see unless we're the recipient."
Travel creator Olivia Ferney, known for the travelwithlivii Instagram account, urged caution on equity deals, which have spread since Alix Earle aligned with Poppi. Ferney said 11 or 12 such deals have been offered to her; she is signing her first, with AI assistant company Tab. "Don't take ownership in 20 companies, thinking, 'I'm going to exit out in a year and be set for life,'" she said, "because you also left money on the table."
Ferney uses AI in her business but not in her content. "My gosh, am I sick and tired of seeing the same stuff be repeated online with everybody trying to go viral," she said. The "Creator Capital" panel, presented by City National Bank, was moderated by the bank's Marie-Josée Cantin Johnson, senior vice president of strategy.
Korea: Chzzk peaks at 4.95 million viewers; SOOP profit falls 57.9%
In South Korea, Naver's live platform Chzzk (치지직) drew record usage from World Cup coverage. Monthly active users of the Chzzk app reached 5.24 million in June, nearly double May's 2.76 million, according to WiseApp·Retail data reported by The Fact (더팩트) on July 22. Korea's June 25 match against South Africa peaked at 4,948,000 concurrent viewers. Naver streamed Korea's matches free and other matches to paying members of Naver Plus (₩4,900, about $3.60, a month); 870,000 watched the paid final.
Chzzk monthly users nearly doubled in June, the World Cup month. Source: WiseApp·Retail
SOOP (숲), formerly AfreecaTV (아프리카TV), reported second-quarter revenue of ₩103.8 billion ($76.4 million) on July 31, down 11.2%, and operating profit of ₩12.6 billion ($9.3 million), down 57.9% (Newsis (뉴시스)). Platform revenue, mainly viewer donations known as star balloons, fell 12.3% to ₩74.1 billion, and ad revenue fell 11.6% to ₩27.2 billion. CEO Lee Min-won (이민원) said the company must look beyond short-term results to the growth of its streamer and content ecosystem (Electronic Times (전자신문)). SOOP plans AI recommendations, auto-subtitles and chat translation for overseas users by year-end, plus an integrated marketing consultancy to reduce reliance on donations.
YouTube's 2027 auto-dubbing pilot and SOOP's year-end chat translation point the same way: both companies see the next pool of live viewers on the other side of the language barrier.
Korean broadcast ads down an estimated 13.8%; KBS logs 11.2 billion YouTube views
Korea's total ad spend was ₩17.13 trillion ($12.6 billion) in 2024, according to a Jan. 8 survey by the Korea Communications and Media Commission (방송미디어통신위원회) and the Korea Broadcast Advertising Corporation (KOBACO, 한국방송광고진흥공사). Online took ₩10.10 trillion, or 59%, while broadcast fell 5% to ₩3.22 trillion (Asia Economy (아시아경제)). For 2025, online is estimated to rise 6.1% to ₩10.72 trillion ($7.9 billion), a 62.1% share, and broadcast to fall 13.8% to about ₩2.77 trillion ($2.0 billion), a 16.1% share (Herald Economy (헤럴드경제)).
Korean online ad spend rose an estimated 6.1% in 2025 while broadcast fell 13.8%. Source: KCMC, KOBACO
The projected $44 billion U.S. creator ad market is about 3.5 times Korea's entire estimated 2025 ad market of ₩17.27 trillion. The 3.9% creator slice of U.S. advertising is larger than all advertising in Korea.
Korean broadcasters are growing on YouTube. KBS's YouTube channels drew 11.22 billion cumulative views in the first half, up 50.4% from 7.5 billion a year earlier and first among Korean broadcasters for six straight months, Sports Kyunghyang (스포츠경향) reported on July 13. Most of that comes from clips and catch-up viewing. The fandom effect Larson described comes from live.
The sales model differs as well. By law, Korean terrestrial broadcast ads are sold by KOBACO and private media reps by program and time slot. The question Larson now hears from brands is not which slot, but who. Broadcasters already employ hosts, reporters and variety-show casts with personal fan bases; putting them on live streams and packaging them as person-level ad and sponsorship products falls outside the existing broadcast sales system and would sit with digital teams.
Overseas audiences are part of the case. With over 40% of YouTube live watch time coming from outside creators' home countries, and auto dubbing due in 2027, Korean-language live streams face a lower barrier abroad. Backstage segments from music shows, variety-show sets and live sessions with drama casts, genres whose K-content fan bases are already global, are the first candidates. Because live cannot be edited, broadcasters would also need talent-management and standards rules separate from those for broadcast.
Live Showdown and auto dubbing arrive in 2027; pace of ad shift is the next variable
YouTube's rollout runs from Watch With in late 2026 to co-host matchmaking and the auto-dubbing pilot in early 2027 and Live Showdown later that year. Each feature is built to raise fan funding and ad revenue during live streams. Cronk and Larson agreed that ad budgets trail viewing: Cronk pointed to a 3.9% share despite fourfold growth, and Larson dated the change in brands' questions to the past 18 months.
In Korea, Chzzk plans to hold World Cup users with esports and national-team friendlies (The Fact), while industry observers say it needs content that does not depend on costly rights. SOOP is counting on third-quarter streamer-ecosystem policies and its year-end marketing brand. With broadcast ad spend shrinking, live platforms and broadcasters' YouTube channels will compete for the same online budgets. YouTube's features through 2027 are built around individual creators. For broadcasters to win a share, the first test is whether they can schedule live streams around people rather than programs.