YouTube pays creators up to 28 times more than the TikTok Creator Fund did two years ago. TikTok is launching a podcast network with iHeartMedia, and Instagram is testing locked content for its most loyal followers. The bigger the offer, the higher the price. And that price has a name: exclusivity.
Only two years ago, the TikTok Creator Fund paid creators $0.01 to $0.02 per thousand views. It was a programme that discouraged most creators so much that they effectively ignored it. The Creator Rewards Program, launched in 2024, changed that to $0.40 to $1.00 per thousand views for videos longer than 60 seconds. A twentyfold increase. And that is no coincidence.
Platforms have reached the stage where they are genuinely competing for talented creators. TikTok has signed a partnership with iHeartMedia and is launching its own creator-led podcast network. YouTube is pushing exclusive shows produced by creators directly for its platform. Instagram is testing features such as “lock” and “early access”, which let creators lock content for their most loyal followers. Each of the big platforms now offers more than it did a year ago. And each of them wants something from creators in return.
What exclusivity really means
In practice, a platform does not ask a creator to sign an exclusive contract. It works in a more subtle way. The platform offers a premium monetisation programme conditional on a minimum number of published videos, a certain length of content or a specific format. A creator who wants to maximise income from that platform starts adapting their content to its requirements. Over time, they produce content that works mainly there and only to a limited extent elsewhere.
YouTube remains the strongest source of income for 28.6% of creators, while TikTok is the strongest for 18.3%. But these figures tell only part of the story. A creator who depends on YouTube ad revenue is vulnerable to every change in the algorithm or the programme terms. A creator who tries to build income across several platforms at once runs into the fact that each platform prefers native content, and the algorithm systematically disadvantages content that clearly comes from elsewhere or is recycled.
Where the European creator stands
For European creators this dynamic is more complicated than for American ones. Influencer marketing in Europe is growing at 15% a year and is worth roughly €4.2 billion, but the market is fragmented by language and culture. A French creator does not compete mainly with a German one. Within their own language area, they compete with creators who have access to the same audience.
This means a European creator can afford less exclusivity on a platform than an American one with access to a homogeneous English-speaking audience of hundreds of millions of people. The strategy of “putting everything on one platform” works better in a large overall market. In a smaller language market, spreading the risk is a necessity, not just a recommendation.
45% of European creators plan to expand to YouTube in 2026, and 41% to Instagram and TikTok at the same time. The figures show that creators intuitively know what they need. The problem is that diversifying across platforms costs time and performance. A creator who publishes on five platforms rarely dominates any one of them.
Who wins?
Platforms that pay creators more also demand more from them. The market for creator monetisation platforms will grow from $11.57 billion in 2025 to $29 billion by 2030. These figures reflect creators’ growing dependence on platform infrastructure, not their growing independence.
A creator who builds their own relationship with the audience outside platform algorithms is immune to changes in the rules. Substack, Patreon and newsletter platforms are growing precisely because they offer a direct relationship with the audience without an intermediary. But direct channels require upfront investment, discipline and a willingness to accept slower growth. For a creator at the start of their career, that is a difficult choice. The algorithm brings followers faster. Your own platform protects them for longer.
The outcome of this platform rivalry has nothing to do with which platform offers the higher payout per thousand views. What matters is which creators realise that followers they do not hold in their own database are, in fact, not theirs. They are only on loan.
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