Introducing 5 Creator Economy Advertising Platforms You Should Know

The creator economy is a digital ecosystem where creators monetize their work directly with their audience, bypassing traditional media gatekeepers. It attracts people who want the opportunity to express themselves – sometimes to the extent of becoming a household name, and thus potentially become a high-earner with a flexible lifestyle. Many others are happy to develop a pastime which may give them an opportunity for a little side-hustle income from time to time. There are low entry barriers – anyone can just start doing it, and development of a more supportive ecosystem is providing more help to actually earn enough to live on in the creator economy. Major platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Patreon, and Substack empower creators to build their brands and generate income through various channels. This blog takes a look at five smaller and more specialist advertising platforms in the creator economy sector: BILI Social, 90 Seconds, Billo, MOFILM, and Hashtag Paid.

What are the income streams and monetisation strategies?

The creator economy is characterized by its emphasis on community engagement and diverse income sources, making it a rapidly evolving segment of the digital landscape.

Advertising Revenue

Creators can earn money by placing advertisements on their content, such as on YouTube channels or Instagram.

Sponsorships

Brands can partner with creators to promote their products or services, offering creators income and visibility.

Subscription Models

Platforms like Patreon and Substack enable creators to offer exclusive content or benefits to subscribers for a recurring fee.

E-commerce

Creators can sell their own products or services directly through their platforms or online stores.

Brand Collaborations

Creators can work with brands to create sponsored content or promotions, earning income and building brand awareness.

Creator economy market size

How many people are we talking about? Different sources use different definitions, and like-for-like comparisons or aggregate total numbers from different sources are not particularly reliable. However, according to various 2025 data, a range of approximately 200–300 million people worldwide can be considered creators, including influencers, writers, artists, and podcasters. This does not mean they earn enough for it to be their sole source of income, or in fact that all of them earn anything at all from their creative activities.

Let’s look at the five specialist platforms.

BILI

Brands want real connections with their audiences, but finding the right creators who feel authentic, drive engagement, and deliver results, is no small task. It’s even harder when brand teams are trying to scale across platforms, manage costs, and maintain quality. The answer is rarely to use the established mega-influencers.

BILI connects brands with its community of 25,000+ mid-size and niche authentic creators – from amateur influencers to professional athletes – who actually know and use their brands. After all, BILI, which is headquartered in Toronto, Canada, stands for “Because I Love It.” BILI also monitors 3-5 million other creators that it can call upon if it identifies some relevance for a client. Both sides, the brands who seek authenticity and the lesser well-known influencers who seek income, are able to take control of their social commerce within BILI’s marketplace.

BILI’s clients have experienced up to 28% rises in engagement levels (views, likes, shares, comments). Its work for its grocery brand clients Giuseppe Pizza and Finish Quantum UltraMax won their respective categories in 2025’s BOLD Awards VI.

BILI’s income is primarily through a commission-based model where brands share profits based on the value of products sold as a result of influencer activity with the influencers and with the platform. BILI thus has a major incentive to ensure its community of influencers, and their output, remains best-in-class.

Their clients are often D2C brands, so they tend to deal with people on the marketing side. But these people also wear multiple hats, because they’re usually a medium size company looking for new sales channels. They want to go into different markets, they want a different sales channel, and they really like the idea that BILI’s process takes care of itself. They can put forward their brands, and if it sells they don’t have to engage with the influencer in any meaningful way, because BILI manages the influencer relationship for them.

Whether it’s requesting samples, or helping them identify the sweet spot of what commission to give,  brand teams can treat an influencer as another salesperson within their sales channels. So people that BILI work with are typically part of the sales team and part of the marketing team.

90 Seconds

This cloud-based proprietary platform connects brand owners and marketing teams with over 12,000 vetted creators based in 160+ countries, covering roles like videographers, editors, and animators. This vast network supports multilingual and region-specific content, making it ideal for executing global campaigns.

90 Seconds streamlines end-to-end production project management, from briefing to delivery, with real-time collaboration tools that can help manage the entire video creation process, including casting, shooting, and editing, ensuring high-quality output for corporate and commercial use.

Major users include clients like Amazon and Deloitte, focusing on professional, scalable video content for marketing and internal communications.

It has three main income streams.

1. 90 Seconds charges brands for end-to-end video production services, including project management, creator matching, and post-production. Fees are based on project complexity.
2. It offers tailored packages for large brands or agencies that need recurring video content, generating on-going revenue through subscription-like models.
3. Revenue from additional services like professional editing, motion graphics, or localization.

Billo

Billo has a network of over 5,000 vetted video creators in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia, covering niches that include cosmetics, apparel, and tech. It is very useful for beginners, because no experience or followers are needed.

Brands create briefs, and creators earn via providing videos, photos, whitelisting, or referrals. Brands select their chosen creators, and receive videos in 7-12 days, with up to two revisions included. Creators upload their videos to Billo, not their own personal social media, which transfers full licensing rights to the brands. The content is optimised for the different social media platforms, with editing services ensuring platform-specific formatting (e.g., 9:16 aspect ratio). Successful creators can receive payouts every two weeks.

Billo operates four main income streams:

1. Billo charges brands a service fee for access to its platform, creator matching, and optional add-ons like professional editing or motion graphics.
2. It then takes a significant cut (around 60-70%) on payments brands make to creators for UGC videos, as creators report earning $40 for videos that cost brands $125.
3. To generate upfront revenue, Billo offers tiered pricing packs (e.g., Professional pack with $450 bonus on $2,500) that brands purchase in advance to fund subsequent video orders.
4. Revenue from add-on services including in-house editing, captions, or platform-specific formatting (e.g., TikTok, Meta optimization).

MOFILM

Mofilm engages a global community of diverse filmmakers (e.g., directors, animators) to create branded content based on campaign needs, emphasizing creative storytelling. A creative brief system provides detailed briefs to guide creators, ensuring alignment with brand goals while allowing creative freedom, though work can also be submitted through competitive pitches or contests.

High-profile clients include brand owners like Coca-Cola and Unilever, focusing on premium, campaign-driven videos for ads or social media.

Mofilm’s main income streams are:

1. Project-based fees charged for managing video content campaigns, including creator sourcing, production oversight, and delivery, with fees scaled to project scope.
2. Licensing creator-produced videos to brands for marketing use, often retaining a percentage of licensing fees.
3. Branded video contests where creators submit content for prizes, with Mofilm charging brands for campaign setup and management.
4. Customized services for large enterprise scale clients, generating revenue through long-term contracts or retainers.

Hashtag Paid

#paid enables creators and marketers to collaborate and measure entire creator marketing campaigns in a centralized and integrated experience. A brand marketer can submit a brief, and #paid will vet its network of creators through algorithmic matching to assemble a team that best suits the brief’s requirements. Marketers, or their agencies, can even access creator lifestyle data like who has an upcoming home or car purchase, pregnancy, wedding, or a new pet.

Each client then works with a dedicated team of experts – already in an empathetic mindset – to build and execute a winning creative strategy. #paid’s proprietary technology further smooths the way by providing solutions to large category problems such as fair pricing and automated content usage rights that create true omni-channel creator marketing. Creators are also able to set their own prices and receive automatic payments in under 45 days.

Rather than rely on what it calls “vanity metrics and influencers,” #paid focuses exclusively on measuring creators’ impact on fundamental business performance metrics.

#paid is also one of the creator economy platforms based in Toronto, Canada, and though most of its people work remotely it manages marketing teams and content creators from offices in Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami.

Its impressive client list allows its creator network to collaborate with major brands such as McDonald’s, Sephora, Samsung, Heineken, Unilever and Disney. Its large network of diverse creators enables the clients to source work from underrepresented communities and niche categories.

#paid builds and maintains its community of collaborators, lets clients experience the benefits of its technology to build effective teams, manages the workflow and quality control, licenses work for use in any channel or capacity, and ensures payments are made on time. The platform is not transparent about how much it charges for any of this, which suggests it is negotiated individually with each client.

Key Takeaways

The creator economy offers brand marketers an unprecedented opportunity to tap into authentic, diverse, and scalable content and communication channels through platforms like BILI, 90 Seconds, Billo, Mofilm, and Hashtag Paid. These specialist platforms demonstrate the power of crowdsourcing for delivering marketing creativity, enabling brands to connect with real audiences in more authentic ways that traditional advertising cannot.

Creator economy platforms such as these also offer creative individuals opportunities of self-expression, income, career enhancement, and chances to add unprecedented global brand names to their CV.

Crowdsourcing professional resources through these platforms offers cost-effective scalability and creative diversity, along with technology to identify key potential contributors from the millions that are available, plus measure campaign effectiveness through tools that are usually beyond the reach of an individual brand owner.

For brand marketers, the message is clear: crowdsourcing via creator economy platforms is not just a trend but a strategic imperative.

Does this include you – are you a brand marketer? What’s your view on harnessing the creator economy to boost brands? Or maybe you’re a creator who works with any of these creator economy platforms – what’s your personal experience of them?