Whalar Group
In 2024, a string of trends in the creator economy emerged or accelerated, from creator-led tours to buzz around artificial intelligence. But what will happen next year?
Neil Waller, cofounder of the creator-marketing agency Whalar Group, shared his top predictions for the creator economy in 2025 with Business Insider — from a continued rise of generative AI tools to audio.
Whalar Group runs a venture studio and a physical campus for creators. It also has a talent-management arm that helps clients grow their businesses and land brand partnerships.
Read Waller's seven predictions for 2025 below:
More creators will plan out their content calendars.
From video themes to episodic content, Waller expects more creators to have planned content next year.
"This can allow them to hire people around achieving those goals as well," Waller said. "Just more planning, and more content from creators that's thoughtfully stitched together."
An increase in talent managers.
Waller said he thinks there will be an increase in the number of creator talent managers, both from external agencies and those hired directly by creators for their teams. (Whalar runs a talent-management firm for creators on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.)
"The amount of managers that are in this industry now supporting creators has grown dramatically," he said. "I think we'll see far more creators have managers, and far more people get into the management space, which I think is a really good thing when done well because it helps professionalize the space, and provide creators with more time to work on what they want to do, which is create and build communities."
Platforms will lean more into generative AI tools.
Waller said he believes there will be a larger wave of creators adopting generative AI tools into their workflows.
"They've been experimenting already," Waller said. "I think just with the rate of understanding and the rate of new technologies coming, we're going to see an adoption of all sorts of different tools, not just chatbots, but help with editing, thumbnails, and animation."
Aside from platforms like YouTube and Instagram integrating AI, Waller also mentioned several startups used by creators to help with workflow, like the captions tool Zeemo and the writing assistant Claude.
More creators will monetize their online communities through courses.
"Creating a physical product is quite a heavy lift," Waller said. "But I think creators are in an interesting place to take their skills and teach online courses. There are a lot of interesting niches that I think could do this."
Waller said tools and startups helping creators build courses or online products — from Mighty Networks to Kajabi — have made it easier for creators to start.
The creator economy will continue to professionalize and gain a new level of respect.
Working in the creator economy has gained acceptance as a real (and aspirational) profession.
"I see more and more educational creators teaching science, pottery, magic, finance, art, and we're just seeing lots of these interesting niches by professionals who are good storytellers and creators themselves," Waller said.
Audio is going to have another giant leap forward.
"I think audio is going to have another big moment of growth next year," Waller said. "And I think it will be driven by AI toolsets where the AI technologies are going to dub a translation of the content in your own voice."
Waller predicts that more accessible AI-powered tools will be available to change the movement of the creator's mouth to look as if they are speaking the dubbed language.
A new wave of athletes, politicians, musicians, and entrepreneurs will become creators.
"Just look at the Kelce brothers," Waller said about athletes Travis and Jason Kelce and the success of their podcast. "We've already seen those moves start. But I think that group of professionals are going to massively enter into the creative space."
