Framing Content Monetization
If we look at the Internet as a whole, content monetization can be
considered a subset of the wider concept of “web monetization.” In a
nutshell, monetization entails making money out of something,
generating revenue.9 The history of internet advertising dates back to the
early days of the internet, when banner ads were first introduced.10 These
ads were simple graphical banners that were displayed on web pages, and
they were used to promote products or services. Over time, Internet
advertising has evolved to become more sophisticated and effective, with
the use of technologies such as cookies and tracking pixels to collect data
on users and target ads more effectively. Today, internet advertising is a
multibillion-dollar industry, and it continues to evolve as new
technologies and platforms emerge. It is an essential part of the digital
economy, and it plays a key role in how businesses reach and engage with
consumers online.
Yet advertising led to much more than pixel-renting. By using
information-transfer protocols for data collection, advertising has
supported the development of a considerable world market for profiling
user behavior. Companies behind most of the advertising on the Internet
(e.g., Google and Facebook) were thus able to centralize their power. In
the process, the pitfalls of too much centralized power led to new datasharing architectures, such as Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid project,11 aimed
to redesign business incentives on the Internet using decentralized
structures. Similarly, the Web Monetization protocol, a proposed
Application Programming Interface standard that promoted micropayments upon website browsing, is another example of the more
recent decentralization directions taken by web monetization.12
While monetization on the web was developing and changing,
monetization on social media, from the perspective of the individual user,
started emerging when online popularity became a commodity for native
advertising.13 Celebrities, such as soccer players, models, or reality TV
stars who were already benefiting from offline popularity, managed to
inhabit their online presences with the same attention from fans and
followers. The now infamous example of why online popularity became
an asset for brands and advertisers is best reflected by the Fyre Festival
saga.14 The Fyre Festival was a music festival that was held in the
Bahamas in 2017. The festival was promoted heavily on social media by
a number of mega-influencers, who were paid to promote it to their
followers. The role of influencers in the Fyre Festival was significant, as
they were instrumental in promoting the event and attracting attendees.
However, their involvement also highlighted some of the ethical issues
surrounding influencer marketing, such as the need for transparency and
the potential for deceptive practices. The Fyre Festival ultimately served
as a cautionary tale for both influencers and their audiences, and it sparked
a broader conversation about the role of influencers in the digital
economy.
By populating their feeds with advertising as content, megainfluencers showed the potential success of electronic word-of-mouth
advertising in parasocial relations.15 Differently put, the unilateral bond between a fan and their idol or perceived friend, driven by trust,
relatability, authenticity, and aspiration, is a highly fertile ground for
persuasion. The emerging socialization as advertising has been labeled as
“influencer marketing,”16 a monetization business model bringing
together influencers and brands in a mediated or unmediated manner, for
the purpose of advertising, namely promoting goods and services on
social media platforms.
Influencer marketing opened the doors to monetization options for the
internet entrepreneur and set out a trajectory for content monetization,
which we can define as the process of generating revenue from social
media content. The goal of content monetization is to turn content into a
source of income for the creator or owner. This is often done with the help
of tools, intermediaries and platforms that enable content creators to
easily manage and track their revenue streams.17
In the following section, we offer an overview of content monetization
practices, which we refer to as business models, from the perspective of
content creators. These practices are mercurial, just like the broader social
media economy of which they are part. Even the term referring to the
beneficiaries of these forms of revenue has suffered changes in the past
years, moving from “influencer” to “content creator.” Influencers can be
seen as a subset of content creators focusing on advertising business
models, who, in the process, got a bad reputation for doing so, particularly
due to issues relating to hidden advertising. By contrast, content creators
engage in cultural production.18 This distinction is particularly important
since regulatory discussions surrounding the definition of influencers
need to account for the wide variety of monetization models that underlie
social media content creation.
