Dive Brief:
- Fan connection app Cameo is opening itself up to the creator marketplace with a new onboarding policy called CameoX, per a company blog post. Previously, Cameo limited its marketplace to select personalities who met specific follower thresholds or were hand-picked.
- CameoX, which launched as a pilot in May 2023, allows content creators and other talent to more easily join the platform and engage with fans. Over the last 18 months, over 31,000 new self-enrolled creators have joined the platform and completed over 155,000 Cameos.
- The move could provide an alternative earning stream for creators while helping Cameo connect with new audiences. Since its 2017 founding, Cameo has generated over $310 million in talent earnings and facilitated over 8 million connections worldwide, per release details.
Dive Insight:
With its promise of bringing celebrities closer to fans via individualized messaging, Cameo was once a darling in the mobile realm. But its dream of having a roster of A-list celebrities on tap to offer birthday greetings or anniversary congratulations has lost some of its luster, with the platform more recently mired in D-list celebrities, retired sports stars and disgraced politicians.
With CameoX, the fan connection app is welcoming its marketplace to content creators, a move that could help it gain attention from new audiences, particularly digitally native younger consumers. The 31,000 new self-enrolled creators that have joined Cameo over the last 18 months have helped contribute to millions of earnings in bookings, per release details.
“We realized we had missed out on thousands of talented individuals who could have made meaningful contributions to the marketplace,” said Cameo CEO Steven Galanis in the blog post.
With CameoX, talent can fill out a form with some basic information and verify their identity to go live on Cameo. The process puts the platform more in line with players like Twitch and YouTube, though it’s unclear whether that will be enough to lure creators away from those platforms.
Prior to introducing CameoX, talent could join the platform in one of three ways: outreach from the Cameo team, referral from another talent or talent manager or applying directly. Over the past three years, the platform received 100,000 applications from talent who did not meet the platform’s thresholds for inclusion, according to the post.
According to Cameo, the “vast majority” of creators cannot sustain themselves on the revenue they make from platforms such as Instagram, TikTok or Twitch, and Cameo can provide an alternate revenue source. In addition, opening up the platform to more talent opportunities gives Cameo a chance to reach potential A-listers before they become stars.
The introduction of CameoX could also help the app create some buzz in the marketing realm. Past partnerships for the platform have included Coca-Cola, LinkedIn and Snap. The platform has long attempted to achieve relevancy, and at one point even experimented with non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
