Audience Reality Check #12
Photo by Tiara Juzi on Unsplash
Earlier this year, I presented my creator-economy research and was offered a comparison with Canada’s video game industry. It had taken about twelve years, I was told, to get that industry properly recognized. Canada would get there with creators, too.
It was meant to be encouraging. But the idea of a twelve-year timeframe made me deeply uncomfortable.
That’s a long time to run any business, especially one operating at the pace of digital media. While institutions work out where creator businesses fit, those businesses are making decisions about how to pay for help and how much control to give up to keep going. Their audiences also aren’t waiting for a policy process to finish.
Recent developments suggest some institutions are starting to catch on. What interests me is whether those changes will make it easier to build a lasting business around the audience relationships creators have already established.
There’s a business behind the videos
In my Canadian research, access to support for the business behind the content came up over and over again. Finding professional advice that understood creator work was a recurring concern. So was the fit between these businesses and existing funding structures. The research involved fifteen participants, a mix of creators and industry representatives with different experiences and ambitions. It wasn’t a survey of the whole sector. But these individuals helped me see the distance between attracting an audience and having the capacity to keep serving it.
Audience relationships take work. Responding to people takes time, and managing a community can become a job of its own. Meanwhile, someone still has to negotiate the contracts and keep the business running. Some creators have become remarkably good at reaching audiences. But it doesn’t mean they have everything they need to maintain those relationships.
This is part of what I mean when I talk about audience infrastructure. People need ways to find Canadian work and reasons to return. And the people making it need enough capacity to keep that connection going.
Recognition needs to lead somewhere
A recent UK report entitled Creator Skills: Progression, Provision and Priorities puts business skills alongside the creative work. Legal and financial knowledge become more important as creators hire people and develop commercial partnerships. It also recognizes that a move into television isn’t everyone’s goal. For some creators, success means keeping their independence and building their digital business. This means support shouldn’t assume that digital work is an audition for somewhere else.
In the United States, the Small Business Administration has taken a practical administrative step. Its October 2026 guidance explains how qualifying audiovisual creator businesses fit within the existing motion picture and video industry classifications. They were already eligible for support if they met the program requirements, but the announcement clarifies the route. And making that route easier to understand is something an institution can do now.
The UK has separately revised its industry-classification notes to explicitly include internet videos and vlogs. But the Office for National Statistics says its earliest planned use of the new framework is the 2031 Blue Book (the UK’s annual national accounts publication).
Recognition and implementation run on different clocks. What matters to a business is when a change becomes useful.
Canada is starting to respond
There are encouraging developments here, too. On October 28, the Independent Production Fund (IPF) announced YouTube funding for two creator programs. One will support emerging creators in the territories; the other is aimed at creators and digital-first businesses already showing growth. Playback reports that they won’t be limited to YouTube creators. These join the Canada Media Fund’s (CMF) Digital Creators Pilot Program, which supports business growth and audience development.
What encourages me is the growing recognition that these businesses need support beyond the content they produce. What I’ll be watching is whether different creators can access that support without reshaping their businesses to fit the programs.
The wider screen sector is also asking related questions. CMF’s Beyond Project Funding research informed its new Business Development Program, which includes support for developing audiences and earning more from existing Intellectual Property (IP). Its research concerns television and interactive digital media companies, a different group from the creator sector, but it recognizes the need to support a business beyond its next production.
YouTube has also released a Canadian creator consultation that raises concerns about access to finance and business training. The platform has its own interests in this discussion, but the concerns are familiar from my research.
At the Canadian Academy’s October 27 panel on vertical dramas, Alice Wang described adapting Rent a Plus-One. Its early teaser attracted a much stronger response on TikTok than YouTube. With financing constraints also shaping the decision, the team proposed a vertical format and a smaller budget. IPF agreed to the revised proposal, and the team retained control of the IP. This example shows why flexibility matters: funding could adapt as the team learned more about its audience.
From an opportunity to infrastructure
Project funding can be very helpful. My research also points to the need for support that helps creators run the business between productions. Shared professional services could make a practical difference. Affordable legal and accounting advice from people who understand creator businesses would help small teams make informed decisions about contracts and the rights to their work.
There’s also a case for supporting the everyday work of maintaining audience relationships. That might mean community-management help or setting up an email newsletter people choose to receive. These are ways to keep in touch beyond hoping the next upload reaches the same people. More direct contact gives both sides another way to continue the relationship.
We should assess this support through business results and evidence that people are returning. Views alone won’t tell us whether a creator can keep operating, or whether they retain enough control to decide what comes next. It is important that creators themselves have a say in designing that support. The goal is to make it easier to do the work, with requirements that make sense at the scale of the business.
We have some experience to draw on
The twelve-year recollection sent me back to Canada’s games history. What I found was useful: public support was already helping the sector grow before dedicated statistical categories arrived. Québec introduced its multimedia tax credit in 1996, and Ubisoft told Parliament it helped motivate the company’s Montréal investment in 1997. Dedicated Canadian statistical categories for games arrived in 2012.
That history gives us something to work with. Better evidence and practical support can develop together.
We already know that Canadian creators are finding people who want their work. We’re learning more about what it takes to maintain those relationships. Audience infrastructure includes making sure that capacity can last beyond the next upload.
What should our experience allow us to do faster this time?
Further reading
ScreenSkills and BBC, Creator Skills: Progression, Provision and Priorities, Olsberg•SPI, 2026.
U.S. SBA creator-economy classification guidance, October 15, 2026.
CMF business-development programs and research and Digital Creators Pilot Program.
YouTube Canada consultation and IPF announcement, October 28, 2026; Jamie Casemore’s accompanying Playback coverage.
Canadian Academy vertical drama panel, October 27, 2026, especially the discussion of Rent a Plus-One.
Parliamentary account of games-industry growth and Statistics Canada’s classification history.
Research note: This article draws on recurring themes from my 2026 Canadian creator-economy research.