Has anyone checked out Disney’s Verts lately? (And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, I don’t blame you). The Disney+ in-app experience quietly changed in March of this year; vertical, short-form content—hence the name—now populates its home page. Disney engineered an app interface to rival TikTok and Reels, with one major difference: It serves only trailers for Disney and Hulu shows.
Needless to say, Verts has yet to catch on. That might be changing, though, as Disney and TikTok struck a content-sharing deal last week, expanding the jointly run Disney Creator Ambassador Program to fuel fandom content across platforms.
In layman’s terms, Kylo Ren fan edits on TikTok will no longer be flagged for copyright. In fact, if their creator opts into the program, they’ll be featured on Verts as well. Disney’s ambassador program seeks to incentivize creators to share their content, but stops short of compensating them with money. The success or failure of this program will set a new precedent for how brands work with existing fan bases to capitalize on organic credibility.
A win-win?
At first glance, this content-sharing deal seems like a win-win scenario. Creators can now post their Spider Man role-play videos—audio and all—without fear of being claimed for copyright, meaning more fans can enjoy them across platforms. Not to mention, Disney now has access to a crucial element that makes or breaks a social platform’s cultural relevancy: fan-made assets.
Consumer-made content is the driving force behind the success of short-form content platforms; the most frequently maligned part of TikTok or Instagram Reels is content that feels like an advertisement. In our rapidly evolving attention economy, longtime fans often have more credibility than the company that owns the intellectual property (IP) inspiring their videos. Content coming from Disney can feel like an ad; content created by other fans feels like a celebration of a shared interest. Verts failed to gain traction in its first iteration because it debuted in an echo chamber, creating an ad feed for Disney content on a platform built to house Disney content.
But what does the Disney Creator Ambassador Program actually entail? The company’s incentive for fan creators to share their work on Verts is an increase in content visibility and opportunities to network. But the program rollout has been vague so far. What does an opportunity to network involve, exactly? How much of an increase in content visibility can contributors expect? Theoretically, creators will be compensated the way influencers usually are—through exposure, networking, and event access, but not revenue share. Opportunity can be a strong incentive, but when push comes to shove, influencer brand trips don’t pay the bills.
Now, to be fair to Disney, fans have never made money on their edits before. Pirates of the Caribbean thirst traps were either copyright-struck and removed, or allowed to exist unmonetized.
The case for profit sharing
To be sure, Disney is a business that wants to maximize profit on its assets; in this case, beloved IP. Now that Disney wants to use fan edits to breathe life into its struggling platform, the calculus changes. If Disney profits from the labor, it should be willing to treat the creators doing the legwork as shareholders, and reward their investment monetarily.
Precedent for this kind of compensation exists. Spotify’s royalty model for artists or the YouTube/AdSense revenue-share model (imperfect, but functional) offer a template for compensating the creators making the app valuable. Even if Disney didn’t want to pay creators in royalties, it could take a page out of Sephora’s book and offer what are essentially freelance contracts. Members of the “Sephora Squad” enter into a one-year paid partnership with the brand, allowing the brand access to creators’ content and offering creators a feasible way to earn a living. Access to networking events isn’t appropriate for people posting fan content as a hobby outside of their day job. The well of cheap, engaging content will eventually run dry without liquid monetization.
Time will tell if the Disney Creator Ambassador Program is a sustainable model for contributor compensation, and if it actually succeeds in making Verts a household name. In the interim, we can all acknowledge that the fan edit is the lifeblood of short-form content platforms. Disney certainly knows it to be true.