How Discord United the Creator Economy (HBBIP #109)

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The more I think about what we do here at HBBIP—and I think about it a lot!—the more I believe that there are two things that each brand spotlight is trying to achieve:

• Tell a compelling story about how a brand leveraged creator marketing to grow.
• Tell a compelling story about what that growth says about creator marketing at large.

Not to get all Hegelian on you, but when everything goes right, each HBBIP represents something of a synthesis: industry (creator marketing) informing how a brand (that week’s spotlight) does business, and that brand’s business in turn informing the industry. One is inextricable from the other.

If I can toot my own horn for a moment, this being my newsletter and all, I’ve told this sort of story once or twice before: I’m thinking about how iHeartMedia’s momentum underscores YouTube’s role in podcast consumption, or how Substack’s success is indicative of a whole new category of creator.

That’s my favorite kind of story to tell: one where a brand’s journey first mirrors the broader trends in the creator economy at large, and then the industry comes to reflect qualities of the brand itself.

So what’s next for the creator economy? And which brand can we look to that exemplifies macro-level trends in the space?

The Top Brand of All Time (of the Week): Discord

When I say that we’re living in the age of Discord, I don’t mean, you know *gestures broadly at world*. I mean that a company called Discord is really popular, and that this popularity is changing the face of creator marketing. 

For those who may not know, Discord is a community-based chat and communication platform. The brand is structured around ‘servers,’ which are essentially live, interactive chatrooms of both the public and private variety. While these servers correspond to different themes, their goal is to unite people who share a common interest or fandom. 

What began as a tool for gamers to communicate with each other has evolved into an integral part of online life. Whether it’s sports fans watching the same game, students or coworkers collaborating on a project, far-flung global citizens consuming the same piece of media, or followers interacting directly with their favorite creator, if you do anything remotely community-based on the internet or social media, chances are there’s a Discord for that.

If all this sounds like the creator economy boiled down to its essence—a tool that unites fandoms via multimedia content streams, and makes it easier than ever to bring creators close to their audiences—well, that’s because I’m framing it that way. But I’m framing it that way because it’s true.

Along with Discord’s rise in prominence, we’ve seen social media mentions of the platform spike on other platforms, as creators tout their personalized Discord channels and encourage their fans to join them. This is where I get to The Caveat: much like my previous newsletter on Substack, while CreatorIQ doesn’t presently track Discord data in a way such that I can pull it for this newsletter, we do have Discord vetted as a brand within our system, which means we can track how frequently creators are talking about it on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and all our other fun platforms. We can also see what they’re saying about it.

So let’s go ahead and see that, shall we?

Discord Creator Count, 2020 - 2024

First, we can see that Discord has been expanding its metrics pretty steadily, boasting a nearly 4x expansion of its creator count over these five years. For inquiring minds who might be interested to know the brand’s 2025 creator count, as of January to September, it stood at 7.3k creators—on pace to best its 2024 total, but not quite there yet.

Discord Post Count, 2020 - 2025

One area where Discord is already besting its 2024 total is in post count, where the brand’s Jan-Sep 2025 mentions outpace how many times it got shouted out on other platforms in 2024. We see more linear growth here than we do for creator count, demonstrating something I’ve observed elsewhere: once you find the right people, and they talk about you a lot, you don’t necessarily need to expand your creator population at a similar rate. The posts will follow, and outpace your rate of creator count expansion.

Discord Impressions, 2020 - 2025

With more posts comes more impressions. Here we see that Discord’s January-to-September 2025 totals are neck-and-neck with its 2024 haul. I’ve been in this game a long time, folks, so take this prediction to the bank: Discord is going to close 2025 with more impressions than 2024. You read it here first.

Also, just to emphasize something: that’s 60 BILLION impressions!

Discord Engagements, 2020 - 2025

I think Discord will also beat its 2024 engagements total, but honestly, it’s going to be close, and there’s a lot more work that has to be done in the year’s last three months. 

Why does the brand have a lead when it comes to impressions, while engagements lag slightly behind?

As longtime readers might already be aware, the answer for such questions usually comes down to platform dynamics. Sure enough, Discord has the starkest platform dynamics I’ve ever seen. No qualifier necessary. Not ‘one of’ the starkest, or ‘among’ the starkest—I mean the starkest. Like, Iron Man levels of stark.

Normally if impressions are trending well ahead of engagements, a brand is investing heavily in TikTok. Well, in this case, it’s something a little different:

Discord's Impressions by Channel, Oct 24 - Sep 25

That’s right: over the last 12 months, YouTube has been responsible for driving 99% of Discord’s impressions across other platforms. Instagram is sitting pretty at 0.6%, while TikTok rounds things out with 0.4%.

Like I said: stark.

Discord's Engagements by Channel, Oct 24 - Sep 25

Things get a little more even when we break down the brand’s engagements: here, just a paltry 96.7% stem from YouTube, while Instagram reels in a more substantial 2.4%. TikTok rounds things out with 0.9%.

This isn’t necessarily a case of all of Discord’s creators mentioning the brand mainly on YouTube. Just 44% of Discord’s creators from October 2024 to September 2025 were classified accordingly as ‘YouTube creators’ by our data system—a plurality, but not a majority.

However, 92% of Discord’s posts during that time period came via YouTube. So even if creators dabbled with other apps, YouTube was where they mentioned Discord, mainly in conjunction with hyping their personal Discord servers.

Why so YouTube-heavy? A lot of it stems from Discord’s gaming-centric legacy. The platform is still an essential channel for many gaming streamers, and for streamers at large, a group that’s long since branched out from gaming to include creators who broadcast for hours about any topic under the sun: pop culture, politics, sports, fashion, beauty, cooking, fitness, humor, and other things I’m not going to list, because surely by now you get the point.

As such, YouTube’s longer-form videos and livestreaming features, as well as the continued popularity of these various genres, come closest to capturing the spirit of Discord (and sometimes discord) on a different platform.

It reminds me of something I said a little while back in our first ever HBBIP: Live broadcast on LinkedIn—itself a livestream, almost Discord-like event. Since I was getting into the spirit of livestreams, I noted that our current creator era revolves around streamers. Whether they’re on Twitch, Discord, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, or other platforms I’m not going to list because you probably also get this point by now, the moment belongs to those who can hold their audience’s attention for hours across a range of subjects, and who connect with this audience in a live, visceral way. 

There’s definitely room for specialization here and there, but today’s creators started out as creators before they were anything else. That means that more than any specific vertical, they’re experts at the creator game itself. And any expert at the creator game is paying attention to Discord right now.

For now, as 2025 draws to a close, I’ll be watching how Discord continues to prosper in the year to come. I’m betting big on platform diversification in 2026, with creators going broad on the channels they use to get their messages out there, and I expect Discord to be a significant part of that process. After all, in these crazy times, maybe it takes a little Discord to bring everyone together.

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