Actresses Earn 16% Less Than Actors on Cameo

Key Findings

• 23% of the celebrities on Cameo are Content Creators
• The average prices charged in each major category fall between $30.52 and $54.84
• Most celebrities on Cameo charge in the $20–$50 price range
• Celebrities from newer media (Content Creators) charge in the $10–$20 price range
• YouTube leads other content creation platforms in the number of celebrities and the average price charged
• Actresses on Cameo earn 16% less than Actors

Even before COVID-19, Cameo was a startup that many people were paying attention to. Since the video message service debuted in 2016, it’s been hailed as one of the best startups for employees and in concept and execution.

But with the global pandemic fundamentally altering everyone’s ability to generate income, celebrities have been flocking to Cameo as a way to supplement.

But which parts of the entertainment world are embracing Cameo the most? What are these celebrities charging for a custom “Happy Birthday!” message? And who’s making more money? These are all questions we wanted to know the answers to, and the answers we found were surprising.

What Is Cameo?

Cameo is a web- and app-based service that connects everyday people with the celebrities they idolize to buy customized shoutout videos.

Depending on the public figure, users can pay anywhere from $5 to $2,500 for a personalized video. Of that cost, Cameo takes a 25% cut for facilitating the service.

As of May 2020, Cameo touts having more than 30,000 celebrities on its platform.

Because Cameo is on the rise, we wanted to take a look at pricing data for some of the most popular categories.

Which Celebrities Are on Cameo?

First, we took a high-level look at some of the top categories to see which industries made up what shares of celebrities on the platform.

Content Creators Make Up 23% of Cameo’s Celebrities

In categories with more than 20% of the pie, Content Creators led the group with 22.94% of the total celebrities on the platform. Following up Content Creators was the Actors category, with 20.28% of the total.

Athletes, All Other, and Musicians each came in at 16.33%, 15.14%, and 15.10%, respectively.

With ~5% of the pie each, Models and Comedians split more of the remaining pie with 5.05% and 4.65% each.

Gamers make the smallest showing of the categories examined, netting just 0.51% of the total number of celebrities.

It’s a bit surprising that Content Creators encompass the largest portion of the pie, considering they deal with new and social media, which have been around for a fraction of the time the other categories have been in the public eye. That said, it makes sense that this would be the biggest group since just about anyone with an internet connection or a mobile device could potentially be a YouTube star or Instagram influencer.

Also of interest is the fact that Comedians and Models share a similar portion of the total. These two spheres of entertainment aren’t very similar or too likely to crossover, but bring similar numbers of celebrities to the platform.

The $20–$50 Price Range Is the Most Used Price Point on Cameo

After getting an idea of what portion of the celebrities on Cameo belonged to which categories, we wanted to take a closer look at how the pricing compared between each group.

Average Price by Category

The first thing we looked at was the average price charged for the service by the celebrities in a given category.

The average price across most categories was ~$50:

The standout data point here is the $30.52 average price for Content Creators. In spite of leading all other categories in terms of share of celebrities on the platform, they have the lowest average price by more than $10 and are more than $24 less expensive than the next biggest category, Actors.

This suggests that there’s inherently less value in Content Creators’ celebrity status than most of the other categories, as the average prices are a good indicator of what the market can bear for each category.

Price Distribution for the 3 Biggest Categories

Next, we took a closer look at the three largest categories by number portion of celebrities (Athletes, Actors, and Content Creators) to see how pricing was distributed for each.

Price Distribution for Athletes

The first category we looked at was Athletes. The pricing tier with the largest share was the $20–$50 range at 43.3%, which accounted for a larger share than the next two tiers combined ($10–$20 at 21.9% and $50–$100 at 18.7%). The two extremes—Less than $10 and More than $250—accounted for just 5.3% (or 2.5% and 2.8%, respectively) of the overall prices offered by celebrities in the category.

Price Distribution for Actors

Like with Athletes, the tier with the largest portion of celebrities for Actors was the $20–$50 range. The Actors category also sees it’s cheapest and most expensive tiers utilized the least by its celebrities, with 1.6% and 2.2% each.

Price Distribution for Content Creators

Content Creators is an interesting category because it bucks the trend we’ve seen established with the previously analyzed categories. The $10–$20 price range is the most oft used tier among Content Creators at 39.5%. The second most used price tier is the $20–$50 range. These two tiers together account for nearly 75% of what Content Creators are charging for their Cameo services.

That the $10–$20 price range is more utilized suggests that’s what the market can bear and that, as newer entertainment, it may not be considered as valuable as some of the others explored here. That the $20–$50 range is not far behind, though, could suggest that the perceived value of Content Creators is increasing.

YouTube Leads Among Content Creator Subcategories

For the third part of our analysis, we dug deeper into how the different kinds of content creators—TikTok, Instagram, and Youtube—compared to one another since this category bucked a lot of the trends we’ve explored.

Content Creator Subcategories by Number of Celebrities and Average Price

First, we took a quick look at how many celebrities each of the three popular subcategories had:

YouTube had 2,832 celebrities, Instagram had 2,252, and TikTik had 1,393 as of the writing of this analysis. This follows what you might expect–the oldest and most popular platform has the most public figures while the youngest platform has the fewest.

Next, we looked at what the average price charged for creators on each platform was:

This essentially follows the same pattern. The older and most popular platform (YouTube) has the highest average price at $34.71. Instagram, the middle child, has an average price of $29.19. And the newcomer, TikTok, has the cheapest average rate at $16.24.

Actresses Earn 16% Less Than Actors on Cameo

For the last section of this analysis, we looked at how pricing on Cameo compared across genders in the film industry. We looked, specifically, at the average prices for a Cameo message from actors and actresses:

The data shows that Actors on Cameo charge, on average, $76.18, while Actresses charge $64.25.

According to at least one study, women in Hollywood earn about 38% as much as their male counterparts. The data shows that actresses earn less on Cameo as well, but the gap is about a 16% difference.

Methodology

We reviewed data for more than 10,000 celebrities, influencers, and other types of celebrities directly from www.cameo.com. The prices, categories, and other data were collected on July 23, 2020.

Any public figure may belong to multiple categories. The prices analyzed are for requests submitted through the web and do not include data from in-app purchases. Celebrities may have been added or may have left the platform since July 23. The celebrities may have also updated prices since then.

Final Thoughts

Our analysis of Cameo confirmed some suspicions but also turned up some surprising truths:

• Content Creators account for the largest portion of celebrities
• Average prices in each major category fall between $30.52 and $54.84
• Most celebrities on Cameo charge in the $20–$50 price range
• Most Content Creators charge in the $10–$20 range on Cameo
• Actresses on Cameo earn 16% less than Actors

Considering the above, there’s a pretty clear picture painted of a gap between older and newer media. Celebrities on Cameo who are from older media (movies, professional sports) charge more for their services. New media celebrities (like content creators) charge less. Assuming that celebrities generally charge what customers will pay, this suggests that newer media is less-valued, though the data suggests that gap is closing.

Frank Gogol

I’m a firm believer that information is the key to financial freedom. On the Stilt Blog, I write about the complex topics — like finance, immigration, and technology — to help immigrants make the most of their lives in the U.S. Our content and brand have been featured in Forbes, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, and more.

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