Certain to disrupt the audio advertising and social media landscape, Clubhouse launched late 2020 and has seen impressive growth and adoption over just a few months. The invite-only audience ramp up created a demand-frenzy while allowing early influencers to establish solid content platforms and programming plans.
Like an on-demand live radio, thousands of rooms are available to discuss anything from potting plants to becoming a billionaire and people seem to be listening. Like a 24/7 conference taking place on any topic you can think of, the app promises endless content sprinkled with celebrity effect. Just last week, there was an absolute frenzy as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and several other A-listers randomly joined rooms to listen in on the action.
What does it mean for advertising? We’re not sure what the model will look like. There is a lot of talk about subscriptions and micro-payment set-ups to enter specific rooms with celebrity content and there is always a more traditional ad-supported model that would reflect a podcast-type insertion that could be served programmatically. Spokespeople for Clubhouse suggest that we will find out soon enough as the platform is ripe for monetization now that it has officially launched with critical mass and some decent content. In the meantime, it didn’t take long for Facebook to take note. Plans are in the works to develop a competing product.