Navigating the Creator Economy: An Analysis of Content Promotion and View Allocation Policies on Digital Content Platforms

When offering content promotion opportunities to creators, digital content platforms often face the challenge of balancing the allocation of limited views between content quality and promotional efforts. To examine this tension, we developed a game-theoretic model that captures the rich interactions among creators, the platform, and viewers. We show that when view allocation leans more toward content promotion, it does not necessarily lead creators to increase their promotion expenses, and it can result in either lower or higher equilibrium content quality. Furthermore, the platform should offer content promotion only when content production is cost-effective for creators and when the total number of creators is moderate. Finally, we find that the platform should avoid combining revenue sharing with content promotion, and that interplatform competition may result in more promotion-oriented view allocation and lower content quality compared with a monopoly platform.