'The children's market is huge'

Cameo, the celebrity video-sharing platform, is branching out into the children’s market, CEO Steven Galanis told Yahoo Finance Live Thursday (video above).

“The children’s market is huge,” he said. “One thing that was really interesting when we looked really deep into our customer base on Cameo – 70% of our buyers are over the age of 30. So a lot of these people are first-time parents or they have young children or nieces and nephews.”

Cameo Kids – launched in partnership with Candle Media – is now live and features animated characters such as Santa Claus, Thomas the Tank Engine and from the popular show CoComelon. Like Cameo, Cameo Kids offers custom messages. These messages for kids, featuring virtual characters instead of real celebrities like on the original Cameo, are powered by AI and cost parents between $25 and $30 per message.

“We were able to bring CoComelon, the first property that kids two to four years old just absolutely devour,” said Galanis. “These kids, when they get the reaction videos, they absolutely go crazy and it’s just so rewarding to watch this come to fruition.”

A photo of characters in Cameo Kids provided by the company.

‘Double’

It was not an easy year for technology as the sector suffered from rising interest rates, inflation and negative consumer confidence. Cameo has not been immune; the company made two rounds of layoffs, one in May and another in November, significantly reducing headcount.

“We are now capitalized well into 2024,” he said. “[It] really was a big priority of mine, the board and the leadership team to make sure we live to fight another day… We’ve had to scale back some of the initiatives we’ve been doing.

Cameo is prioritizing four things next year: “doubling down” on its core market, launching Cameo Kids, growing Cameo for Business, and building on the company’s acquisition of celebrity merchandise platform, Represent.

“We hope to do more with less,” said Galanis.

The company’s core market is especially important going forward, he added.

“We think there is still a lot of room to grow in the core market, both nationally and internationally, and again we continue to build new tools and talent that allow people to use their brand and turn it into a business,” he said. “We want to do this ubiquitously around the world.”

Allie Garfinkle is a Senior Tech Reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @agarfinks.

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