From screen to scale: Is Pakistan ready to recognise its digital creators? - The Express Tribune

The YouTube Partner Program allows content creators in Pakistan to monetize original works. PHOTO: REUTERS

Pakistan has decided that its content creators earn enough to be taxed. It has not yet decided that they are an industry. That contradiction is worth paying attention to.

Two weeks ago, I attended Screen to Scale: A Dialog on Pakistan’s Creator Economy at IBA’s City Campus, organised by the Indus Policy & Strategic Economic Collective (IPSEC).

The event brought together people from policy, media, business and the creator ecosystem to discuss a question that seems increasingly difficult to ignore: are we treating the creator economy as an industry yet?

My answer, after listening to the discussion, is that we are not — at least not to the extent that its economic value deserves. One remark from the panel has stayed with me: Zeba Qureshi, Senior Manager for Creator Marketing at YouTube, pointed out that 60% of the viewership for Pakistani content comes from outside Pakistan.

The country, she argued, is sitting on a goldmine, and most of us at home have not even noticed that Pakistani creators are being watched on a scale we rarely acknowledge. For years, content creation in Pakistan has often been dismissed as something young people do on their phones: a hobby, a side hustle, or simply a way to become famous online.

But the reality has moved far beyond that. A successful creator is no longer simply producing a video. They may be employing editors, videographers, designers, writers, and managers.

They work with local and international brands, generate advertising revenue, build communities and take Pakistani stories to audiences outside the country. Their work can create employment, attract commercial investment and, in some cases, bring foreign income into Pakistan.

If creators are generating all this value, then why are we still discussing them primarily in terms of views, followers and popularity?

Pakistan already has examples of what this sector can produce. Take Irfan Junejo. What began as personal filmmaking and vlogging developed into a substantial creative career.

His stories of Karachi series explored the city’s food, culture and neighbourhoods with a depth few creators had attempted, showing sides of Karachi that rarely made it onto anyone’s platform. It demonstrated that Pakistani creators could build large audiences through authentic storytelling rather than simply chasing virality.

Then there is WildLens by Abrar Hassan, whose travel documentaries have taken Pakistani storytelling to audiences in over 100 countries. His work shows how a creator’s perspective can travel across borders, introducing international audiences to places, people and experiences through a distinctly personal lens.

These creators are not merely accumulating followers. They are creating intellectual property, audiences, cultural influence and commercial value. And that distinction matters. A million views should not be the end of the conversation.

We should be asking what those views represent: advertising revenue, brand partnerships, jobs, production spending, consumer attention, cultural exports, and opportunities for the people working around the creator.

When a creator works with a major brand, hires a production team or reaches audiences beyond Pakistan, there is an economic ecosystem behind that one piece of content. Yet much of this value remains difficult to see because we do not measure it as an industry.

This is perhaps part of a larger problem in Pakistan. We often recognise our talent more readily when it has already received recognition elsewhere. A Pakistani artist, filmmaker, musician or creator can gain international attention and suddenly become more valuable in the eyes of the local audience.

The creator economy presents another opportunity to break that pattern — but only if we begin recognising creators as economic actors rather than simply internet personalities. The growing attention being given to the taxation of social-media creators makes this question even more important.

If we recognise that creators earn real income, then surely the conversation cannot stop at taxation. A mature creator economy also needs infrastructure, reliable digital payments, intellectual-property protection, data, investment, training and policies that allow creators and the businesses around them to grow.

And this is not only a question for policymakers. It is a question for brands that increasingly depend on creators to reach audiences. It is a question for universities preparing students for an economy in which creating, producing, and distributing content can become a career.

It is a question for investors deciding which industries are worth supporting. And it is a question for us as audiences, because the attention we give to creators is itself part of the economy they are building.

We often talk about Pakistan’s exports in terms of textiles, agriculture, technology, or traditional services. But what happens when the product is an idea, a story, a film, a community or a person’s creative ability?

That value can cross borders without a shipping container. The Screen to Scale conversation left me with a simple thought: Pakistan does not have a shortage of creators. It has a shortage of recognition, structure, and measurement around what those creators are already producing.

Perhaps the next question should not be whether content creation is a “real job”. That question is already outdated.

The better question is: what would happen if Pakistan treated the creator economy like an industry?

If we built the systems around the talent we already have, creators could become more than individual success stories.

They could become part of a larger ecosystem — creating employment, attracting international brands, exporting Pakistani culture, and generating economic value at a scale that we have not yet learned to measure.

The screen is already producing value. Perhaps it is time for Pakistan to recognise it — and give it room to scale.

Sheherzad Arshad is an MBA student at the Institute of Business Administration(IBA), Karachi.

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