Cameo CEO on growth and new offerings: 'The kids' market is huge'

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

"The kids' market is huge," he said. "One thing that was really interesting as we got really deeply looking at our customer base on Cameo – 70% of our purchasers are over the age of 30. So, a lot of these people are first-time parents or they have young kids or nieces and nephews."

Cameo Kids – launched in conjunction with Candle Media – is live now and includes animated characters like Santa Claus, Thomas the Tank Engine, and from the hit show CoComelon. Like Cameo, Cameo Kids provides customized messages. These messages for kids, which feature virtual characters rather than real-life celebrities as on the original Cameo, are powered by AI and will cost parents between $25 and $30 per message.

"We were able to bring CoComelon, the premiere property that kids basically from the age of two to four just absolutely devour," said Galanis. "These kids, when they get the reaction videos, they absolutely lose their minds and it's been just so rewarding to watch this come to fruition."

'Doubling down'

It hasn't been an easy year for tech, as the sector has suffered amid rising interest rates, inflation, and deflated consumer sentiment. Cameo hasn't been immune; the company did two rounds of layoffs, one in May and another in November, slashing headcount substantially.

"We're now capitalized well into 2024," he said. "[It] was a really huge priority of mine, the board's, and the leadership team's to make sure that we live to fight another day ... We've had to scale back some of the initiatives that we were doing."

Cameo is prioritizing four things next year – "doubling down" on its core market, the launch of Cameo Kids, growing Cameo for Business, and building on the company's acquisition of celebrity merch platform Represent.