Top News and Stories
The spookiest month of the year proved to be a good one for the social platforms, as most reported strong quarterly earnings signaling a strengthening media market. Let’s take a look at the top stories from social media, our favorite brand influencers activations, and creator economy reports worth reading in this months edition of the Influencer Marketing Roundup.
TOP SOCIAL NEWS
Instagram releases a slew of new features including collaborative carousel posts, reminder ads for stories, sticker creations from items in your photos, comment polls and a nearby feed for stories
TLDR: It was a busy month of Instagram launches, some mirroring TikTok functionality like the nearby feed, and others focused on creative collaboration. We personally love the collaborative carousel posts, which should make it easier for creators to co-create with each other and with brands. Comment polls also have the ability to make the comment section much more interactive and interesting. We hope IG keeps the new features coming.
TikTok is experimenting with ad-free subscriptions, Meta is proposing a $14 per month charge for ad-free Facebook, and X is Looking To Launch New Tiered Premium Pricing Packages, while also testing a $1 a year fee in the Philippines and New Zealand for all new users.
TLDR: Subscription social is here and in a big way. Each platform has its own take but a combination of Europe’s Digital Service Act and the need to diversify revenue models outside of advertising is leading to a slurry of activity from all major players. Our bet is that most will not pay a $14 price tag to not see ads as they scroll through Facebook, but this is only the beginning of the features that will be connected to paid subscriptions.
The social platform are diving deeper into brand creator education programs with TikTok’s new “Made for TikTok” series and Pinterest’s Education Hub for Creators
TLDR: Brands and creators are still trying to figure out this world of creator collabs, and platforms want marketers and creators to get their education with them. We anticipate more classes, certifications and series to come.
TikTok Announces Live Concert Event to Showcase Music Trends
TLDR: TikTok is planning its first-ever music concert, featuring stars like Cardi B and Charlie Puth. The event, named TikTok in The Mix, will take place in Mesa, AZ, and will be streamed live on TikTok Live with presale tickets sold on TikTok. Could TikTok be a place where consumers buy concert tickets in the future???
TLDR: This was in addition to YouTube launching the new Affiliate hub this month. Affiliate models have been hit or miss for brands given many talented creators do not want to rely on variable income to pay their bills, but a hub where brands can easily offer incentives and creators can easily add shoppable links is a smart concept. TikTok and YouTube may be dueling it out in the world of shoppable content for many years to come.
TikTok unveils Out of Phone OOH ad solution for brands
TLDR: TikTok is coming to a theater near you … and billboards, the gas pump and nearly any other out-of-home screen you can think of. The new “Out of Phone offering” will enable brands to extend their TikTok campaigns to billboards and to run ads alongside blocks of TikTok content on other OOH screens. We’ve been preaching the extension of creator content outside the walls of social media for many years, and now the platforms are making it easier than ever for brands to do just that.
ByteDance Launches ‘CapCut for Business’ to Assist in Brand Video Creation
TLDR: It’s not very different from the existing CapCut feature set, but we can call this CapCut for dummies as it’s meant to be the simplest, out of the box way to create content for marketers. The feature set includes 1) Business templates, which include various commercially licensed elements, 2) Product URL to Ads which apparently instantly converts the URL of your product or landing page into captivating ad videos with just a click of a button, and 3) Collaboration tools to share your concepts with team members and agency partners
TikTok Announces New Partnership With Disney
TLDR: Disney will be a premium publishing partner for TikTok’s Pulse Premiere ad product. The content hub will be a reservoir of Disney-branded content, allowing users to view videos, concoct their own, participate in Disney-centric trivia, and amass “Character Cards” of favored Disney personalities. We love this partnership and it will likely open the door for many more deeper brand integrations on TikTok.
TikTok is Experimenting With 15-Minute Uploads
TLDR: A 15-minute TikTok video sounds a lot like a YouTube video. TikTok already has YouTube beat in time spent by users on the platform, and increasing time on TikTok means increasing ad impressions. But will people stay tuned for a whopping 15 minutes in between 15-30 second videos… our bet is no.
Snapchat Launches New Tools To Facilitate Creator Collaborations with Brands
TLDR: Snapchat introduced several new features to help brands partner with creators, collectively called “Snap Collab Campaigns.” The new product suite includes a “Creator Discovery API,” which gives third-party influencer platforms access to the metrics of Snapchat’s entire creator roster. Additionally, advertisers can now run midroll ads within creators’ Snapchat stories, an offering previously restricted to its top creators, or “Snap Stars,” and creators can use a new “paid partnership” tag on videos to disclose when their content is sponsored.
TikTok is developing a scoring system for creators in the TikTok Creator Marketplace
TLDR: This system will provide creators with a score based on a set of industry attributes, which will be developed with input from TTCM users. These numerical scores will be visible on creators’ profiles, and include an overall score along with individual scores for each attribute. We are not a fan of scoring human beings, and would much rather see TikTok showing relevance scores in searches based on topics. This could have a big impact on creators who don’t score well.
Meta is paying celebrity faces behind its AI chatbots as much as $5 million for 6 hours of work
TLDR: Meta unveiled its AI assistant feature last month, featuring celebrities’ likenesses. Kendall Jenner and MrBeast are among the stars who portray Meta’s chatbots with different personalities. It sounds crazy, but 200M people are chatting with fake AI celebrities and that number is only going to grow. This is a space everyone should be paying closer attention to.
TLDR: Donaldson joins a handful of well-known people who have warned that their likeness is being used without permission. In the Mr. Beast video, his deepfake tells viewers that they are one of 10,000 lucky people who will get an iPhone 15 Pro for just $2 as part of the world’s largest iPhone 15 giveaway. It’s been pulled down since Donaldson drew attention to it, but this is going to happen more often and the AI questions will continue.
BRAND INFLUENCER HIGHLIGHTS
Olaplex ‘Dupes’ The TikTok Dupers
Fenty Beauty Engages 300 Influencers with Drive-Thru Sampling
Kerrygold provides an all expenses paid trip for butter influencers
How Shake Shack cooked up its first NIL campaign
Pizza Hut Jumps on Girl Math Trend with Anna Sitar Social Campaign
Why Google Pixel is Putting Creators at the Forefront of its Marketing Strategy
REPORTS & DATA WORTH READING
More US Marketing Use IG Reels Than TikTok for Influencer Marketing
TLDR: 53.7% of US marketers will use Instagram Reels for influencer marketing this year, making it the top platform for influencer marketing according to Insider Intelligence. While TikTok is the OG of short form video, the fact that Instagram has the ability to cross post Reels to feed/story and brands can get a greater diversity of content by having their creators create different styles of content (video + static) has kept it ahead of TikTok.
Creator Now surveys 2,200 creators on their AI behaviors
TLDR: The survey showed that 97% of creators said they’re already incorporating AI into their creative process. The vast majority of these creators—90%—are leveraging ChatGPT, and the most common reasons they gave for using AI were “generating ideas” and “researching topics” for their content. Creator Now conducted the survey in response to YouTube’s recent announcement of a suite of new generative AI-powered tools it will roll out to creators in the coming months.
Ogilvy Report says that 75% of B2B marketers now investing in influencer marketing
TLDR: Influencers have become a go to strategy for the B2B market. 75% of B2B marketers in the survey are now actively employing B2B influencer marketing, with 93% of them planning to amplify their influencer content. Not only that, nearly half (49%) believe that influencers can enhance the credibility and trustworthiness of their brands, and 40% have witnessed improved lead generation and sales outcomes due to their influencer marketing strategies.
