Each week the Insights Team at The Goat Agency pull together the latest news from the social space in a weekly social media industry news round-up. This week we take a look at the top Twitter advertisers that continue to drop the platform, Pinterest’s broadened global expansion and how MrBeast plans to cultivate the creator economy.
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Contents
Top Twitter Advertisers Continue To Abandon Ship
MrBeast Partners With East Carolina University, Training Skilled Workers For Creator Economy
Pinterest’s Global Expansion Continues; Added Support For More Languages
YouTube Quizzes, Community Posts and New Visual Editing Tools
Snap Underlines the Rising Potential of AR for Marketing
Is Social Media Becoming Less Social, More Media?
Top Twitter Advertisers Continue To Abandon Ship
More worrying news for Elon Musk’s Twitter. More than a third of the platform’s top 100 marketers have not advertised on Twitter in the last two weeks. This is believed to be in correlation with the bullish nature in which Musk is controlling the company.
Since Musk’s chaotic acquisition, 14 of the top 50 Twitter advertisers have stopped operating. Ads for brands such as Jeep and Mars, who were among the top 100 US advertisers just six months ago, haven’t appeared on Twitter since November 7. This follows the trend of Twitter’s decline in its most active users.
Pharmaceutical company Merck, Kellogg, Verizon and Boston Beer have also put an end to their Twitter ads in recent weeks. While Musk has been desperately trying to cut costs and find alternative revenue streams, Twitter is still heavily reliant on advertising. In 2021, around 90% of the company’s $5 billion revenue came from advertising.
Twitter is renowned for its capacity for large corporations to increase awareness for their companies. Now it seems that the same companies are eager to jump ship given the platform no longer seems like a solid investment, or so experts say.
MrBeast Partners With East Carolina University, Training Skilled Workers For Creator Economy
Shortly after becoming the most subscribed-to creator on YouTube, MrBeast has partnered with East Carolina University (ECU) to launch training and credentialing programs for people who want to work with content creators.
Skillsets like editors, camera operators, and graphic designers are often integral to the running of YouTube’s top channel, in a behind-the-scenes sort of way. In fact, MrBeast is reported to have around 125 full-time staff working under his own production.
MrBeast claimed that finding the talent, and people required to make his operation a success was difficult. With this partnership, the hope is that the program can help make the process easier for creators, and to inspire aspiring professionals to get the experience they need without having to commit the time or money required for a college education.
MrBeast alongside other creator industry insiders will work with ECU to develop the program’s curriculum. Courses will be offered on a full online basis, and prepare enrolees for entry-level positions in camera work, editing, analytics and other needed creator industry skills.
Pinterest’s Global Expansion Continues; Added Support For More Languages
Pinterest is gearing up for the next steps in its international expansion. The platform added support for Afrikaans, Croatian and Bulgarian language Pins, broadening the scope of its global accessibility.
“Every month more than 400 million people come to Pinterest to find the inspiration they need to create the life they love. With millions of Pins in Afrikaans, Croatian and Bulgarian already on the platform, it’s now easier than ever for Pinners to discover fresh ideas, and get inspired for their life’s projects in their preferred language.” Explains Pinterest.
Opening up more opportunities, especially in more regions, could help Pinterest maintain the balanced growth that it has been experiencing throughout the year.
International expansion is a key focus for the platform. While the majority of its users are now outside of the US, Pinterest still generates almost 84% of its income for users in North America.
Pinterest is still processing the expansion of its ad tools, with Pinterest ads only recently accessible in Argentina, Chile and Colombia. That’s a crucial step in increasing its revenue potential.
YouTube Quizzes, Community Posts and New Visual Editing Tools
YouTube has revealed two new tests for its Community Posts feature, which will offer new ways for creators to engage and interact with audiences.
Community Posts are updates that are viewable within the ‘Community’ tab, which can be accessed through any channel with over 500 subscribers. It’s essentially a social media-style update feed, purposed toward enhancing engagement within a creator’s audience.
YouTube is expanding its new visual editing process for image posts, which provides more ways to compose Community updates.
“If you’re a creator in this experiment, you’ll be able to use the YouTube app to add filters, text, and stickers to images for posts. This experiment will roll out to a small percentage of creators who use iOS devices and have the Community tab enabled.” Explains YouTube.
The platform is also introducing Quizzes as another Community Posting option, offering new ways to generate direct interactions.
“Quizzes introduce a new, interactive way for creators to engage with viewers, and in cases of educational channels, help them learn. Creators in the beta can create quizzes the same way as other kinds of Community Posts. We’re beginning to test the quizzes beta with a small number of creators and will look to expand in the future based on feedback.” YouTube added.
The value of Community Posts is yet to be seen. It could be available component and external offering away from video uploads, with a means to share more, more often.
Snap Underlines the Rising Potential of AR for Marketing
With AR on the verge of becoming an enormous focus in the coming years, its a good time to remind brands to consider the potential for their marketing efforts, through 3D digital initiatives as usage behaviors evolve.
Snap recently partnered with Breakthrough Research to conduct a study into AR perception amongst consumers, and how likely they AR is to impact the shopping process.
The data collected through response shows that consumers are excited with regards to the possibilities of AR, finding that the tech enables consumers to make faster decisions, and purchase more as a result.
It’s estimated that AR is set to drive an estimated $11.2 billion increase in spend within the Fashion space alone. Travel is also anticipating an AR influenced increase:
“For Travel, Snapchatters expect to spend more than they typically would when AR is a part of their travel planning journey. This is because AR helps them be more confident in making decisions about the trip and ultimately planning longer trips by adding travel excursions or other add-ons to the itinerary.” Explains Snap.
At this stage, brands should be looking into the possibilities of AR, engaging in 3D virtual objects through metaverse and AR experiences. It only makes sense that brands to at least begin to align their marketing channels with this shift.
Is Social Media Becoming Less Social, More Media?
Is Instagram a social platform, or an entertainment app? The same can be said for TikTok, YouTube, what about Snapchat?
Algorithms are redefining what we see in each app, and with that in mind, it’s no surprise that we’re being fed constant content rather than being encouraged to stay up to date with friends. But what does this mean for the wider social media space?
It’s regarded that social media is now more about the content created over the connections shared. With the shift towards AI-recommneded video in particular, its becoming less about the social graph.
TikTok recently surpassed Netflix as the second-most popular app among under 35s. The app is poised to become the most popular destination for video consumption too, while last year it trailed Facebook by less than a minute in average viewing figures.
The impact of TikTok is being felt industry wide, as both social apps and entertainment brands look to replicate its style.
TikTok has about 80 million monthly users in the US alone, 80% of whim are between ages 16 and 34, putting a line under the importance or recognizing the channel as a viable marketing outlet.
So, is TikTok a social app, or an entertainment platform?
The app itself, considers to be an entertainment platform and with its networks of film publishers and film audience, it’s hard to disagree.
TikTok is unlike any other platform, which is why your Facebook’s, Instagram’s and YouTube’s continue to poach features from the short-form specialist. And, if competitors continue to follow in its footsteps, does that mean the end goal is to value entertainment of social networking?
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And that’s all for this week, but don’t forget to follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter for real-time announcements of all our new blog content!
