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It’s Wednesday and Google is cluing viewers in on the most searched subjects of 2024. At the top of the list: sports, sports, and more sports.

SHOP ‘TIL YOU DROP

TikTok wants to turn millions of Americans into paid shopping influencers

The paradigm shift: Every platform from YouTube to X is making it easier for creators to monetize their content. TikTok Shop, however, may have set the barrier to entry lower than ever before by opening affiliate marketing payouts to users with as few as 1,000 followers.

That move further democratizes a process that was already designed to streamline social ecommerce. With TikTok Shop, creators don’t have to connect with individual brands or apply to individual affiliate marketing programs. All they had to do is be over 18, live in the U.S., and have at least 1,000 followers.

The context: Affiliate marketing has become a regular component of creator/brand partnerships in the U.S., with creators often getting referral links and special discounts for their audiences in exchange for a cut of the sales. That system, though, tends to involve short ad spots worked into the creator’s usual content. On the other hand, the sort of social shopping content that’s worked in China—where social ecommerce is already a $425 billion business—makes products the main focus of creators’ content.

That form of social shopping didn’t catch on in the U.S. until the arrival of TikTok Shop in 2023, when it saw immediate adoption by established creators and before getting picked up by newcomers like Brandy Leigh. The 50-year-old mother of six told Rest of World that she made $95,000 in Shop commissions between May and October 2024. (The amount creators earn through Shop varies, but Max Benator—the founder/CEO of creator ecommerce startup Orca—told Tubefilter it can be as much as 20% of an item’s sale price.)

Orca processes affiliate earnings for around 20,000 creators every month—some of whom, Benator says, are earning six figures “primarily through TikTok Shop.”

The future: There’s potential for affiliate superstars to utilize their earnings the same way MrBeast, Dude Perfect, EYstreem, and Alan Chikin Chow have used their YouTube cash: to build out content production studios. At the same time, those superstars may be competing with millions of ordinary individuals who are now essentially influencers.

We could be rapidly heading toward a future where viewers get served dozens, hundreds, or thousands of videos from professional creators and everyday individuals hawking products in hopes of earning affiliate cash. It does seem like an inflection point in the calculus of content creation.

If millions of individuals have the opportunity to create short-form videos with the potential to reach millions of viewers, the question becomes: will they A) forgo including a product that could earn them affiliate revenue, or B) include a product and try to get a (potentially big) bag?

If hundreds of years of capitalism is any indicator, the choice seems pretty clear.

🔆 SPONSORED 🔆

Influencers were front-and-center of the F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix. Here’s how Viral Nation made them part of the story:

2024 F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix was a roaring success, with Viral Nation playing a pivotal role, bringing influencers and brands together to make Formula 1 history.

🏎️ The brand campaign: MGM Resorts International joined forces with Viral Nation to arrange personal partnerships that seamlessly aligned creators like Christina Kirkman, Mia Baker, and Miles Chamley-Watson with diverse activations and experiences available at luxury MGM Resorts properties, including Bellagio, ARIA and The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.

The curated experiences went deep: To help Kirkman celebrate her father’s 60th birthday, Viral Nation and MGM brought the creator and her family on the trip of a lifetime, complete with LVGP's qualifying and final races at Bellagio Fountain Club and VIP reservations to enjoy dinners at signature resort restaurants.

A talent spotlight: Up-and-coming chef and Viral Nation influencer Gab Chappel was tapped by Gordon Ramsay himself to help host a 250-person private dinner on the Grand Prix starting grid—an emotional experience featuring some of Chappel’s own dishes.

🤝 The agency behind it all: From celebrity partnerships to global brand campaigns, Viral Nation keeps creators at the forefront of the industry. 

Learn more about Viral Nation →

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Six months after rolling out its gaming hub to all users, YouTube is testing some multiplayer experiences within Playables. (Tubefilter)
  
  

• New “trial Reels” will allow Instagram creators to test out new videos on non-followers before showing them to existing fans. (TechCrunch)
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• A recent report from IT service management Cloudflare found that “global Internet traffic grew 17.2% in 2024.” (Cloudflare)
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• Character.AI is facing a second lawsuit related to the impact of its chatbots on the mental health and safety of underage users. (The Verge)

FOUL BALL

Nearly 2/3 of sports content is consumed via streaming. Those viewers are fed up with repetitive ads.

The problem: If the first bar of Rae Sremmurd’s “No Flex Zone” sends you into an icy rage, you’re probably flashing back to this year’s NBA playoffs. The hip-hop track accompanied a Wingstop ad that played constantly during the playoffs, and still appears on Max and NBA League Pass. Viewers haunted by “No Flex Zone” are victims of misaligned frequency caps, an all-too-common issue on ad-base streaming platforms.

On TV, there are safeguards to prevent repetitive ads—but the landscape of streaming ads is more fractured, with everyone from parent companies to networks carving up inventory. According to Thomas Trudeau—the Director of Innovation Partnerships for the IPG Media Lab—limited advertiser rosters also contribute to misaligned frequency caps. Trudeau noted that streaming services typically have more personalized ads, which can “lead to ad repetition if there isn’t enough variety of ads to match a viewer’s profile.”

The impact: Research has shown that ad frequency imbalances cut into sales figures in the long run—and the damage to advertisers’ reputations can be even worse. The first autocomplete suggestion beneath a recent Google search for frequent streaming advertiser Liberty Mutual, for instance, was “liberty mutual ads are the worst.”

The solution: Roku Media Head of Sports Media Joe Franzetta recently told Marketing Brew that two-thirds of sports content viewership is projected to come via streaming in 2025—meaning now is the time to get frequency caps under control. According to Trudeau, that’s unlikely to happen “until a confluence of inventory scale and operational maturity is reached.”

Some brands and marketing companies are already striving to make that confluence a reality. Tubi, for example, has made a big deal out of its ad capping technology, while marketing firm Symitri aims to solve ad frequency issues through data-driven analysis (per Symitri Co-Founder/CEO David Kohl).

TALKING POLITICS

Podcasters influenced the 2024 election—so Spotify is setting up shop in D.C.

The context: There’s a reason the 2024 presidential race was branded an “influencer election.” Ahead of voting day, major candidates flocked to podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience and Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy, both of which frequently top the charts on Spotify. Interviews with podcasters—especially young, male podcasters—were so pivotal to bolstering President-elect Donald Trump’s credibility among Gen Z men that some of the creators who hosted him even got shout-outs during his ensuing victory celebration.

The initiative: Spotify is doing what it takes to be the go-to source for those buzzy political conversations. As political pundits flock to D.C. to witness the Inauguration Day that will take place on January 20, 2025, the platform is expected to offer podcasters access to a pop-up studio space. Spotify hasn’t publicly confirmed or denied those plans—but according to Bloomberg, the Stockholm-based streamer has already invited some creators to attend a brunch that will celebrate “the power of podcasts in this election.”

Spotify’s efforts to court podcasters goes far beyond its Inauguration Day initiatives. In recent months, the platform has greatly enhanced its video podcast capabilities while revamping its creator monetization program. At the same time, Spotify continues to benefit from its ongoing relationship with Rogan and his namesake podcast.

WATCH THIS 📺

Take it from Marques Brownlee: Sora is really good at abstracts and really bad at legs

The review: OpenAI’s text-to-video engine has only been available to the public for a few days, but Marques Brownlee is already on top of it. The YouTube reviewer weighed in on pros and cons of Sora in a sixteen-minute video that deemed the new AI tech “both horrifying and inspiring.” (Its method of depicting both human and animal legs apparently falls into the former category.)

Check out Brownlee’s full commentary here.

Creator economy marketing starts here. Get in touch to advertise with Tubefilter.

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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen. Drew Baldwin helped edit, too. It's a team effort.