Month: August 2020

Of the top 20 Facebook advertisers, according to Pathmatics’ 2019 data, five of them — Microsoft, Unilever, Diageo, Coca-Cola and CVS — are keeping media dollars away from the social network. In 2019, those advertisers spent a combined $237.4 million on ads on Facebook, per Pathmatics.

Like many of the platform’s top 20 advertisers, these five had already been cutting Facebook budgets over the last three years. And while none of the advertisers ruled out never returning to Facebook, they weren’t sure about when — and how — they would. Some like Unilever have said they won’t buy ads there for the remainder of the year, while others like CVS have paused spending until the end of August when they will review whether to return, a company spokesperson said. 

Other advertisers like Diageo and Coca-Cola are less specific on when they will return. Diageo hasn’t made any public statement on what will happen to its media dollars on Facebook, but a source close to the business said its pause will continue indefinitely. Coca-Cola, on the other hand, has at least detailed its next steps. 

In an update to its month-long boycott of all social networks, the beverage giant said ad dollars would remain paused on Facebook and Instagram worldwide indefinitely. It has, however, started to buy ads on YouTube and LinkedIn again as of August 1. Still, any return to buying ads on both Facebook and Instagram will be based on how Facebook’s efforts to suppress hate speech stack up against its own new safeguards for hateful content online that are being developed.

“While we’ve made progress, our journey is not complete,” said Coca-Cola in the online update. “At this time, as we continue to assess each platform, we can confirm that our re-entry to social media will be a phased approach by channel.”

Beam Suntory has taken a similar stance.

“We are extending our pause of all paid Facebook and Instagram advertising in the US across our brand portfolio,” said a spokeswoman for the advertiser. “We have yet to see sufficient progress to change our approach and continue to hope this collective action helps catalyze positive change and accountability.”

Other advertisers that have made their own assessments of how Facebook is dealing hate speech and misinformation since the boycott began at the beginning of July say they are happy with what they’ve seen.

Take outdoor apparel manufacturer The North Face. The company was the first high-profile advertisers to join the boycott — and now one of the first to announce its return. 

In an emailed statement, a spokesperson from The North Face said: 

“We are proud to have been the first large brand to announce support for the ADL and NAACP through our adoption of the #StopHateforProfit movement. Since we signed on 19. June, we have held constructive conversations with Facebook to clearly outline the areas where we want to see tangible changes.

“We are encouraged by the initial progress and recognize that change doesn’t happen overnight. That’s why we will continue to engage in dialogue with Facebook to hold them accountable for the actions they plan to implement. We intend to resume our working relationship with Facebook and Instagram in August, but have joined our parent company, VF Corporation, and other VF brands to create a coalition that will hold regular check-ins with the Facebook team to continually evaluate their progress and determine on an ongoing basis if they are a partner and platform that upholds our values.”

For all the lingering concerns from the likes of Coca-Cola and Diageo over how much Facebook is prepared to change its management of hate speech, it has made concessions to advertisers’ concerns.  

For example, it tightened measures to protect immigrants, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers from hateful ads targeted at them, and took the decision to label content as “newsworthy” that otherwise would be removed for violating Facebook’s policies. While the value of these measures is debatable — as evidenced by the boycott’s organizers announcing their “disappointment” at Facebook’s unwillingness to commit to concrete solutions for addressing hate speech and misinformation on the platform — the social network has seemingly done enough to appease some of its detractors.

Heineken has also restarted buying ads on Facebook and Instagram.

“Due to concern about harmful content in social media, Heineken made the decision to pause Facebook and Instagram activity in July” said a spokesperson in an emailed statement. “We have since engaged in detailed conversations with Facebook and are pleased to see their new commitments based on a four-point action plan formulated by the Global Alliance for Responsible Media. While we are resuming our advertising on Facebook platforms as of August, we will continue our dialogue with Facebook as they make progress against the new commitments.”

While the coalition of civil rights groups including the Anti-Defamation League and the NAACP behind the Stop Hate for Profit boycott had clear expectations of the concessions Facebook needed to make in July, many of the advertisers on it didn’t. Some like Patagonia echoed the boycott’s demands, but others barely mentioned them and in some cases, like Unilever, distanced their own boycott from the wider campaign.

And then there were those like Pernod Ricard who joined the boycott but doubted whether it would push Facebook to change. Like others, the advertiser has started spending on Facebook again but is also developing an app that will allow people to report hate speech they see online. 

With so many contrasting views the outcome of the month-long boycott was predestined to be fragmented.

“The loser is the social movement itself,” said Bob Regular, CEO of ad tech vendor Infolinks. “Facebook proved they would not move very far and there’s not one leverage point that can deter them except mass humiliation — which is unlikely since they control the central messaging platform that can humiliate them.”

The rest of the top 20 Facebook advertisers, like Clorox, either said they didn’t have anything new to add to their statements at the start of the boycott or were unable to provide a response by the time this article was published. Pfizer, for one, declined to comment outright.

The cadence of how often members receive free products from Beauty Drawer is ad hoc based on the deals Marie Claire strikes. As it grows — it expects 6,000 new sign-ups a month to start — it will tier the audience so brands can target products to skin types and preferences pre-selected by members when they sign up to the service.

“Sampling is a no brainer for beauty brands,” said Marie Claire’s e-commerce director Emily Ferguson. “Beauty is so subjective, why would a brand give out 5,000 samples where three quarters don’t suit that skin tone? They’ll lose that audience at that time.”

As well as paying for the sample, brands pay for advertising through sponsored content or social campaigns, like How-To Guides. In May, Marie Claire had over 3 million monthly unique users in the U.K., twice as many as the year before, according to Comscore figures.

“Sampling adds a whole new concrete way to map out what Marie Claire content brand partnerships would look like,” said luxury consultant Livia Stefanini. “You measure partnerships on lead gen and engagement, this guarantees 5,000 people will receive your sample. That’s guaranteed penetration.”

In a crowded women’s lifestyle media market, Marie Claire has positioned itself as the destination for beauty, thanks to business lines like its London beauty store Fabled and editorially driven e-commerce site The Edit, said Stefanini.

“Working in skincare, samples are the number-one way to get people into a product,” she added, pointing to a study from 2015 showing that free sampling was a top-five contributing factor for buying skincare products for over 30% of consumers. Skincare is proving more resilient and benefiting (proving out?) Leonard Lauder’s often critiqued “lipstick effect,” maxim she added, which suggests that women will buy cosmetics throughout a recession.

There are other revenue opportunities for Marie Claire. Brands can sign licensing deals so products have a rating and review from the editorial team. While there are no fixed plans to yet, amassing thousands-strong databases from its new sampling push will be lucrative for the title in terms of growing its first-party data pool and spinning up other models like subscription boxes. Marie Claire plans to launch another business in the next few weeks, but Ferguson wouldn’t share what type. 

Marie Claire’s revenue is evenly split between advertising, (display and branded content) and commerce, (affiliates and voucher business), said Ferguson. For The Edit, its editorially-driven e-commerce site, the average basket size for designer customers — which make up roughly 60% — is £397, ($521.34) she said. Like other publishers, e-commerce has boomed. Marie Claire generated as much revenue from e-commerce in June than for all of 2019, she said. In May, it made more money through e-commerce than Marie Claire did during Black Friday last year.

Marie Claire has been working on Beauty Drawer for the last year. In April, Future PLC completed the £140 million ($184 million) takeover of TI Media -— which publishes nearly 40 titles like Ideal home and Country Life — after selling off three titles due to competition concerns. Both Future and TI Media have cut staff and closed titles since the impact of coronavirus. Ferguson wouldn’t say what role Future is playing in the title’s sampling business.

Women’s lifestyle magazines haven’t faced as many closures during coronavirus as other niche titles, but there’s still a heavy dependence on print revenues that’s unlikely to return, said independent media consultant Colin Morrison. Marie Claire went digital-only last September. But cutting costs by closing print is different from expanding digital operations. Future has historically invested in developing its own tech stack and digital operations.

“There is a big market (in women’s magazines) and room to do a much better job digitally than what we have seen,” said Morrison. “I expect Future has big plans for Marie Claire in digital terms.”

The beauty industry, like nearly all other business sectors, has felt the rush and weight of change that’s come from both the coronavirus crisis and the calls to action from the recent civil rights protests.

Through the pandemic, seismic shifts have occurred in how brands interact with customers. Beauty publishers, like Allure for example, have stepped up to provide a valuable connection between their audiences and consumers.

And as a public-facing voice on the conversation about diversity, Allure has pushed to provide a diverse representation that publishers in general have lacked for decades.

“We needed more racial and ethnic diversity, more body type diversity and then also with age, too,” said Michelle Lee, editor-in-chief of Allure. To do this, she has helped spearhead significant changes—from the content itself, to those who create it.

In the latest episode of Digiday’s weekly show The New Normal, Lee discusses how Allure analyzed and stripped out the beauty stereotypes that it had been hewing to for years, in order to create a more inclusive and equitable proposition for the Allure brand.

Making internal adjustments

“There has been this push towards more reality,” Lee said. Audiences don’t want everything looking so “phony perfect” anymore. That’s why, in 2017, Lee said that Allure banned the term “anti-aging” from their magazine and website. 

This still is a significant area of focus for the beauty industry and was even a vertical for Allure until that point. “That was the last taboo. People were talking about, ‘we love diversity,’ but then still women were being shamed about growing older,” Lee said. 

Magazines and beauty media have spent decades reinforcing some of these stereotypes. Now they are the ones tasked with undoing those harmful beliefs. And it will be a long game to accomplish that and make meaningful change, she said. 

Getting the audience on board 

Continuing with the example of banning the term anti-aging, Lee said Allure had to make the change regardless of what public consensus might be.

This is why Lee no longer uses focus groups to test new covers. “I would hate for a room of 10 to 12 people to bypass my own editorial decisions,” she said, adding that people won’t know what they like until the finished product is presented to them.

Additionally, there will always be “naysayers,” she said. The July cover, for example, featured U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team players and married couple Ali Krieger and Ashlyn Harris. Lee said that she received hateful comments both on social media and through snail mail from readers who were upset about a lesbian couple on the cover.

“If someone is going to be offended … I don’t want my audience going that direction any way,” said Lee. “As a leader of a brand, you have to” make bold moves.

Innovation for the needs of the industry

With stores closed or operating in a different capacity than normal, Lee said that the ability to sample products has changed substantially. Places like Sephora, for example, no longer have product testers out in in-person circulation so getting consumers to test new products has become a challenge.

In the November issue, Lee said that her team reorganized the magazine to operate, in many ways, like a beauty supply store, including having departments for skincare, hair, makeup, etc. Since the magazine is sent straight to readers’ homes, there is the opportunity to include samples via circulation, she said. Additionally, in each section of an issue, augmented reality elements will be added to pages to allow readers to virtually test how they would look using specific products.

Seeing an opportunity in clean beauty 

Clean beauty is a hot trend in beauty right now, but there is zero regulation for what that actually means. For some brands, this means only using organic ingredients. For others, it means using non-natural chemicals that are believed to be healthy for the skin. 

Realizing that readers were worried about the ingredients of the products that they were putting on their faces, Allure created its own clean beauty seal for brands that did not use a list of ingredients suspected or known to be harmful, according to Lee. The goal was to help calm the fear mongering that was taking place in the industry and to get consumers to buy fully vetted products.

“If there is a standard in the future — if we can get brands on board — we’d love to create the standard,” she said. 

Image description –

A breakdown of Allure’s staff diversity

Diversity in and out of the newsroom 

Lee said that diversity at a magazine can’t just stop at who is on the cover or the models that are featured. It also needs to be about who is behind the camera, doing the makeup and designing the clothes. Everyone from newsroom staffers to contracted workers should represent a strong mix of people. 

Allure’s staff is more diverse than many newsrooms can claim, and Lee said that the way this gets achieved is through strong equality advocacy from people at the top. 

“There is a pipeline, but you might not be tapping into it,” said Lee. That’s why action plans need to be put in place, she said, and reaching out to diverse employees can be one point of entry. 

Digiday analyzed the most-recent earnings updates from the top 10 ad spenders in the world (according to RECMA data from 2018; 2019’s ranking isn’t available until September) to see how they are adapting their marketing strategies to the ongoing crisis.

1. Procter & Gamble: Supporting public health measures

Much like the previous quarter, the world’s largest consumer goods maker continued its strong pandemic sales performance as consumers stocked up on cleaning products like Mr Clean, Tide and Charmin toilet paper. E-commerce was also a particular bright spot as organic sales were up 6% in the latest quarter, its fiscal fourth.

The company said it increased marketing investment by 270 basis points — or around $480 million — though this increase was partially offset by 230 basis points of overhead and marketing expense savings. 

On the earnings call last week, P&G CEO David Taylor said the company was “using our marketing and communications expertise to encourage consumers to support public health measures, to help flatten the curve and slow the spread of the virus.” Taylor said its educational TV advertising and the use of additional in-store navigational and educational signage helped deliver “an immediate lift” to its homecare category.

P&G said it expects to record sales growth of between 2% to 4% for the current fiscal year — citing challenges with the economy and the ongoing health crisis. Organic sales rose 5% in its 2019 fiscal year.

2. Unilever: Readying a ‘purposeful’ push

Unilever reported a 0.3% dip in second-quarter sales growth, but its shares still soared when it reported earnings last week as analysts had expected a bigger decline. With hygiene front of mind for consumers, sales of products like Dove soap, Domestos bleach and new Lifebuoy sanitizer shot through the roof.  Still, with much of the world under lockdown conditions, food service sales declined by almost 40%, while out-of-home ice cream sales declined by almost 30%.

As consumer habits shifted, Unilever said it adapted and reallocated its brand and marketing investments “week-by-week.” That, coupled with declining ad prices in most media markets, led to the company’s brand and marketing investment declining by 100 basis points during the period — but also improved efficiency.

However, Unilever said it expects to increase its marketing investment in the second half of the year as lockdown restrictions ease and it puts advertising heft behind new products designed for the new normal. “We’re investing more of our marketing spend on communication, which is explicitly purposeful,” such as campaigns for brands like Lifebuoy and Domestos which also provide coronavirus-safety messages, said Unilever CEO Alan Jope on the company’s second-quarter earnings call.

3. L’Oréal: ‘Entering the second half with confidence’

L’Oreal’s sales dropped 19% in the second quarter as lockdown conditions weakened demand for makeup and cosmetics. Still, there are some signs of a recovery: Chief executive Jean-Paul Agon said the company’s sales rose in July for the first time since January.

Much like its consumer goods counterparts, L’Oreal’s e-commerce business has grown rapidly during the pandemic, up 64.6% over the first half of the year. The company’s China business also marked a swift recovery, with sales up 30% in the second quarter.

L’Oreal spent €3.98 billion ($4.7 billion) on advertising and promotional expenses in the first half of the year — down 10.9% in absolute spend terms versus last year, but up 30 basis points as a percentage of sales.

Agon said the company is “entering the second half with confidence.” The company has new product launch plans for each of it divisions and Agon said it is increasing its media investment “everywhere” to grow its market share.

4. Renault Nissan Mitsubishi alliance: A rough road ahead

Renault plunged to a record loss in the second quarter as the pandemic ruptured car sales and the company continued to feel the negative effects from its troubled alliance partnership with Nissan, of which it owns 43%. Renault’s sales fell 35% in the quarter. Meanwhile, Nissan has warned investors it will likely record its biggest ever operating loss in the year to March 2021. Global vehicle sales in the current quarter were down 48% on last year. Meanwhile, Mitsubishi reported a ¥176 billion ($1.7 billion) loss in the period covering April to June. 

The alliance is now embarking on a turnaround plan that involves wide-ranging jobs and production cuts.

On the marketing front, Nissan last month introduced a new “flat” logo. Meanwhile Renault is planning to make its e-tech hybrid engine technology one of the “key pillars” of its strategy this year, said Renault CEO Luca de Meo. “We shouldn’t be as shy as we have been in the last years” about showing off the performance of the technology, he added.

5. Amazon: The unstoppable money printing machine

Unsurprisingly, the pandemic has been a boon for Amazon’s sales as consumers dodged the shops and ordered items straight to their homes. Net sales soared 40% to $88.9 billion in the second-quarter and the company booked a record quarterly profit. Still, Amazon laid out $4 billion in “covid-19” related costs, such as purchasing personal protective equipment and paying out bonuses to its front-line employees and delivery workers.

The company expects sales next quarter to grow between 24% and 33% versus the prior year. Amazon’s “other” segment, which primarily includes revenue from advertising, grew 41% to $4.2 billion.

Its marketing costs in the period nudged up 1% on the year-ago quarter to $4.3 billion.

Amazon is planning to host its Prime Day shopping event in the fourth quarter this year, rather than the third, so as not to affect service to its customers who are relying on its service throughout the prolonged coronavirus crisis.

6. Coca-Cola: A narrower focus on its biggest brands

Coca-Cola’s net revenue slid 28% in the quarter ended July 2 as lockdown conditions hit beverage sales in restaurants, bars and other out-of-home venues. CEO James Quincey is more optimistic for the future: “We believe the second quarter will prove to be the most challenging of the year,” as sales trends improved as the months progressed. Coke pulled back heavily on marketing expenditure in the period — its selling, general and administrative expenses were down 34% — just over $1 billion — versus the year-ago quarter.

Quincey said Coca-Cola is now refocusing its marketing investments around its biggest brands and being more disciplined in its experimentation. One example of that is its new global ad campaign, “Together Tastes Better,” demonstrating how its drinks can be paired with meals. Coca-Cola is also launching the next iteration of its “Open” campaign this summer, a push that “invites the world to enjoy the simple and important things in life,” as Quincey put it.

At the same time, Coca-Cola is re-evaluating the return on investment across all its marketing channels — “everything from ad viewership across traditional media to improving effectiveness in digital,” Quincey said. Ultimately, even though marketing spend will step up from the second quarter, there will be cost savings.

7. GlaxoSmithKline: Working on a covid-19 vaccine

Pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline typically doesn’t talk too much about marketing and advertising on its earnings calls. The company suffered a 2% dip in revenue in its second quarter as global lockdown situations slowed down the number of people using its vaccines, with visits to healthcare professionals limited.

The company is working with France-based Sanofi to develop a covid-19 vaccine. So far the U.K. has signed up for 60 million doses of the vaccine, while the U.S. has agreed to secure 100 million doses.

GSK has been making a number of divestments of some of its products, such as Horlicks, as it looks to position itself as “the world’s leading pureplay consumer healthcare company with the most competitive portfolio possible,” said CEO Emma Walmsley. GSK has also been “winning share in an accelerating e-commerce channel” in its consumer unit.

Looking ahead, GSK is aiming to make £500 million ($656 million) in savings between now and 2022.

8. Volkswagen: ‘Full-blown task force mode’

Volkswagen chief finance officer Frank Witter described the first half of 2020 as “one of the most challenging in the history of our company.” Revenue dipped 23% in the second quarter. 

Still, he said the Germany automaker was “cautiously optimistic” about the rest of the year, thanks to the launch of new models and the “positive trend exhibited in our business over the past few weeks.”

The company maintained its “full-blown task force mode” from the previous quarter, which included cutting back budgets in areas including external consultancy and marketing. Witter said Volkwsagen has been “even stricter” with its brand efficiency programs and its platform rollouts.

Volkswagen’s U.S. unit was among the advertisers joining the #StopHateForProfit Facebook boycott in July.

9. McDonald’s: Cooking up a big push

With many restaurants closed and consumers staying indoors, McDonald’s global comparable sales declined 23.9% in the second quarter. Things are on the up now: As of June 30, McDonald’s said “nearly all” of its restaurants around the world were open.

U.S. marketing spend was down 70% in the quarter as McDonald’s chose to conserve resources until the coronavirus situation stabilized. That budget will be reallocated in the third and fourth quarters. The company said it will spend more than $200 million on additional marketing to support its franchisees get tills ringing again.

Some of the efforts will also be directed towards a “rededication” to breakfast, which the company said had been the most challenged part of its menu due to coronavirus — especially as some new competitors had stepped up their breakfast offerings at the same time. 

Having removed scores of menu items to ease its operations during the height of the pandemic, some will be returning — but not all, the company said. The bulk of McDonald’s marketing efforts in the second half of the year will be towards core menu items and drawing attention to some of its service channels — like online ordering — rather than new innovations

10. NBCUniversal/Comcast: A tricky quarter, but room for Peacocking

While Comcast’s broadband business continued to mark an uptick in customers as the coronavirus crisis continued to keep people at home viewing and surfing in record numbers into the second quarter, the rest of its empire was in a slump. Many of its theme parks remain closed, cable customers continued to cut the cord, advertising revenue was down and many movie releases are up in the air. Overall, revenue for the June quarter dipped by 11.7%.

On a positive note, Peacock —the company’s ad-supported streaming service it rolled out in April to Comcast customers, followed by a wider national U.S. launch in July — has picked up 10 million customers, the company said. Despite the Peacock push, advertising, marketing and promotion costs were actually down on the prior year — falling 29% to $1.3 billion. 

Advertising revenue, sold across its local cable, national cable, broadcast television and Sky networks, fell 30.4% in the quarter.

For example, about 41% of Black employees said they felt like they fit in at work, while 63% said they downplayed their culture or backgrounds in the workplace. Among non-Black POC (those identifying as Hispanic, Asian or other minority races), 62% said they fit in at work. Three in four White people said they felt they did.

The below chart illustrates how differently these employees experience work: 70% of Black employees in media are looking for a new job, compared with 35% of White employees. Only 31% of Black employees are proud of their companies, compared with 64% of White.

Digiday Research also ound that 64% of non-white employees in media and marketing surveyed said they face challenges at work that white employees do not face. About 43% said they have faced racial discrimination at work. When Black people were excluded, 56% non-Black people of color (those identifying as Hispanic, Asian or other minority race) said they’d faced challenges.

Among those who said they were Black, 86% said they face challenges at work non-white employees do not face, while 62% said they’d faced racial discrimination at work.

Now Instagram is in position to exploit that vulnerability using the copy-and-kill strategy it had deployed to counter Snapchat’s rise. In August, the Facebook-owned platform will debut a TikTok-like short-form video service in the U.S. called Instagram Reels. However, not only is Instagram attempting to ape TikTok’s product, but it is also trying to steal TikTok’s talent by offering to pay some TikTok creators to use its new platform, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“We have a long history of reaching out to emerging creators and working to break new stars on Instagram. As with previous products, we remain committed to investing in both our creators and their overall experience, and in certain cases, we may help cover production costs for their creative ideas,” said a Facebook company spokesperson in an emailed statement.

Instagram is not the only platform attempting to woo TikTok creators. YouTube has a team dedicated to working with TikTok stars that have created YouTube channels, according to entertainment industry executives. However, Instagram is seen by industry executives as TikTok’s foremost competition because the two platforms are considered most alike with a lot of overlap between their audiences.

“There is a battle going on, and it’s for the eyes of all of the 13- to 34-year-olds,” said Chris Sawtelle, the head of digital ventures at ICM Partners.

To be clear, TikTok is not backing down from the fight. The platform has created the TikTok Creator Fund that will pay some creators in the U.S. for posting to the platform. Initially, TikTok had earmarked $200 million to pay out over the next year, but a day after news broke of Instagram’s Reels payment talks, TikTok announced it had upped the ante to more than $1 billion paid out over the next three years. A TikTok spokesperson did not respond to an email asking how the platform will be selecting creators to receive payments or what the terms of those payments will be.

The TikTok Creator Fund as well as Instagram’s reported Reels payment offers signal that the platforms understand this battle will be won with money. That is what has kept many creators on YouTube as would-be rivals like IGTV emerged. Without revenue-sharing programs to rival YouTube’s, these platforms have not been able to compete. More recently, the promise of money through a revenue-sharing program IGTV is now testing is what has helped the platform to attract YouTube stars. 

The competition for creators between TikTok and Instagram is not a zero-sum affair. Diversification has been the name of the game for creators for the past half-dozen years or so. That’s been true for YouTube stars who have agitated against its content-recommendation and advertising algorithms as well as Vine stars who saw Twitter allow that platform to wither away. And it’s now true for TikTok stars.

“From day one, when we started signing big creators on TikTok, we said to them: ‘for many reasons [including] protection against any platform having issues as well as to grow your star power, you have to be on every platform,’” said Greg Goodfried, co-head of digital talent at talent agency UTA.

However, there is only so much time in the day for creators to be producing content for these various platforms, and how that time is allocated usually comes back to the money they receive in return. 

TikTok seems to be especially cognizant of this. Roughly a year and a half ago, TikTok began paying some creators, including those with large followings on Instagram and YouTube, to post to its platform, said Neben. And over the past year, TikTok has grown more active in facilitating sponsorship deals between creators and brands. “We’ve definitely seen it pick up quite a bit in the last six months,” Neben said of brand deals for TikTok videos.

That has helped TikTok to become a more regular part of the consideration set for creators. Between 2007 and 2013, YouTube dominated that discussion. And from 2013 until 2019, Instagram joined YouTube as the two most popular platforms for brand deals, Goodfried said. “Starting in 2020, we live in a YouTube-Instagram-TikTok world,” he said.

However, TikTok remains a newer platform among marketers than Instagram or YouTube, so the money creators make from brand deals for TikTok videos falls well short of the the money they make for posts on Instagram and YouTube.

“The gold spigot hasn’t launched yet,” Sawtelle said of TikTok. As a result, creators continue to focus on Instagram “because that’s where the money is.”

Certainly more money is coming to TikTok, though questions remain regarding how much money individual creators will stand to receive from the TikTok Creator Fund and what demands TikTok will be making of creators in exchange for payment. That said, TikTok has been more explicit about establishing a sustainable revenue stream for creators, whereas — with the exception of IGTV — Instagram has limited its financial dealings with creators to piecemeal payments and allowing creators to post sponsored content to its platform. 

Instagram may have the upper hand at the moment as the more established platform, but as the platform establishing a more direct way for creators to make money, TikTok has an opportunity to usurp Instagram’s position. But that’s dependent on TikTok remaining available in the U.S. and staving off Instagram’s latest attack.

How the battle turns remains to be seen, but a winner may emerge sooner than later. “These next couple months, this is the moment. We’re in it right now,” said Sawtelle.