Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
Sharing Is Caring
Snapchat is a mobile-first social net, though it’s still not native to the world of influencer marketing. (It took off because the posts disappeared.)
Attracting legit social creators and influencers is critical to the health of the social net. But Snap lost $1.4 billion last year, so it’s not like Facebook or YouTube, which can both cut large checks and still have room to breathe.
Still, Snap made a big change in April with the general release of a creator rev-share called the Snap Star program.
The early signs are optimistic, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Snap hasn’t disclosed the rate Star program members receive in the rev-share – though the YouTube Shorts version pays 45%.
“Creators only have so many hours in a day, and they obviously will spend their precious time where they can get the most bang for their buck,” says Megan Frantz, talent manager at the influencer marketing firm Whalar.
The incentive structure is stronger for Snapchat accounts to post now. But can those influencers bring back former users and regain overall attention metrics?
Pulling Threads
Threads, Instagram’s Twitter twin, blew past the 100 million user mark in its first week, breaking the fastest-growing consumer tech product record previously set by ChatGPT, The Verge reports.
Since Threads is linked to Instagram, users can easily import profiles, followers and people they follow. And Instagram has more than 2 billion active users around the world – a rich prospecting pool.
In comparison, Twitter has maybe half a billion monthly active users, but its traffic is taking a swan dive, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince tweets (and threads).
Threads also has more users than the other Twitter competitors combined: Mastodon has 4.5 million users, BlueSky 50,000 and T2 9,200, Digiday reports.
Marketers are already testing the waters at Threads, according to Digiday. Though there are no ads yet, brands such as Netflix, Anthropologie, Slim Jim, Williams-Sonoma, Gymshark and The Economist gave set up Threads profiles.
Many questions remain, like what’s buried in Threads’ data policies, how the algorithm will work, whether there’s news content distribution and if it will be the one true Twitter killer.
The Sword And Shield
“They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result,” European data privacy activist Max Schrems tells the Financial Times.
Schrems has twice brought down major US-EU data-sharing agreements, first the Safe Harbor agreement, then the Privacy Shield.
There is no new law. The European Commission is resurrecting Privacy Shield, saying it’s reviewed new policies per an executive order by President Joe Biden regarding personal data transfers, which guarantees they are adequate to meet the law.
The fact that the new Privacy Shield rests entirely on an executive action – not a law – is a serious flaw, though. A new president could undo the order in a snap, and a massive system of commercial data sharing becomes illegal.
But even before it can reach that tenuous stage, Privacy Shield 2.0 must survive Schrems in court.
“Just like Privacy Shield, the latest deal is not based on material changes but by political interests,” he says.
But Wait, There’s More!
Amazon Prime Day isn’t the catalyst it used to be. [Bloomberg]
A mysterious network called AdStyle is placing fake celeb endorsement ads on conservative sites. [ProPublica]
How the generative AI boom could change advertising. [CNBC]
Internal use of generative AI by agencies has become a factor in RFPs. [Adweek]
You’re Hired!
The Washington Post promotes Johanna Mayer-Jones to chief advertising officer. [release]
Saatchi & Saatchi rehires Cliff Atkinson as director of culture and DE&I. [Campaign]
