Facebook Works To Attract Top Creators; Puts MRC Audit On Ice

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The Creator Economy

Facebook is trying to woo top content creators. But it’s late to the party and lost its halcyon sheen as the spot for influencers and ecommerce brands, reports The New York Times. YouTube is still the backbone of the video creator economy, and TikTok is the unquestioned champion of viral content, with a purely algorithmic feed that rockets video from 10,000 views to more than a million in minutes. TikTok also invested early in creator account tools and marketing partnerships. Snapchat and Twitter are in the mix. Late last year, Snapchat started parceling out more than one million dollars per day to creators for content on its discovery portal. Some individuals have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in a day. Snapchat and Twitter also both introduced tipping features this year. And Twitter is creating a paywall option so some accounts can charge monthly subscriptions for exclusive content. Facebook outlasted internet titans like AOL, Myspace and Tumblr. But what separates one social network from the internet graveyard is a healthy creator class.

Brand Safety You Later

Last June, Facebook committed to a Media Rating Council brand safety audit within the year, since, at the time, it was trying to stem a cascade of marketers that had boycotted the social network over content moderation failures, hate speech and misinformation on the platform. In October, still smarting from the fallout, Facebook agreed in principle with the MRC on the scope of the audit, which wouldn’t include News Feed. But no audit has materialized, and Facebook now tells Digiday that it is on track to start the audit in July and finish the accreditation process by the end of this year. That timeline is feasible if an audit does get underway in the next few weeks, according to an MRC spokesperson. But with no contract in place and apparently no clear sense of what the audit would even include, an MRC brand safety certification is more likely next year. Don’t hold your breath.

Sunny Days

Things are looking up for global advertising markets in 2021 after a tough and uncertain time last year. Dentsu paints a rosy picture overall for advertising in its latest report, with digital emerging as a bright spot. Read the report. “The ad market is forecast to fully recover in 2021, exceeding pre-pandemic spend sooner than was previously forecast.” Advertising is expected to grow by more than 10% to $634 billion. That rebound will be driven by digital, which is expected to return to double-digit growth at 15.6% this year – compared to 4% last year – and reach $311 billion. In the United States, dollars will continue to flow into connected TV and OTT “as supply erodes in linear TV, despite advertiser demand.” The Drum has more. [Related in AdExchanger: GroupM: Digital Will Capture More Than Half Of All Ad Spend In 2021]

But Wait, There’s More!

Nordstrom, eyeing 20-somethings, strikes minority investment deal in online clothing company Asos [NYT]

Roku Turns Quibi’s Lemons Into Lemonade – [Adweek]

Vistar Media raised $30 million. [release]