🛍 TikTok Shop is a problem...

Creators feel TikTok Shop creates too manny ads

Author

Wishu
November 22, 2023

Hello. In just three years, the share of U.S. adults who say they regularly get news from TikTok has more than quadrupled, from 3% in 2020 to 14% in 2023.

Creators feel TikTok Shop creates too manny ads

TikTok creators are starting to complain that the app is showing them more sponsored content, making the space feel "dystopian." "There's links everywhere," Brassel says in the video. "There's a hundred ads. Why is there 17-year-old girls trying to sell me 35-cent ring lights?"

Influencers feel strongly about the saturation: Autumn Accord, who has a TikTok account with more than 150,000 followers, said in an August 29 video that the TikTok Shop has become annoying and that she doesn't trust that people's reviews of sponsored content will be unbiased.

Is TikTok Shop the problem? It's unclear whether the introduction of the TikTok Shop has created an increase in sponsored content on the site. Still, an analysis conducted by two Insider reporters shows that advertised content is steadily making its way into people's feeds.

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💬 What’s new on the platforms… 

💸 Klarna launches its own shopping platform: Buy now, pay later company Klarna is launching its Creator Shops platform, which allows influencers to monetise their content through affiliate links and setting up their own “shop” pages on Klarna.com

🚀 Meta updates

  • Instagram officially launched the ability to share Feed posts and Reels exclusively with people on your Close Friends list, just like you can now on Stories and Notes. This update seems like a game changer for a variety of users:

  • People who previously used Finstas as a pressure-free space to connect parents who might appreciate the added privacy when posting family pics

  • Creators or brands who want to create a sense of exclusivity within a select community.

  • You can now share Instagram Feed posts and Reels exclusively with people on your Close Friends list

☕️ LinkedIn updates: LinkedIn sent out an email confirming it would remove all carousel posts, profile videos and clickable links on images or video as of December 14. Note: you’ll still be able to create carousel-style posts by uploading PDFs.

👩‍💻 YouTube updates: YouTube is testing Dream Track, an AI tool that allows creators to generate Shorts tracks using just text prompts and humming. The AI tool is in beta with select creators and 9 famous artists who are allowing their voices to be incorporated into AI-generated tracks, including Alec Benjamin, Charlie Puth, Charli XCX, Demi Lovato, John Legend, Papoose, Sia, T-Pain, and Troye Sivan.

📲 TikTok updates: TikTok announced “Add to Music App,” a new feature which gives music fans the ability to save the songs they discover on TikTok on the music streaming services of their choice.

FTC cracks down on food industry following problematic ‘influencer’ posts

Stricter standard for influencer food advertising are needed: Federal regulators announced warnings against two major food and beverage industry groups and a dozen nutrition influencers Wednesday, as part of a broad action to enforce stricter standards for how companies and social media creators disclose paid advertising.

What do these standards involve? The crackdown, which represents more aggressive enforcement of the FTC’s rules, signals that the agency seeks to set a new precedent for holding both influencers and industry accountable for social media marketing campaigns that fail to make clear who is funding them.

Even the Kardashians are in trouble: In 2017, the FTC sent out more than 90 warning letters in response to social media posts from celebrities, including members of the Kardashian family, who the agency said failed to disclose their connections to brands. 

🔥Trending

What Threads posts get the most engagement according to Meta

Threads pushes competition with X: The team at Meta working on the company's buzzy new app, Threads, has been hard at work recruiting influencers, celebrities, and users to help build communities and subcultures to compete with X, formerly known as Twitter.

Meta’s Senior Global Marketing Director, Jackie Pimentel, spoke at CreatorIQ Connect: Pimentel spoke at the LA conference about the strategy behind Threads, and how her team is working to create communities within the app. "Creators really needed to be at the center of the content, from day one," Pimentel said. "The minute a person opened the app, we wanted content in there." Meta is still actively recruiting celebrities, sports stars, and influencers to create content and help build communities, Pimentel added.

The app's initial buzz has died down a bit since its massive launch: Still, in October, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Threads had nearly 100 million monthly users. But Pimentel assures the team is "working with different verticals is something we are working on. What are specific features to those verticals? How do we bring on everyone from the superstars to the amplifiers and the fans?"

Kick: Startup spikes bank products

Kick is backed by the Open AI Startup Fund: Kick was co-founded by Conrad Wadowski, who also co-founded online course platform Teachable. The two-year-old company previously positioned itself as a startup aimed at creators, including offering them tax prep services, bookkeeping tools, and debit cards with generous cash back.

It has had to withdraw its creator sector: Today, Kick’s website doesn’t even mention creators, and focuses on providing an AI-powered assistant for bookkeeping for the more general business owner. At the end of the day, most creators can get by with existing features like Google Sheets—and regular banks.

Is Meta’s ad-free Instagram subscription worth it?

When European regulators asked Meta Platforms to be more explicit about consent to data collection, the Facebook and Instagram parent’s solution was to offer Europeans a choice: free with ads or an ad-free subscription.

The ad-free feed:

  • It has been almost a decade since Instagram introduced advertising.

  • The ad-free subscription makes Story swiping more pleasant; those ephemeral photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours. Before, Instagram would often serve two ads in a row. The subscription allows users to see friends’ updates without promotional interruption.

  • The main feed change isn’t so dramatic. The official ads are gone. But a fair amount of promotional content is still evident.

  • What about data collection? Meta is clear: If you pay for no ads, your data won’t be used for ads. That doesn’t mean Meta will stop collecting your data.

Is it worth it?:

Is the ad-free experience worth more than an Amazon Prime or Netflix subscription? For most, no.

In a news release, Meta emphasized, “We believe in a free, ad-supported internet—and will continue to offer people free access to our personalized products and services.”

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