EMARKETER’s Max Willens: Niche Marketers are Driving the Ad Surge in Social Video and CTV
NEW YORK — The brands that once felt too small to advertise on television got their taste of sight, sound, and motion through social video. Now they want more. That appetite is driving one of the most significant budget shifts in advertising history.
“By the end of this decade, it will be close to four-in-10 of all dollars spent on media of any kind going to either social video or converged television,” Max Willens, principal analyst for Social Media and the Creator Economy at EMARKETER, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at EMARKETER’s Future of Digital event in New York. “All of that is driven by a real expansion of access to this kind of advertising format.”
Creators are at the center of that expansion. For brands that have fully committed to the model, creators have become the organizing principle of their entire video strategy, spanning organic social, paid social, linear television, and CTV.
Micro and nano creators take share
The early creator economy rewarded reach. A small number of creators with massive platform audiences attracted the bulk of brand investment. That calculus is shifting as the volume of content brands need continues to grow.
“Because of the sheer tonnage needed by most brands, you’re seeing a shift toward lots of spending on lots of smaller creators whose content can then be sliced and diced and repurposed in lots of different ways,” Willens said. “Micro and nano creators in particular — their share of influencer marketing spend is going to grow to nearly half in the next couple of years.”
The extensibility of creator content drives this. Material produced for one platform migrates naturally to others, from organic to paid social, from social to web, from social to CTV.
One measurement approach won’t cover the whole funnel
Most brands entered creator marketing through a single door. A communications team ran some awareness campaigns. A performance marketing team drove sales through affiliate creators. Each built a methodology that worked in its lane. The problem emerges as creator investment expands across the full funnel.
“Using a performance or affiliate oriented approach for bottom funnel spending is great. It’s less effective if you’re trying to measure upper funnel progress. And the reverse is true as well,” Willens said. “A lot of brands still think of creators as one thing and think they should be able to measure it in one way. But the successful brands are finding that you usually need multiple frames of reference and approaches.”
Commitment separates winners from trend chasers
Research consistently shows that the sixth, seventh, and eighth time a creator discusses a brand, that content outperforms the first. The creator knows the product better. The audience has grown familiar with it. That compounding effect requires patience.
“If you really want breakthrough results, you have to be willing to commit, and that takes real discipline as far as who you work with,” Willens said. “If you try it once or you do it because you hear a lot of people are obsessed with one kind of trend on TikTok, that might work for a few months. Building that relationship, building that familiarity is really only possible if you commit to something.”
NEW YORK — The brands that once felt too small to advertise on television got their taste of sight, sound, and motion through social video. Now they want more. That appetite is driving one of the most significant budget shifts in advertising history.
“By the end of this decade, it will be close to four-in-10 of all dollars spent on media of any kind going to either social video or converged television,” Max Willens, principal analyst for Social Media and the Creator Economy at EMARKETER, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at EMARKETER’s Future of Digital event in New York. “All of that is driven by a real expansion of access to this kind of advertising format.”
Creators are at the center of that expansion. For brands that have fully committed to the model, creators have become the organizing principle of their entire video strategy, spanning organic social, paid social, linear television, and CTV.
Micro and nano creators take share
The early creator economy rewarded reach. A small number of creators with massive platform audiences attracted the bulk of brand investment. That calculus is shifting as the volume of content brands need continues to grow.
“Because of the sheer tonnage needed by most brands, you’re seeing a shift toward lots of spending on lots of smaller creators whose content can then be sliced and diced and repurposed in lots of different ways,” Willens said. “Micro and nano creators in particular — their share of influencer marketing spend is going to grow to nearly half in the next couple of years.”
The extensibility of creator content drives this. Material produced for one platform migrates naturally to others, from organic to paid social, from social to web, from social to CTV.
One measurement approach won’t cover the whole funnel
Most brands entered creator marketing through a single door. A communications team ran some awareness campaigns. A performance marketing team drove sales through affiliate creators. Each built a methodology that worked in its lane. The problem emerges as creator investment expands across the full funnel.
“Using a performance or affiliate oriented approach for bottom funnel spending is great. It’s less effective if you’re trying to measure upper funnel progress. And the reverse is true as well,” Willens said. “A lot of brands still think of creators as one thing and think they should be able to measure it in one way. But the successful brands are finding that you usually need multiple frames of reference and approaches.”
Commitment separates winners from trend chasers
Research consistently shows that the sixth, seventh, and eighth time a creator discusses a brand, that content outperforms the first. The creator knows the product better. The audience has grown familiar with it. That compounding effect requires patience.
“If you really want breakthrough results, you have to be willing to commit, and that takes real discipline as far as who you work with,” Willens said. “If you try it once or you do it because you hear a lot of people are obsessed with one kind of trend on TikTok, that might work for a few months. Building that relationship, building that familiarity is really only possible if you commit to something.”
