Business of Creators 💬

Platform round-up

Leverage the latest updates and features across digital platforms to help you get ahead of the game…

🎵 Instagram now lets users add up to 20 overlapping music tracks to their Reels, enabling creative sound mixing and new audio trends.

🆕 YouTube is adding new features to Shorts, including auto layout for easier video conversion, text-to-speech for narration, auto-generated captions, and the ability to remix remixed clips. They are, however, not planning to allow custom thumbnails for Shorts clips yet. 

🤝 Meta is testing a new Threads feature that lets users easily re-share media with credit to the original poster, aiming to reduce content theft and support a better creator ecosystem.

💗 Instagram is testing a "Super Like" feature for Stories, found in the app's code, which lets users express extra enthusiasm for a Story by pressing and holding the like button.

👯 YouTube is testing "Community Spaces", a new feature allowing channel fans to engage with text posts and interact on selected creator profiles.

➕ Instagram has shared 10 new tips on its Professional Dashboard to help maximize Reels performance

❌ Instagram recently allowed different sized images in carousels. However, an update has meant that brands can't boost Instagram carousels with full-screen images. 

👎 The new ratio metric? X is advancing its test of downvotes on post replies, with a new broken heart icon appearing in the app's code, indicating a dislike button that may soon launch publicly.

👻 Snapchat has partnered with VideoAmp to enhance ad measurement and planning tools for agency partners in North America, helping brands track the impact of their campaigns more effectively.

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4 of the top 10 advertisers on TikTok are reducing their spending

In what could be an indicator for where things are shifting, things aren’t looking too green for the platform. Here’s what you need to know from recent findings from MediaRadar: 

Ad spending

• TikTok's ad spending was growing quickly, but it slowed down after news of a possible U.S. ban came out in March 2024.

• In March, ad spend was still up 19% compared to the previous year, but that growth dropped to 11% and 6% in April and May, respectively.

• Overall, ad spend on TikTok is still growing, but at a slower pace. From January to May 2024, it was up 11% compared to the same period in 2023.

• Some advertisers are spending more on specific categories like consumer services (cleaning companies, printing services), jobs & education, and finance.

• Interestingly, even though some big advertisers like Target and P&G cut back on spending, the average daily cost for advertisers on TikTok actually went up slightly.

• This suggests there's still competition among advertisers who see value in reaching TikTok's audience. 

• Some advertisers are shifting their goals on TikTok to focus on getting more direct results from their ads, rather than just building brand awareness. 

User growth

• For the first time, TikTok's user growth seems to be slowing down, especially among young people (18-24 year olds).

• The percentage of weekly users in this age group dropped from 35% in 2022 to 25% in 2024. 

• On the other hand, the number of users aged 35-44 is increasing.

• The average age of a TikTok user in the U.S. is now over 30.

• People are also spending slightly less time on TikTok each day on average (now 51 minutes compared to 52 minutes in 2023).

The bottom line

We just really don’t know what’s going to happen. TikTok's ad platform is still growing, and user engagement is extremely strong. However, the potential ban and changes in user demographics is still causing anxiety for advertisers and creators. Only time will tell.