Affiliate Idea Factory

Anyone in marketing gawking at the near-billion price tag attached to TikTok creator Khaby Lame and his deal with Rich Sparkle Holdings isn’t really looking at innovation. They’re witnessing faith. Faith in what this industry has collectively agreed to let numbers represent. 

Because that $975 million valuation doesn’t seem to be rooted in the nuts and bolts of Lame’s company Step Distinctive Limited’s financials so much as the gravitational pull of his audience. 

The release made that all too clear: it talked up Khaby Lame as a “global-tier traffic entrance”. His company was framed as the “once-in-a-generation traffic gateway” to some 360 million followers. Moreover, those same fans could generate more than $4 billion in annual sales.  

Continue reading this article on digiday.com. Sign up for Digiday newsletters to get the latest on media, marketing and the future of TV.

,Read More

Social media has now been around long enough to know it can be an extremely powerful marketing channel, notably for lower-funnel advertisers. Even in the face of eroded signals on what gets them to click.

So the timing is right to understand social platforms from a 2.0 point of view — at least that’s the thinking behind Gale agency’s research work into what it considers “emerging media.” And what it found is that the more a platform can deliver the feeling and growth of community, the more success brands can have marketing on that platform. 

Gale, which is owned by Stagwell, surveyed more than 1,200 U.S. consumers to evaluate their relationships with traditional and emerging media. Digiday got a look at the findings from the report, called Connections Over Impressions. Ultimately, with more social platforms evolving their ad offerings, brands can essentially harness word-of-mouth in a 2.0 manner. 

The report essentially found that brands need to assess such elements as platform momentum, ability to capture and hold attention and the ability to establish trust. The channels that delivered best on those attributes were community-centric spaces where brands can seek deeper connections with the authoritative voices on those platforms — think the moderator of a subreddit on Reddit that’s relevant to your brand, or an appropriate server on Discord. 

Continue reading this article on digiday.com. Sign up for Digiday newsletters to get the latest on media, marketing and the future of TV.

,Read More