Creator Marketing trends for the 2HY of 2024

Digital video consumption has reached an all-time high, led by creator content, and advertisers are shifting more dollars toward influencer marketing. Some are willing to bet that the days of creators being viewed as a supplement to advertisers’ playbooks are gone. Instead, creators could become the new foundation for marketing and advertising.

“Starting first with creators when it comes to advertising is definitely the way of the future,” says Ali Fazal, vice president at creator management platform Grin.?

This year, 44% of marketers plan to up their creator investment, with an average spending increase of 25%, according to the inaugural creator economy report by IAB and TalkShoppe. The landscape was last valued at $250 billion and is expected to grow to a whopping $480 billion by 2027, Goldman Sachs forecasts. As creators become more cemented in advertiser budgets, the role they play could grow, graduating from the experimental bucket to a category of their own. While the terms creator and influencer are often used interchangeably, the key difference is purpose, with an influencer using their relationships and their network to promote products and influence buying decisions.

Social Media Marketing agency TERRITORY Influence (Bertelsmann Group) is among those experimenting with the concept of creator-led advertising. The agency last year teamed with Sazerac for an international creator-leg campaign, that spanned digital out-of-home, social media and experiential marketing and was centered around the activation of unpaid nano influencers with support from a slew of bigger creators. In total, the campaign generated 6.2 Mio impressions, while the brand enjoyed a sales uplift of 7.5% in Germany during the campaign runtime.

The example above signals the edge that creator-based advertising provides over traditional tactics in the social media era.?

"Previously you would have had influencer marketing bolted onto a campaign as an afterthought. Now, creator activity is at the heart of brands marketing plans,” says Stefan Schumacher, managing director of TERRITORY Influence.

As advertisers ramp up their creator investments, I hope that they will also pay more attention to the key industry trends anticipated for the second half of 2024. Trends like long-form video’s resurgence or generative artificial intelligence (AI) could change strategies for some, while the growing hype around social commerce could offer brands new opportunities to engage with customers.

So without further ado, here are my top trends that I expect to shape influencer marketing in 2024 and beyond:

The science of being #influenced

Beyond consumers’ general appreciation of creator content are signs that such content is more meaningful than studio-made ads, like scripted video content that appears on TV, per IAB’s report. Creator ads have a 1.4-times greater impact on building brand loyalty and a 1.3 times greater impact on inspiring brand advocacy, according to the findings.

It’s worth noting that an appreciation for creator content comes as consumers are posting less content of their own across social channels, according to Ellyn Briggs, a brands analyst for decision intelligence company Morning Consult:

“Influencers especially are going to need to fill a content void,” says Ellyn Briggs, brand analyst at Morning Consult.

Though consumers these days are increasingly likely to call out inauthentic content, they continue to place deep trust in creators, tasking marketers to rethink how they engage their audiences. A trend I expect to grow as we move into the second half of 2024 is that brands and creators will be more selective around who they partner with, and longer-term partnerships will be more common. In contrast to the fast-paced digital marketing world, building long-lasting relationships between brands and influencers is key to success for both parties. I also anticipate that marketers will increasingly hire creators to produce content specifically for brand-owned channels, versus sharing the content to the creator’s pages. Such is the case for Uber, which built out a TikTok creator strategy that leverages no more than six creators at any given time to make content for the brand.?

“Creators being on their own and working with no confines are able to be a lot more innovative, bold, daring, and as a result, the content is more effective,” says Stefan Schumacher.

Follower count is dead - long live Nano & Micro Influencers

A focal point in the creator space has often been the use of macro or star influencers, with sometimes millions of fans and followers. Until today, many brands and agencies have confused influence with popularity. Instead of looking at someone’s influence over others, they have focused pre-dominantly at the number of followers and fans. As the influencer marketing industry matures, I do expect the use of follower count as a sole consideration to finally fizzle out of the conversation. In fact, that the metric alone isn’t as strong of a success indicator compared to aspects like engagement, click-through or comment sentiment. Additionally, as brands strive to build a more diverse creator strategy, follower count often favors those not from diverse backgrounds.

“I think we can officially say that in 2024, using follower count to determine an influencer’s potential success is dead.” confirmes Ali Fazal, vice president at Grin

At Territory Influence we believe that everyone can be a creator and actually has an influence on someone. Hence, we are looking at the effects different types of influencers have on engaging with and impacting other people. To measure this, it is important to look beyond the number of followers and start analyzing influencer credibility, audience engagement, content quality and the power to drive actions and impact sales.

Micro-influencers have established themselves as a new opportunity for marketers to be more relevant to their target audience and send their messages in a more authentic way. What does “micro-influencer” mean? Micro-influencers are people with smaller communities of followers on social media, but those followers are often much more active and engaged than those of influencers with higher numbers of followers.

“What we’re seeing is that a lot of these micro creators, who might have a smaller audiences but really strong engagement rates, as they are gaining more followers they’re able to retain that high level of interaction,” says Zoltan Palotai, Executive Director at Territory Influence.?

With authenticity taking the forefront in 2024, user-generated-content from unpaid nano influencers will play an ever bigger role in building brands online. Having real customers share their positive experiences, especially unprompted, will help build your brand image and improve purchase consideration. According to a recent study among 2,042 U.S., U.K. and Australian shoppers, 79% of respondents said UGC highly impacts their purchasing decisions. The same report found that 80% of consumers are more likely to purchase a product online if the website features photos and videos from real customers.

The resurgence of longer-form content

I also anticipate more variety in content formats, in particular a resurgence of longer-form content, as consumers indicate a want for more granular insights and deeper connections. And with YouTube creators still reigning supreme amongst younger generations, it's only natural to see TikTok and Instagram encourage their users to create longer videos too. Such has become the norm on TikTok, where viewers often request a part two and three on shorter videos, a sentiment TikTok appeased with the addition of 10-minute videos. And while short-form videos will not fall from popularity any time soon, the opportunity to tell a more comprehensive story could make a difference for marketers.

So what are the types of long-form content people want to see? What can you do as an influencer, business, or agency to leverage this resurgence?

Here are my top 5 tips you should implement in 2024:

• Vlog-style content. Vlogs are the best way to connect with your audience and provide a glimpse into your daily lives. It’s all about being authentic and letting your personality shine through.?
• Storytelling content. Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways to engage your audience. Sharing personal experiences can really help brands, influencers, and businesses establish a unique identity and build relationships with their audience.
• In-depth informational content. Audiences are hungry for knowledge, and long-form content provides the perfect opportunity to dive deep into a subject. Whether you're creating a tutorial, a how-to guide, or a research-based piece, provide plenty of examples and visuals to help your audience understand the material.
• Captions and text-based content. As the world becomes more diverse and inclusive, it's important to create content that's accessible to everyone. They're also a great way to engage audiences who prefer to consume content without audio.
• Interactive content. In a world where audiences are craving immersive experiences, interactive content is becoming increasingly popular. This can include anything from quizzes and polls to choose-your-own-adventure style stories.

“Over time there has become this perception that millennials and Gen Z in particular can’t focus, we have to make things quick, and we’ve seen that this bet has failed time and time again,” says Ali Fazal, Vice president at Grin.?

Still, short-form has been a growing focus for platforms, particularly TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, with the latter two consistently layering in new features and monetization tools for their Reels and Shorts products in a bid against TikTok. Beyond the big three platforms for influencer content, others have similarly ramped up efforts to court both creators and advertisers. Snapchat recently began experimenting with a creator-led content series concept and added sponsored links to its My AI generative AI chatbot.

Social Commerce as accelerator for the Creator Economy

As marketers map out their creator plans this year, a key focal point is the potential for social commerce. The interest follows the recent debut of TikTok Shop in the U.S., which has so far seen tepid results, though brands have expressed excitement. For some, it has proven to be a major opportunity —?beauty brand BK Beauty activated TikTok Shop and within three months said it had more than doubled revenue, according to Adweek.?

Total social commerce sales in the U.S. are expected to grow steadily from $67 billion in 2023 to over $144 billion by 2027, per Insider Intelligence. More broadly, for brands using influencers, Briggs recommends that they take note of the types of content favored by social media users, like product hauls and daily routine videos, which have been successful for driving purchases. Specifically, 53% of Gen Zers made a purchase after watching a “review” video on social, while haul and get ready with me (GRWM) videos drove 40% and 37% to purchase, respectively, per Morning Consult data.

The seamless shopping experience touted by social commerce could be what elevates the playing field, with 46% of buyers indicating that they are interested in buying products from social media with a one-stop shop experience, according to 2023 Comscore data.

Social media apps already play a significant role in product discovery - in fact, GenZ adults are significantly more likely to start online product searches on TikTok, YouTube, or Instagram, than on Google - while consumers are also becoming more open to buying on social platforms directly.

In the dynamic landscape of social commerce, influencers will evolve from mere endorsers to influential shopping guides. Influencers will curate content that seamlessly integrates products into their lifestyles, providing genuine insights and recommendations. This approach guides their followers through the decision-making process with a level of trust that traditional advertising struggles to achieve.

AI will Reshape Influencer Marketing

Among other questions under consideration is how AI can serve the creator economy. While some creators are already experimenting with generative AI to tell better stories, others are afraid that AI powered avatars will take over their jobs.

Here are my Top 4 predictions how AI will reshape influence marketing in 2024:

1. Predictive AI will improve influencer selection

AI is revolutionizing the influencer selection process through in-depth data analysis, going beyond basic demographic data of the audience. By utilizing information about online behaviors, interactions with content, and even psychographic analysis, AI helps find influencers who authentically resonate with the brand’s values. As a result, companies can not only communicate more effectively with their target audiences but also build lasting and credible relationships with influencers that reflect their brand.

2. AI dubbing will expand creator audiences

I do expect influencers to expand their audience across language barriers using AI powered automatic translations. YouTube has rolled-out a feature last year, that enables creators to easily add multi-language audio dubs to both new and existing videos, expanding their reach to international audiences. When creators upload a video, they can now select the option to add additional audio tracks for over 40 languages. Once added to new video uploads or updated to existing ones, viewers can automatically watch the video in their default language. During the testing phase of the feature, YouTube reports that creators saw over 15% of their watch time come from views in the video's non-primary language.

3. Gen AI will separate the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

While smart creators will benefit from using generative AI to streamline mundane back-end tasks like planning and organizing, allowing for extra time to be creative, those who grow overly reliant on it will raise red flags among an already critical consumer base.

"The central currency for influencers is the trust of their community. Transparency regarding the use of generative AI will hence become an important factor to maintain that trust." says Karsten Hoffmann, executive director at Territory Influence.

According to The New York Times, Instagram is also testing a program that offers its top influencers the ability to interact with their followers over direct messages using an AI chatbot. The program, known as “Creator A.I.,” would allow influencers to chat with fans through direct messages on the social network and potentially through Instagram comments in the future. This would allow content creators with a large number of followers to better interact with their fans, while reducing the amount of work required to personally respond to a large number of messages and comments.

4. Virtual Influencers will attract audiences and brand partnerships

There’s also the concept of virtual influencers, like Miquela, who has already teamed with brand Pacsun, that could potentially come more into the mainstream as AI helps the computer-generated figures look more lifelike.

According to Influencer Marketing Hub data, AI influencers are collecting excellent feedback from brands and advertisers, with 60% of marketers who collaborated with virtual influencers being satisfied with campaign results.

“These virtual personalities created using advanced AI technologies could represent interesting new opportunities for brands worth exploring. They could help engage with younger audiences, especially in the realms of fashion, technology, and entertainment,” says Zoltan Palotai, executive director at Territory Influence.

Still, while virtual influencers offer some advantages over actual creators, like the ability to promote anything without qualms, the human element is key to forming authentic connections. Likely not a shock, analysis from Morning Consult has found that consumers trust recommendations by human influencers far more than those from AI.

In my dedicated deep-dive article on the subject of AI powered influencers I do provide more insights regarding the benefits and watch-outs of working with?virtual social avatars.

Summary & Conclusions

If there's one thing we can count on for the second half of 2024, it's that creator marketing will continue to evolve. Feeling overwhelmed having to continually keep up with the latest trends in influencer marketing? Consider hiring a specialist agency like TERRITORY Influence (Bertelsmann Group). We have a team of over 500 social media, community & influence marketing experts across Europe, who will be more than happy to engage with your target audience and run social media & influencer marketing campaigns for your brand.